I passed with an 84! Glad that's over.
TLDR – My advice is at the end of this post.
A bit of background on me. I finished my undergrad in 2010, and my MSA in 2012, so it had been 4 years since my last accounting course. I have been working in the field since March 2011, and now have a staff position at a small company in VA.
This was my first time taking any exams, and I managed to pass using exclusively NINJA materials. I gave myself 6 weeks. It took me the first 3 to get through the books alone following the prescribed NINJA method (granted I was going WAY overboard with my notes at first). Before the exam, I had a trending score of 86% and had 68 hours of study time logged online. I did not reach the review phase, I only got about 3/4 of the way through adaptive learning. I also made sure to work through all 75 of the available sims, which I think are crucial.
I took one practice exam the night before my exam and scored a 92. On the day of the exam, I submitted the simulation testlet with 40 seconds remaining, and I did not take a break during the exam (good thing, because I used the last 90 minutes on sims alone). I was furiously searching the literature in the last 5 minutes to make sure I had reasonable answers for my SIMS, talk about sweating bullets! I walked out feeling that my chances of passing/failing were around 65/35.
ADVICE – Caveat: Everyone is different, this is just what worked for me:
Focus your time on working through as many MCQs and SIMS as possible, taking notes as needed using the explanations to the questions/SIMS. Only refer to the books when you are struggling with a concept. Usually, the explanations to the MCQs and SIMS will be more than adequate.
As I mentioned earlier, I spend 3 weeks “nailing the concepts” and taking “intense notes.” However, I wish I had spent that time working MCQs and SIMS because that's where I absorbed most of the information. When I was taking notes before I had worked any problems, I didn't have any context within which I could apply the concepts. It was like I had all these concepts just floating around in my head with nowhere to go except out. The MCQs and SIMS provided the structure upon which I could build my understanding; a frame of reference, if you will.
My studying philosophy now is why spend time taking notes on topics that you already understand and remember. Using this approach, the MCQs and SIMS allow you to identify your weaknesses where you can then focus your efforts instead of trying to write everything down. It seems so obvious to me now, and was probably obvious to a lot of folks early on, but I needed to go through the trial & error of determining what was most effective for myself.
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