Passed my CPA exams! You can too!

Hello,

I wanted to share my journey and things worked for me in this journey. I hope this might be helpful to someone out here. I was working at a big 4 firm as an External Auditor from 2020 till July 2024, and I had a strong foundation in Financial, management and cost accounting which majorly helped in my CPA journey especially in AUD, FAR exams and also, one of the reasons I chose BAR as my discipline.

I started preparing for my exams roughly around Sep 2023, and I have to admit that I did not take my preparation or CPA exams very seriously at the beginning. I was stressed, unmotivated, and unwilling to solely focus on CPA.
My first exam was BEC and I attempted that in Dec 2023. I was not ready, also rushing to complete it before 2023 year-end. I failed the exam with a score of 68. I felt very bad as I have not failed in any of my exams until that point. I never wanted to feel like that again, so I took some time to understand where I went wrong. “I did not complete the entire material, poor planning (balancing a full-time job and allocating time for studies), underestimating the time needed for me to study, avoiding studying even when I had time available over weekends convincing myself that I am tired, etc.,” – made a list and kept it for my future reference.
 
My scores and timelines:
AUD – 84 (Apr 24 – Jun 24)
FAR – 83 (Oct 24 – mid Nov 24)
BAR – 75 (mid Nov 24 – mid Jan 25)
REG – 76 (mid Jan 25 – Mar 1^st week, 25)

After my AUD exam, I quit my job and took sometime off and resumed my CPA journey. So I had full day to preparation, Hence the timelines were quicker.

After my BEC experience, I never wanted to leave myself out without a deadline, so I got my NTS, informed my work managers (while at work) and fixed a date in advance for my exam and started working towards that deadline. I chose Audit next to BEC, solely because of my work experience and to build confidence with the exam I feel would be manageable. This was my routine for all 4 subjects:

1. I watched Becker video lectures at 1.5x once for understanding concepts and immediately attempted MCQs.
2. If the topic is huge – I will go through the PPT by myself and made sure there are no gaps in my understanding and If I had doubts – I would paste the lines from Becker PPT and ask the Chat gpt to simplify/provide examples or ask it to explain it to a 10 year-old kid (Will note down the simple explanations separately for reference) I did not take any other notes except these explanations or as mentioned in point (5), Utilized becker PPTs, Cheatsheets from Reddit for cumulative reviews.
3. Did not force myself to understand each and every line at my first time going through the material, just focused on knowing something of everything!
4. After completing a Chapter (eg.A1) and scoring more than 80% in MCQs, I will attempt SIMs.
5. When attempting MCQs for the first time, I would note down the explanations for the ones where I got wrong/new stuff spotted in MCQs, to refer back.
6. Eliminating the wrong answer choices for MCQs worked for all subjects (except for calculations). This can be done effectively as you move on to further chapters or when completed portions, at the beginning it won’t be easy, just hangin there.  
7. AUD – MCQs they trick us with words, so I very carefully read questions and read all answer choices and only then I attempted to answer. REG – Only when I did a cumulative review I understood the entire material and things started to click (Did not like taxes and law, had no experience so attempted it at the last). FAR and BAR – Reading the last point in the question will help saving some time to quickly find what’s relevant to the question.
8. Made sure to familiarize myself with almost all the Simulations(SIMs) available in Becker, I had a rough idea on how to tackle different types of SIMs, Becker explanation videos were helpful too, to manage the exhibits and other types of questions. Never underestimate this section. This is important too!
9. As I moved forward to other chapters and when I am bored/want to skip studying, I used to revise the old chapters ppts, practicing questions from old chapters to retain information. Low effort needed to revise, so instead of skipping studying did this. Revision + No zero days!
10. There were somedays I would do nothing to progress, so I started running a timer in the background when I was actively studying and noted it down each day. So I know when I put in less time or if I am spending too much time on a chapter and when I am falling behind. This helped to be accountable to myself and it was simple.

Exam experience for all 4 were not that bad – I left all 4 except BEC, confidently that I passed. During exam made sure I solved all the small questions first and flagged huge ones/unsure ones to the last, so it boosted my confident and it helped avoid getting stuck.

Some motivation/lines I kept remembering myself that I accumulated from outside:

1. Never compare your progress/scores/results/situations with others. It is very tempting to think others have it easy and we don’t. Take others journey as an inspiration – if they can do it, I can do it too!
2. Sit with yourself and see what works for you. You don’t have to do everything others are doing out there (Example – Others might consider videos would be waste of time and taking notes is important, But I found in what ways I retained the material better and I followed it, ignored others)
3. Some people may be able to balance everything, I did for one exam too. But it did not work for me later as it affected my physical health. So I decided to make things easy for myself so I quit my job and only focused on one exam at a time, rather than 2 or 3 exams at a time. Grateful that I had my family’s support here. The ultimate point is don’t make yourself suffer in this journey, try to make things easy for yourself as much as possible.
4. Forgive yourself if you are unable to study for a day due to uncontrollable things, don’t miss 2 days of studying. Studying need not be always completing a chapter – One day it can be just solving MCQs and SIMs. Another day – learning the material. Point is having non-zero days. You don’t have to daily be at full potential doing everything as planned. Some days were easy and I was effortlessly followed my schedule and some days were not easy, dragged myself to study and those times I make myself do the bare minimum and bounce back as soon as possible.
5. Make as many mistakes and correct them before actual exam and keep practicing questions/exams so that you will take the actual exam just like another test.
6. Lessons from BEC attempt failure – Instead of shaming/criticizing myself, I realized, I must never repeat my mistakes, so I made a list and kept referencing when I felt down/unmotivated.
7. Listen only to you, be connected to yourself and make sure to cut off distractions – because NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU and Do not keep doing the same things and expect different results;  

I am glad that I passed CPA exam today. Grateful.

Anything specific apart from what i shared here, please feel free to ask :)
Best wishes to everyone who read my post and don't give up!!