Conquering the CPA Board Exam: Some Tips to Consider

Update May 20, 2008 : Results of the May 2008 CPA Board Exam is located here.

Here are few exam tips that I have searched from the internet, I hope aspirants like me find it useful and helpful.

Exam Tips

1. Visualize yourself as a CPA—believe that you can achieve your goal!

2. Use study materials that are no older than six months.

3. Complete your CPA exam application at least six months in advance of the date you plan to sit.

4. Establish a visible and accessible place to study. Make it convenient for yourself. Study whenever you have a free moment.

5. Take some time to analyze your strengths and weaknesses. Admit that you are not perfect.

6. Work to correct as many weaknesses as possible.

7. Answer all multiple-choice questions. The exam is positively graded. There is no penalty for guessing.

8. Your communication response must be on topic. Address the concept, not just state the concept. Clearly identify a thesis statement. Develop and support main ideas. Avoid the use of fragments, bullet-points, numbered lists, and run-on sentences. Use spell-check and proofread.

9. Don’t grade yourself. Leave the grading to the professionals. Move from question to question, focusing on each new question. Leave the previous questions behind. Each question deserves your utmost attention.

10. Don’t expect to reach perfection. Being perfect is not a requirement to pass the CPA exam.

11. Work to correct what you can. Continue to believe in yourself.

12. To help you remember important information, tape the examples to your bathroom mirror.

13. Each day, review the information as you brush your teeth. Don’t waste a minute of time.

14. Passing the exam is your goal. Don’t expect your family, friends, and coworkers to support you 100%. Treasure the support you receive. Don’t be a complainer – complaining won’t help you learn.

15. Don’t make excuses for why you have not met your study goals. Stop talking and get studying!

16. Don’t expect to reach perfection. Being perfect is not a requirement to pass the CPA exam. Work to correct what you can. Continue to believe in yourself.

17. Allow more time to prepare for AUDIT than to prepare for REG or BEC. It’s the longest CPA exam section.

18. Take the financial accounting and reporting section as soon as you can after your college graduation. If you don’t use the material everyday, you may lose it. Use it or risk losing it!

19. Remain calm, no matter what happens. Anger, frustration, and disgust only lead to despair.

20. Smile, work hard, and give each question the “old college try.” Continue to believe in your abilities.

21. Use only the agreed upon allocated time. Spending additional time on a testlet could result in a greater loss of points – you can’t pass and leave a testlet blank.

22. Failure is only a bump in the road – a hurdle that must be cleared. Establish a plan and move on. We have all failed at something in our lives. We will be measured at how we regroup to meet our goal.

23. When you become a CPA, use your skills to make a difference in the world. Act ethically in all you do. Be a role model for others to see.

source: http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-10920.html

Be in Control and Pass the CPA Exam By: SmartPros Editorial Staff

— You have to be in control to be successful during exam preparation and execution.
Control can also contribute greatly to your personal and other professional goals. Control is a process whereby you:

*Develop expectations, standards, budgets, and plans.
*Undertake activity, production, study, and learning.
*Measure the activity, production, output, and knowledge.
*Compare actual activity with expected, or budgeted.
*Modify the activity, behavior, or production to better achieve the desired outcome.
*Revise expectations and standards in light of actual experience.
*Continue the process.

The objective is to be confident that the best possible performance is being generated. Most accountants study this process in relation to standard costs, i.e., establish cost standards and compute cost variances.

Consider the following simple example: Every day you rely on control systems implicitly. When you brush or comb your hair, you have expectations about the desired appearance of your hair and the time required to style it. You monitor your progress and make adjustments as appropriate, e.g., brush it a different way or speed up.

Develop and enforce standards in all of your endeavors. Exercise control, implicitly or explicitly. Most endeavors will improve with explicit control. This is particularly true with certification examinations and other academic tests.

Practice your question answering techniques (and develop control) as you prepare answers/solutions to practice questions/problems during your study program. Develop explicit control over your study programs based on the control process discussed above. Think about using more explicit control systems over any and all of your endeavors. Seek continuous improvement to meet your needs given a particular situation or constraint. Additional practice will result in further efficiencies.

Allocate Your Study Time to Your Weak Areas

By: Debra Hopkins

— Stop studying what you know. Begin studying your weak areas!

Candidates are happier when they are reviewing areas that they know well. Once you enter a difficult area that has been a weakness in the past, the comfort level with the topic drops dramatically. Use this drop in comfort level as a clue. You are weak in the area and you need to work until you can correct some of the weaknesses. Yes, there is too much information to work until you know everything perfectly. There are not enough hours in a day to do that. However, you can’t afford to ignore even one area. Sure enough, if you gamble on the hope that your weaknesses won’t be tested, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The CPA exam is unforgiving. Your weak areas as well as your strong areas will be tested. For example, statistical sampling is an area that many candidates are weak in. Usually the weaknesses are a result of poor coverage in the typical auditing class. However, this does not prevent the AICPA from asking statistical sampling questions. Quite the contrary - candidates can count on some statistical sampling questions in the auditing exam. Once you begin to study the area, you will find that many concepts are quite basic and can quickly be learned.

This is just one example of taking the time to correct weaknesses. Your memory will always help you to recall your strengths. What you knew yesterday you will know tomorrow for the exam. However, if you don’t know it now, you can’t expect to recall the information at the exam. Correct your weaknesses now to improve your knowledge base and to improve your chances of passing.

Here are some do’s and don’ts from some recent CPA exam passers.

Do
*Try to do something relaxing the night before or the night between the exams.
*Read the essay questions first, then answer the multiple-choice questions. This allows you to subliminally think about the essay while you are working on the multiple choice questions and you might read a related question and include some of the terminology in your essay.
*Bring some hard candies and a soda into the exam. The sugar helps to maintain energy levels.
*If you don’t know how to answer a question or an essay, do your best on the rest of the exam and give your best effort on the tough question. You might do better than you think!
*Take mental breaks during the exam, stretch in your seat, take a drink of soda / water, focus you sight on a distant object, etc.
— Thad Ulrich

Don’t
*Cram the night before the exam.
*Rush through the exam. Take your time.
*Spend too much time on one question. If you don’t know the answer, skip it and come back at the end.
*Overestimate the difficulty of the exam. It is tough, but it is passable if you are well prepared
*Procrastinate. Start studying as soon as possible.
— Thad Ulrich

Do
*Take a review course.
*Practice as many multiple-choice questions as possible.
*Study auditing at the end (about a week before exam).
*Use multiple questions to answer the essays.
— Kristin Hucht

Don’t
*Study essay questions.
*Think that you have gone over enough multiple-choice questions.
*Burn yourself out (you must take breaks).
*Skip classes.
*Think that anyone outside of accounting has any clue of what you are going through.
— Kristin Hucht

Do
*Take a review course.
*Devote entire weekends to study. (There will be many left when you have passed.)
*Believe in yourself.
*Take the week prior to exam off (if possible).
*Use multiple review course books. Sometimes one book is better than another at explaining complicated issues.
— Cynthia Brown

Don’t
*Wait until the last minute to prepare.
*Get stressed out. Remember, everyone taking the exam is in the same situation as you.
*Give up. If you feel overwhelmed, consider concentrating on two parts.
*Listen to others’ horror stories. It is really not that bad.
*Get to the exam site late.
— Cynthia Brown

articles c/o http://www.macpa.org/

—————————————————————————

My Take

As my lawyer housemate told us in one of our drinking sessions, the CPA exam, and all other major exams in particular, are just like all the other minor exams we have taken. Depending on how we set our minds, we could succeed or we could fail. One important thing to remember is that you should not let pressures sink in, be cool, and always think that this will be the last time you’ll ever face the same battlefield again, because after taking it, you know you will pass it.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.