[Yolonge]

I just wanted to share a story as I see people asking how to prepare for BEC. I studied BEC for 2 weeks with Wiley CPA Excel study guide and ninja mcq only approximately at around 30-35 hours. This is a study combination for poor and stingy people like myself who does not want to buy a review course.

To begin with, BEC is made up of 6 topics and has no simulation.

Corporate governance

IT

Economics

Finance

Strategic planning

Operations

I only had 2 weeks to prepare, because I wanted to take the test before the testing period so I can get the score for both REG/BEC on a same day (which is kind of dumb, but I hate waiting). Given that BEC has no simulation, I used similar approach as in FAR; that is I do not really need to understand to pass so hammering mcq will be fine as I am not targeting high score (FAR research is pretty helpful).

With 14 days available and 2 Saturdays off, I only had 12 days to study. I needed to take Saturdays off to keep my sanity. So I planned 8 days to study and 4 days to review.

I started with Wiley CPAExcel. The way I used it is instead of reading/solving MCQ, I went to problem straight but marked the answer prior from the answer sheet. I went over the questions with answers simultaneously to cover bigger topics (Corporate governance, IT, Econ, Finance) and skipped smaller two to save time (planning/operation). Covering one topic per day, It took 4 days to study with Wiley.

I used ninja MCQ to study and review. I was able to do all questions for 4 topics, but had to skip finance and half of operations management.

Ninja MCQ stat – https://tinypic.com/r/rw57xy/9

As for written part, I have read couple written portion on Ninja MCQ but did not spend time on it.

I have seen people studying BEC for 1-3 days, but this will work on people with normal intelligence like myself.

Score report – https://tinypic.com/r/2igp004/9

I am not surprised to do bad on finance, but this was expected.

I do not recommend this method, as this was really about passing but not to gain knowledge but you can certain pass BEC half-assed with just doing mcq without studying. But if you are like me just trying to pass, why not?

Good luck with studying and pass BEC while it is easy with no sim. Next year, it will be a 4 hour test with sim AND essay.

Materials: Wiley book + Ninja MCQ

FAR - 83 (Jan 2016)
Study time: 6 weeks
BEC - 87 (April 2016)
Study time: 2 weeks
AUD - 92 (July 2016), (74 Feb 2016), (72 May 2016)
Study time: 4 (Feb) + 2 (May) + 3 (July) = 9 weeks total
REG - (70 April 2016)
Study time: 3 weeks

[Anonymous]

Mhei I bet you're smarter than you're giving yourself credit for. Your score, in my mind, is an outlier – meaning the test is not measuring what it's supposed to measure, which is mastery of the material. Which is tough for it to do anyway because it's three hours and it's too broad a universe of questions. That being the case, candidates who can answer items of a certain difficulty level, despite the fact that the test questions administered exclude many of the content areas, is probably a valid indicator that the candidate studied all content areas. But not always – a few lucky people will receive questions that just happen to match the areas they studied and/or they'll guess right on others. So those people do well, but that's a function of luck, not their study method. Your focus on the latter was what was gettng you lots of push back.

[Anonymous]

. My co-worker is a rock star at work, mostly because he has incredibly strong soft skills.

PNS hope you can make peace with that, because unfortunately that will get him promoted. It's maddening, but these people realize that preserving their mental energy for moving up maneuvers (versus using it for technical mastery) is a logical move. Not sure if this is a concern for you so I'll leave it at that.

[Author]

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