All Things Must Come To An End...

After 1.5 years of studying I am finally done.  Found out I passed with a 79.  I found REG to be the toughest test mainly due to time.  The material on FARE was much tougher, but the limited amount of time on REG is a killer.  I walked out of REG so disapointed as I thought I failed as I ran out of time, but for those of you that couldnt compolete a sim there is still hope.

For me I am done.  I will try to put together what I feel are the keys to passing this exam in a subsequent post when I have more time. 

Engage!

The key to the exam is putting in time.  I agree 200 per section of QUALITY time can get even the most marginal student through the exam.  I also feel that those people who feel that having the latest and greatest Becker material will somehow make them pass with minimal effort are fooling themselves to their own detriment (and to delight of the cpa examiners since they love their fees).  As my college professor said you don't learn any material you need to study by osmosis through carrying a book around.  I used $40 Wiley material and it worked fine for me.  Is it as concise as Becker, no, so I responded by studying more to compensate.  Switching study materials is probably not the answer to failing grades (unless you prefer bullet point in Becker to more prose type in Wiley etc)...more time studying is.  Each astudy material uses the same bank of questions and go off of released outlines of whats on tesrt from old tests so in general they all can work if you set your mind to it and sacrafice.  I had to face a death in family, job changes and balancing a life, so does everyone.  Its only a excuse if you allow it to be

I did my work all through book self study but if you lack the dedication at first to do it yourself, only then would I say in class studying is worth it

 I failed 1 section FARE 69 and doubled my efforts for 1 month and scored a 93 the next time.  No miracle cures needed.

Another simple mistake I made on that test is I passed BEC first which has no sims, and didn't bother to do online sim as I felt so over confident in my study prep for FARE, but when I got in test center I didn't realize you needed to split screen to copy research answer and wasted so much time and paniced.  That is another key is to stay focused on exam day and don't paic if something doesn't gop your way.  The test questions rarely try flat out trick you.  No where near what the study questions did for older tests. 

I also feel that studying sims is a waste.  Familiarize yourself wiuth format as I said, but spending hours and hours writing researching and on narrow topics most likely will not help unless you are targeting a key weakpoint. 

I found these message boards to be quite useful as well in knowing when tests released in a state etc.  It is a good support group.

Remember the test only wins when you give up.   

All good things must come to an end so I am also done here, but I wish you all luck.  Hopefully some of this was useful.

Clownshoes signing off.......

ENGAGE!