[jennijill]

Hi all!
Are there areas of the exam content that have applied to your job or areas that have definitely not?

[Recked]

A vast majority has nothing to do with my job.
I'm mostly in tax, but at a small firm so we deal with everything from A to Z.
The majority of the issues on the CPA exam don't apply to real life situations with the work I do, except a little bit of FAR, lots of Reg, and maybe some BEC.

[splash6]

I've worked in a CPA firm before doing both Tax and Audit, and I would say only the most rudimentary details applied. I would say the college degree in accounting applies maybe 5%. The CPA exam isn't much more, if at all.

So what is the CPA exam? I'll tell you. Imagine there's a giant pile of money over there. Naturally, everyone sees it and wants to take as much of that money as possible and run away with what they grabbed, as quickly as possible. The CPA exam is a means of batting off peoples' hands away from the money, of shooing them off, nothing more or less. In terms of “substantial knowledge,” the exam is 100% meaningless. Think about it, there's people who are technically “CPAs” working out there right now who received their license before there was even a Codification.

If we forced “CPAs” to constantly retake the exam to remain “legitimate” every, idk, 5 or 10 years, or sooner there would be no one left in the industry because we would rightfully flee the entire industry. The CPA license is a loophole, and besides that another money-making-racket. That's all it is. Every CPA i talked to knows for a certainty that they would fail the exam(s) if they had to retake them without doing the study nightmare all over again. Yet they're “CPAs.”

[jombe]

Internal Controls.
I used to get very frustrated over all the checks & balances at the companies I worked, because I didn't really know the WHY behind those things. After I learned the WHY behind these internal controls, I finally realized my managers weren't necessarily trying to make my life miserable. They HAD to make me do certain things for internal controls purposes a lot of times. I guess it helped me be a happier employee?
Other than that, it's nice to see the theories you learned being applied in real life especially if you are in public accounting. If you are in private, accounting is really a mixture of some accounting duties plus a lot of operational duties and I personally don't see much benefit from the study materials.

FAR - 94 (10/4/15), Local Prep Online Lectures, BISK & NINJA MCQ
AUD - 99 (1/19/16), Local Prep Online Lectures, BISK & NINJA MCQ
REG - 96 (4/19/16), Local Prep Online Lectures, BISK & NINJA MCQ
BEC - 91 (7/19/16), Local Prep Online Lectures, BISK & NINJA MCQ

581 days of listening to lectures, reading texts & 10,000+ MCQs...

[Ralphie Dos Nachos]

I'm in financial reporting for a small company so we are working with the financial statements on a quarterly basis filing with the SEC so FAR definitely applies in some areas and we are audited so when studying for audit i printed out the audit report for our company to study with as I liked to see things that apply to my job.

[Author]

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