[Excel14]

I know the answers I get will probably vary, and such factors as familiarity with material, and effective study hours play major roles in the answer, but on average, how many hours did each of you put in for Audit?

BEC (2/28/16) ----- 78
FAR (09/10/16)-----
AUD
REG

CIA, CGAP, CFE

[tvpaul]

Hopefully this helps, but I felt like total hours put in didn't mean much. I could put 200 hours in studying but not review effectively and still fail. I think it's important to get through the material, identify your weaknesses, and then suffer for about a week or so. For audit I studied at least 10 effective hours a day for 8 days straight right before my exam. Granted, I'm not working so maybe that's the only reason why that was feasible for me but the important thing is your final review.

Another thing that really helped me was typing out all of the audit reports. Really helped me understand the reports.

[Excel14]

@tvpaul:

Wow, so with just 80 hours in 8 days, you were able to pass? Can't see myself being able to do that, even without working.

BEC (2/28/16) ----- 78
FAR (09/10/16)-----
AUD
REG

CIA, CGAP, CFE

[tvpaul]

Oh no that's absolutely not what I'm saying. I definitely put in at least 100 hours before those final 80. But I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't think there's value in counting, in my example, the ~100 hours before the final review. Instead, put in as much time as you can, however much that is. In this time, try to get a grasp of the material, don't get stuck on the hard details, but most importantly, identify your weaknesses. Then during your final review, patch up those weaknesses and review all the information in a matter that suits your learning style. For me it was MCQs. I did 2500 MCQs in the 8 days before my exam.

[Anonymous]

@tvpaul, I completely agree with what you stated above regarding the number of hours without an effective review. I'm currently studying for my retake of AUD and believe this time I'm really putting in the hours AND I'm actually studying less hours than the first time around. Though, I'm taking it in and understanding more of the material now.

BTW, I'm going to take your idea and type out all of the audit report types to make it stick. That's an excellent idea!

I'm tired of operating in fear and mediocrity. It's time to try. It's time to do. It's time to go.

[Excel14]

@tvpaul:

Sorry, misunderstood your earlier message. It read like you were saying that all you put in was 80 hours of total study time and passed. Wow, your review alone was 80 hours. Impressive. I totally agree, it is all about “quality” over “quantity”.

BEC (2/28/16) ----- 78
FAR (09/10/16)-----
AUD
REG

CIA, CGAP, CFE

[Anonymous]

I did about 90 hours the first time I did AUD, I think over the span of 6-7 weeks. When I did my retake, I did 170ish hours over the span of 7 weeks, so about 20-25 hours per week. I'm not sure when you're planning on taking AUD, but if you started right now I think you could still take it by 5/31 (about 6-7 weeks of studying with a minimum of 20 hours per week).

As someone said above, it is the quality over quantity when it comes to studying. When I first took it, I did the bare minimum of what Becker told me to do and sped through it (lecture, MCQ, SIMs, done for the week, repeat on Monday). The second time I did it, I took a week to study each chapter by doing the following:

– Take notes on each chapter in my own words (did not rewatch the lectures)
– Do the multiple choice for that chapter
– Do progress tests for all chapters done up to that point

The above strategy helped me up my score by 10 points.

[Anonymous]

Ive put in over 250 hours on 2 attempts and haven't been able to pass. But, I should have passed on my retake, but I Really screwed up keeping track of time on my sims and failed with a 73. I have a friend who passed Audit on his first try with about 100 hours of studying, but it took him 4 tries to pass FAR and 2 tries for BEC. Whereas I passed FAR and BEC on my first attempt, but will be retaking AUD for my 3rd time. Personally, I have to study at least 150-200 hours per exam to feel really confident in my abilities to walk into Prometric and pass an exam. However, everyone is different and has various educational backgrounds (IQ, learning style, School, BS, MS,length of time out of school, etc).

Goodluck and don't worry too much about time. You will know when u are ready. Id schedule out at least 150+ hours though.

[Jdn9201]

You'll get a wide variety of answers, and yes it does vary on familiarity with the materials and the quality of your study time. I studied about 85-90 hours over 5 weeks. That doesn't count the 20-30ish worth of lectures I listened to at work or at the gym on my Kindle. I was lucky in that my boss was cool with me studying while working as long as I got my job done. I was more worried and anxious about AUD than FAR because I hated it in college (only took 1 class in grad school). Roger made it tolerable – I actually laughed during his lectures. I would also say it helps to keep things in the concept of the big picture, which is the audit cycle. Good luck!

BEC - 88 8/29/15
REG - 82 11/14/15
AUD - 83 1/8/16
FAR - 80 2/29/16

[Matt Douglass]

For me it wasn't the total hours, but the consistency of the hours. For Audit, I studied 165 total hours, but it was evenly spaced over 7 weeks. For REG I also studied about 165 hours, but it was mostly compressed into the last two weeks. You can see from my scores which worked better for me. I think it is all about consistency.

MS, Accounting - Done!

FAR - 83 (CPAexcel/Ninja MCQ)
AUD - 87 (CPAexcel/Ninja MCQ)
REG - 10/16
BEC - 11/16

[Author]

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