[Scared-cpa]

Hi all,

I’ve noticed a pretty normal trend with me. I do pretty good on MCQs but when it comes to TBSs in the same section, I usually get 50% or less correct. It’s really disheartening. Is this normal or do I just need to do more TBSs? I absolutely hate them, as most people do, so I thought maybe that’s why I’m doing poorly on them or maybe I don’t know the material as well as I should?

[Substantive Testing]

TBS are very scary because you never know what you going to get on exam day; Moreover, it is almost impossible to prepare for them. There are multiple reason why you could get a TBS wrong, and you need to identify what the problem is. Was is because you needed to reinforce your concepts better, unfamiliar with the format, computational mistakes, etc. Depending on that you should know how to improve on.

[Kbob]

Totally normal. Don't obsess about it. We all suck at first.

Sim issues for me usually come down to these: 1) misunderstanding how to use the interface (they will tell you if you should enter negative numbers; percentages of ownership are entered in decimal form) and 2) forgetting a key fact or rule (half year of depreciation in year of disposal) that causes a cascade effect (multiple things being wrong because they all relied on the same wrong number).

I recommend doing the same sim repeatedly until you understand both how it works as well as the facts involved.

You'll improve. Just takes time and (repeated) effort.

[Scared-cpa]

Thanks, guys.

@Kbob I think you may have it right. A lot of the answers I would get correct if they were in multiple-choice format, but the formatting confuses me so I often get them wrong. Plus right now I'm doing pensions. I hate pensions. HATE. There's 7 TBSs in one section (CPAExcel) and doing 7 in a row gets very tiring when I'm confused and upset. The harder and longer I work on them, the more tense and upset I get.

I appreciate the assurance, though!

Also: This isn't related to TBSs, but I haven't been taking notes unless I get something wrong or don't understand it. Am I setting myself up for failure by doing this? I just know that I won't look back over them when it comes to review time (let's be honest here). I just figured for the last two weeks, I would relearn anything in my notes through all the MCQs, TBSs, Focus Notes, and flash cards.

[Author]

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