I just took the exam today. I feel very confident about the MCQ testlets. The first testlet was really easy. I feel even more confident on that one than I did the first testlet I had when I passed BEC with an 88. The second testlet was moderately more difficult, so it does seem that the medium-hard thing is still happening. The 3rd testlet sims are where it got very interesting. They were actually pretty challenging, but I think I was overthinking it in the beginning. I blew some time searching in the AL after forgetting to click the “tax” tab because it defaulted to “audit” every single time. In the first 2 sims they hit me on topics that I knew, but did not have a thorough understanding on. The DRS questions were actually surprisingly very manageable. I feel as confident on those as any of them. As Jeff has mentioned before, don't spend too much time studying sims. I would focus on getting good at going through the authoritative literature to find what you want. There were numerous concepts that I just straight went to the AL for a refresher before tackling the problem, and my familiarity with the structure of the IRC helped a ton. Also, having a good feel for DRS and research questions will give you an advantage. With that said, if you simply do more questions and get the concepts down, you won't need to “refresh” your knowledge with AL, and it will save you a lot of time the more confident you are. Think of being good with the AL as a nice insurance policy in case you whiff some details. Also, in the 30 minutes waiting at the exam center I scanned through Ninja Notes, and I can say I nailed a couple questions because of that last bit of review.
In summary, I did about 2000 MCQs (1600 for Ninja and 400 for CPAExcel), did about 40-45 sims from CPAExcel, listened to Ninja Audio regularly, and scanned through Ninja Notes periodically and right before the exam. Next time I will go through the CPAExcel lectures and do questions immediately after each lesson. After that I will do the rest of the questions in the testbank and then get through as many questions in Ninja as I can. I did lectures only for a large chunk before starting Ninja MCQ, and I don't think it helped to wait so long to do questions. Keep in mind that I didn't take notes on all of the lectures, as I don't generally get as much value from that process. I feel really good about the MCQs but the sims were definitely challenging. With that said, I think I did enough for a 75, but you never know. I understood most of the overall concepts on the sims, but if I fail it's from missing too many little details.
Good luck to everyone. I will be moving on to FAR now.
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