A “3” would be something that I would look through a few practice questions and know I needed more info on, so for those I would watch the video lecture or find what I needed in the text. A “2” would be something that quickly made sense and/or wasn’t that difficult, but I wanted to make a flashcard for. If you assign a difficulty score of 1 to 3 to any given topic or question, it went like this: a “1″ would be a question that involved something that I already kind of knew, or was so simple that I knew I didn’t need a flashcard for. Of course there were difficult topics where I had to go back to the lecture, but for a lot of the lessons that are really just memorizing facts, the practice questions gave me what I needed. Without getting into the specifics, I came up with a framework for doing this where I only needed to go through the practice questions for most topics. From my previous study experience, I just wasn’t getting great results from watching the video lectures first, so I just skipped it and went straight to the questions. I could really only fit in 2 hours each morning, so that’s what I did.
So, I decided to start studying in the mornings before work. My brain was fried from working and thinking all day, and trying to stay at the office until 8 or 9 to study was unbearable. I tried that for about a week and just couldn’t do it. Pretty much everyone else at the firm studied after work. I needed to do something different because 1) my study approach didn’t work the first time and 2) I now had way less time to study due to my J.O.B. I was determined to not let it happen again, and I also knew I was going to have to do something different. I’m a pretty even-keel, not-much-gets-to-me kind of person, but something about failing the section and the shock of how busy and lost I felt at work (I was had now started my public accounting job) really lit a fire under me. I spent a few days going through the stages of grief, and finally accepted that my only option was to do it again. I was really bent out of shape that it was a 74, but looking back, if you didn’t pass… it’s all the same. So I refreshed the score page – probably several hundred times throughout the day – and finally when I got home from work I refreshed the screen on my phone as I parked and there it was, a 74. So I waited the weeks until scores came out, and there was some reason that day that they weren’t published in the morning like normal. (And these realizations led to several big changes in how I studied after this, which I’ll get to in a minute…)
There were a lot of surface level questions on the “easy” stuff… and I didn’t know a lot of them.I had spent a lot of time trying to master the hardest topics, and had pretty much glossed over a lot of the “easy” stuff.It’s hard to remember how I thought I was doing during the exam – you really have no clue – but I remember a few key thoughts: So the 3 months went along like this, and finally it was test day. It’s important to note, I knew I wasn’t crushing the material, but I kept thinking, “A 75? I’ll definitely get at least a 75…” So in addition to always feeling like I wasn’t really getting it, I also felt like I was always rushing just to keep up with my study planner. But, there were so many lessons to get through I felt like I never had time to just master any given topic. I would do practice questions and the diagnostic quizzes, and my scores would range anywhere from the 50s to the 70s. This put me an hour or more into my study session, and most days I wondered “am I actually learning this stuff?” So I would really commit to working extra hard the next day… and then most days it would be another slog through the material. For most lessons I would still be pretty confused at this point, so I would then go through a few practice problems. This would usually happen a few times, so I would then skim the chapter text. So I would re-commit to paying attention, and restart the video. I would turn on the video lecture, watch it for a few minutes, and then realize I had completely zoned out.
#The best cpa study material how to
My plan was to study 4 to 5 hours per day.Īt this point I didn’t know how to study for the CPA exams effectively… but I didn’t know any better. I bought my review course, and I jumped right in. My plan was to pass FAR before I started working in August. After I finished my Master’s, I had 3 months before I started my new job in public accounting.
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