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But I did =)
Hello,
It’s strange, but I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. The moment where I am able to write a post on Another71. I’m sure you guys echo my sentiment, but when I am feeling particularly shitty after leaving one of those exams, I would quickly scour this site to see who:
1) Getting the same feels as me
2) Passed regardless of those feels.So thank you to the Another71 community. I am going to try my best to keep this brief, but I just have a lot to say about these damn exams. Here’s my summarized version and then you can keep scrolling if you’d like for the deets.
Testing period: May 2016 – February 2017
The ugly stats:
AUD – 67, 80
REG – 63, 79
FAR – 66, 63, 71, 73, 75
BEC – 74, 72, 74, 78Saying I struggled through these exams is an understatement. I wanted to quit numerous times and contemplated why I even chose accounting as a profession. I failed five times before I finally passed my first exam. Unbelievable.
If the struggle is real for you, you’re not alone. Stop questioning your intelligence. You can and will get through this. Answer the questions below honestly:
Why I failed / How to avoid failing questionnaire
1) You’ve heard it before, but it’s bears repeating. This is not a test of intelligence, it is about endurance. Can you create a study schedule that best suits your needs and stick with it? When you study, are you legitimately studying? If you hesitated, then the answer is probably no and you need to own your failures.
2) When you finish a study session, stop and reflect. What did you get out of it? Did you meet your study goal? Could you teach someone that was new to this topic? If you were going to test the next day on that one topic you learned, could you drop some knowledge and pass?
3) If you were on a CPA study island (HA THAT WOULD BE MISERABLE), who would be there with you to make it more bearable?
I understand, if you don’t want to tell too many people that you’re testing or hear “How did it go?!” knowing full well that you have no idea. The ones that have been on this journey knows your post feelings about an exam doesn’t guarantee a pass or a fail either way. But they’re called a support group for a reason. Lean on them, let them help you hold yourself accountable. They’ll be your biggest cheerleaders when you pass and compassionate when you don’t.
4) After reading A LOT of articles, another71 chat forums and listening to my friends on how you can study the best…at the end of the day, you know yourself the best. Do you need music, silence, your room, public places, etc? Do you like to listen to lectures first, take notes, or take a stab at the MCs so you know what you’re looking for, etc?
5) Ok I can’t just state that and not say what I personally did. Take it with a grain of salt because we all study differently. –> Refer below for details if you care to read!
How I passed the exams
1) NOT CRAM
2) Ok some cramming occurred because I work at one of the big 4s which sucks the life out of you.
3) Run down on Becker – Did the bulk of my studying with this program. What finally helped was to:Listen to all the lectures,
Take extensive notes (typing it out), pausing the video to make sure I got down the notes I needed and going at my own pace to absorb the info.After all of that, then I would attempt to do the multiple choice questions
I didn’t guess when I was doing MCs as homework. If I didn’t know an answer, I would research with my notes or the book to figure it out. I didn’t want to ingrain the wrong guessing habit and rely on just “clicking” anything to see what the answers were.BUT you do need to test yourself. Progress tests are key. It mixes of all the questions so you don’t rely on a pattern to help you answer. I would do one chapter (Ch.4 for example), a set of 30 questions, then the next one would be a cumulative progress test (example, Ch,1-3) to make sure I wouldn’t forget what I would learn.
Practice exams helps. Do them early enough so you can shore up your weaknesses. Also, don’t be too downtrodden by your scores. I felt like the real exams were more straightforward and becker questions can be very convoluted. No lie, i nearly failed every single practice exam :/Final review, oh yes. Costs more though. It’s worth it to summarize all the information in a more manageable form. Plus, new questions to test the old thinker with.
4) Becker was great, but it’s not perfect. Information overload. It would focus on random details that didn’t show up on any of my exams and left out things that could have helped me pass. Cue, Ninja notes.
5) Ninja notes: high level review. I cannot attest to the entire program because I only got the notes and one of the lectures, but I loved how it summarized the information even more. I will say as a caveat, you cannot pass on this alone. Only after I learned the material through Becker was I able to take advantage of the summarization of Ninja notes. It’s not detailed enough and the questions did not feel challenging enough to test my knowledge.
6) When you fail so many times, you get desperate so I turned to Wiley as another source. At this point, I already memorized the Becker MCs so they no longer helped me. Wiley (just signed up for a free trial..trials because I used multiple emails =), provided another source of questions. I used this for BEC and it was refreshing to see different questions and hear different lectures on my weak topics. Still, I have to give a nod to Becker for providing the most detailed explanations for questions.
7) Did I forget to mention that I wrote down nearly everything? My questions, the answers, the explanations, rewrote my notes, etc. I used yellow pads I klepto from work and probably went through 20 or more of them with my notes. You have to engage in the information as much as you can.
8) I had study buddies that were taking the exam as well and we talked through some of the tougher topics. It helps to hear how other people retain information.
9) My study schedule: ever changing. It had to be because I had to travel for work or some clients were more demanding than others. You just have to make it work and put in the hours. If you’re studying less than 20 hours a week, you’re not doing enough. I would vary between:
Waking up early, 5:00am, studying until 7:30, head to work.
Study during lunch for an hour
Come home and study for two more hours after dinner 9-11pm.
If I did this successfully M-Th, I would take off studying on Friday.
Attempt to work out once a week. Gotta take care of your body so your mind can function.
If I had a particularly crappy work week, I would study Saturday and Sunday in three hour blocks, 6 or 9 hours each day. It’s not ideal, but it’s even worse to not study.Change my study areas as needed. “Lighter” studying session where I’m just reviewing my notes and rewriting them, I go to starbucks. “Heavier” sessions where I need to learn a weak topic, I would study at home or the library to maximize the time and avoid the distractions
10) This is where I messed up, I didn’t give myself enough time to study between exams. I would try to test at the very beginning of one and take another at the very end. This would give me 4-6 weeks to prepare. I only skipped one testing period, I tested nearly every period during that time. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to pass but I should have thought, I shouldn’t have wasted my time not going to the exam prepared. Study well and get it done the first time at your own pace.
11) On the same vein, you never really feel 100% prepared when you walk into an exam. The key to making you are prepared enough and that you are able to think your way through the other questions is to give yourself ample time to review. I was learning topics the day before my exam, NO. That is not the time. Strengthen the things you know well and figure out how you can get as many points as possible on the weaker topics.
12) Breaks are so important, but be deliberate about them. A two minute distraction via facebook /IG/ Snap x 50 is a lot of wasted minutes. I found myself deleting these apps and out of habit, clicking to where it used to be on my phone without realizing it.
I get it. You see individuals who pass with flying colors the first go around and those who has taken five years and failed over 30 times.
You made a conscious decision to take these exams to further your career or get three letters behind your name. Whatever your reasons are, write it down, refer to it, grit your teeth and get through it.
Good luck! The grass is unbelievably greener on the other side, come join!
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