Reflections on the CPA exam: AUD

Status: Fire

The CPA exam was one of the most difficult things I’ve undertaken in my life. It’s been nearly a year since I passed the final section, and I wanted to write about my experiences before the sands of time cleanse my mind. I was hired at my current firm on 09/1/09, and immediately started attacking the exam. I had considered waiting a while before taking on the exam, but my wife had just had our first child, and I knew it would get harder to study as he got older. It also helped that my new boss made it seem like I would get fired after a year if I didn’t have the exam passed. Having these as motivating factors, I hit the audit section with reckless abandon.

My study tool was Becker, mainly because they promoted so heavily through my university. After I grudgingly borrowed $3000 from my father in law, I ordered Becker and received it three weeks after I was supposed to. Even luckier for me, I had signed up for all four tests in a sixth month period, and for those of you that have experienced the CPA exam, you know that missing three weeks of study time can make a huge difference. I finally received my materials, and scheduled a date for a month and a half out.

Luckily the topics in audit were not foreign to me. I had taken an audit class my senior year, and it was very much geared toward the CPA exam. I decided I would do two chapters a week (5 chapters in all) and then have two weeks for final review. I started off very strong, and scored well on the sample questions. I noticed right away that practice simulations didn’t help me at all. I know that they do help some people, but you just have follow whatever study pattern you’re comfortable with.

After three weeks, I had finished with the videos of the droll Becker instructors. I have to tell you right now that I absolutely hate Peter Olinto. If I ever have to hear “You’re on your way to be a CPA” again in his dumb jersey accent, I might just have to kill myself.  With the dumb videos behind me, I commenced operation final review. This is where I started losing steam. In retrospect, I should have only left a week for the final review. I started getting cocky, and thought  that I knew all the topics and that I didn’t even need to study much more during the last week. This was incredibly Foolish, because I still had many, many weaknesses.

When test day arrived, my cockiness turned to fear as I realized too late that I didn’t study enough. I couldn’t stop shaking as I walked into the prometric testing center, and I’m sure the proctor probably thought that I was a crack head. I was slightly shocked at how shabby and rundown the testing center was. I mean seriously, this is the F’n CPA exam, and it looked like a kindergarten class. At least the initial room I walked into did. I was then pleasantly surprised to find out that I would actually take the exam in a room the size of closet that reached right around 100 degrees. And through all this, the little voice in the back at my head was screaming that I wasn’t ready. But there was nothing else to do, so I put my thumb print down and started the test.

My anxiety only worsened during the test as it seemed that all the questions were either very vague, or seemed like I had seen nothing like them before. This seemed to culminate on the simulations, and I walked out of the exam feeling very confused. I had no Idea how I did, and figured it would come down to a coin flip. After three agonizing weeks, I found out my gut had been right. My score: 77. I was pretty shocked I passed, and now I know that I didn’t really deserve to. That’s the breaks with the CPA exam. You just have to accept what you get and move on.

With AUD down, I moved onto my next challenge, FAR.