[Anonymous]

Yesterday, I worked Bonds 44 mcq, and it took me about 3 hours. (and I got 58% correct). And the second time, it took me around 1 and half hour to do the same 44 Bond questions. And to top that one, I have forgotten the chapters which I read last month, it seems like I am starting all over again. Everything is up in the air. I don’t remember anything. Now I can really understand the pain what most of you going through for the FAR exam. Oh…gosh this section is THE BEAST.

Oh my God…I am started panic about the FAR exam…THE exam date is approaching to me. How do you do hundreds’ and thousands’ of questions so quickly? Do you read the explanations why you get wrong or right? For the FAR, 1724 questions …oh my…. how long it’s going to take me. And I was planning to do wiley mcq as well…?

Whoever passed FAR, I salute you! Less than 3 weeks left for the exam and I appreciate your advice.

Thank you so much in advance! Wishing all of you good luck.

[NoScores2Display4thisSection]

sometimes 6minutes, depends on the question but FAR is tough

if you use Becker, try the AICPA released SIMs on bonds that comes with Becker, there's one where you have to calculate the carrying value of the bond and fill in the table. that way you practice & pay attention to whether it's semi-annual/annual and the rate, etc

dont worry if the bonds questions take long. you're not going to get so many bonds questions you cant finish the exam.

done

[pacific1]

@cpamust – I am in the same boat as you, I sit down and figure oh I will get 300 questions or whatever done in a certain time frame and I am lucky if I get a third of that! They take forever!

[See Pee A]

@cpamust: I used Becker and had that experience, with all sections not just FAR. They really try to grill you (something you will hopefully appreciate on gameday). Don't get overly bogged down in the minute of the minute details. FAR is difficult because there is a lot of material. What helped me is that I studied from beginning to end in about 3.5 weeks, so even in my last 3-4 days of review none of it was too old. Since you're going slower (I assume you're working, busy with school, or really whatever) it would probably be helpful to occasionally (twice a week, perhaps?) spend about 15 minutes flipping through the past lectures. Don't focus terribly on everything, just try to jog your memory. Come final review time, you will be surprised by how much faster it goes since you have at least the basic concepts in your head, and “re-learning” the things you “forgot” goes much quicker.

I did less than this and still passed (have decent memory and start to finish time was shorter), so with more prep it should definitely work for you.

BEC 86 (08/30/11)
FAR 84 (10/13/11)
REG 88 (11/08/11)
AUD 86 (11/29/11)

Exam prep - Becker self-study

[See Pee A]

@cpamust: I also score in the 70s on most homework sections, a few in the low-mid 80s and a few in the 60s as well. Your score reflects the overly complicated questions you see in homework vs. the actual exam. Think of it this way, the actual FAR exam has 3 MC testlets with 3 MCQ's (90 total) and then 7 sims. If you average 2 minutes per MCQ x 90 MCQ's, that's 180 minutes. That leaves about an hour for the sims. Give or take a bit of time for faster/slower on MCQ's but the questions on the actual exam are rarely as complex as your homework. For example, the pensions stuff in the Becker review goes into so much detail on entries and other craziness… on the exam all I ever got was calculating NPPC. Not to say you won't get anything harder, but just as an example not everything will be tested at the hard level. good luck!

BEC 86 (08/30/11)
FAR 84 (10/13/11)
REG 88 (11/08/11)
AUD 86 (11/29/11)

Exam prep - Becker self-study

[Anonymous]

@NoScores2Display4thisSection

Congratulations on passing the exams. Best wishes to you. Oops, I haven't started the Sims…

@pacific1, We can get through this together ..tell me about that, no wonder, the mcq takes forever and forever to finish.

@See Pee A

Thanks for breaking it down and explaining this. At this point, I am kind of overwhelmed. Doing all the mcq seems so much pain and so much time-consuming. I am glad to hear the exam is not going to be harder than this…hopefully. On the lighter note, I sometimes have the tendency to do hard questions right and easy questions wrong…b/c of over thinking.

It's comforting to read all of your responses. Good Luck.

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one taking forever to go through MCQ's..it took me 2 weeks with varying studying hours to complete F5 on leases and bonds -_-

I realize I spend too much time trying to read, reread, and understand the questions sometimes. My new tactic is just spend only a few minutes on any given question. If I find myself taking too long, I'll just go ahead and guess on an answer. I'm still LEARNING by reading the explanations, except this is more effective use of my time. Plus, the true test of whether or not you've actually learned anything is the next go around. If you still have trouble getting the answers right, then that means reading the explanations aren't helping and thus you should try another approach.

[Macc Grad]

I did bonds for about 9 hours today, using Wiley TB and Yaeger, I broke them down into 10 question quizzes. I've noticed after 10 I lose a lot of motivation to keep thinking on the same topic. After I did a section of 10 I'd go back to a previous module and do 10 questions of those and flip through my notes about whatever topic it was on. It's really helping me keep all the stuff fresh. I didn't do it this way when I took REG and AUD, I'd just plug through them all and then do one massive review for a few days before game time which had me all over the place and in a panic. I'm liking my new approach better as everything will be fresher come final review time.

I've spent up to 10 mintutes on some mcq's by writting out a whole amort schedule and then do the journal entries first. Then I go back to the stem of the question and see if my answer isn't in my chicken scratching somewhere. at the least I have the amortization and J/E's down pretty good. Then I make sure to know how the answer points to the efficient way of getting to the same point.

A true 10+ hour day is on deck for me tomorrow…on to Pension's and Leases. Hope to have them down good by 5pm so I can make way for Deffered Tax for the night cap. Could be looking at a 12 hour day tomorrow.

In AUD, BEC, and REG, I didn;t take any notes while studying, but for FAR I'm getting 5 pages or so for each lecture, and pausing the video a lot more. I think this might bode well for me to really understand the stuff they are teaching.

Another thing (like what See Pee A said), when I get frustrated with a question I look at the little things in the section you do know and understand what it means. My three test taking experiences have all shown that they seem to hit the surface of a topic more often than diving down into the meat and bones of a subject. Best to prepare with the hard ones and take notes on them.

Blah, bedtime, will wake up and plug away again tomorow!

BEC - 77 (exp. 2/23/12)
REG - 75
AUD - 74
FAR - 11/29/11

[RedRage00]

When I first started studying for FAR it would take me forever to do the problems. The more I practiced the easier it became. Keep at it.

Texas CPA
Licensed, March 2012

[rknight21]

oh man great thread… until reading this, I was starting to doubt myself…. When I did AUD i was able to breeze through each questions fairly quickly… My timing suffered a little with BEC but it was still formidable….. However, with FAR i am averaging 4 hours to complete 90 wiley questions…aarrgghhh I havent looked at a single REG question but seriously it cannot get any worse….

for the record I have done 8 sets of those 90 questions and i am still averaging 4 hours..

[rmm91909]

After reading this it has helped me make my decision to move FAR! I was in a pickle and scheduled FAR for 11/28 in hopes that I passed BEC so I would have a shot at not losing my audit score. Well that didn't happen and audit expires 11/30. I guess there isn't much of a reason anymore to cram all of FAR's MCQs in a two week span that includes Thanksgiving. After reading this I think I will be lucky if I make it half way through the MCQs in two weeks!

[Author]

Replies