Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Not a Bad Showing

15 days remaining (adjusted to final test date - saved 9 days over October 2009 estimate)
Mood - Tired
Study Time – 4.0 hours (362.0 total - FAR: 82.0 - BEC: 74.5 - REG: 118.0 - AUD: 89.5)
Scores:  AUD-94, REG-97, BEC-93

Well, I made it through the FAR-8 questions.  I felt great about the material and did ok on the questions.  I scored 81% on the questions and 80% on the supplementals (yes, I got through all 123 of the darn things).  The supplemental questions were very painful and annoying.  They were very calculation-intensive and I don't expect I'd see many questions like that on the actual exam (thankfully).  Overall I am happy with the results.  If it had been any other section I would have expected 7-10% more.  I think I gave away about 4-5% in stupid RTCDQ issues.  

I feel guilty about this "good enough to pass" mentality I seem to be developing.  On one hand it is an excuse for why I'm not doing as well as I have in other sections.  On the other hand, this section is painfully long and has a ton of material.  I would tend towards the excuse explanation, but I've actually managed to stay pretty dedicated to this hellish test over the past 5.5 months so far (gah, I hate the word far).  If I had to take the test tomorrow I think I'd be in the mid-60's.  That isn't a horrible place to be with two weeks to go.  I've probably got another 40-50 hours of study time to go for this section.  After Thursday's pass through the FAR-9 questions I'll be on my own to pull the whole thing together.  All the "I'll nail that part down later" items are getting ready to hit me with the "its time to actually learn this part" side of the coin.  Can I just leave my body for the next two weeks and come back when it is all over?

6 comments:

  1. Do you currently work? If not just focus on the exam, you will do good. When did you start studying for the FAR section? How long did it take to from the beginning to the end?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I do work a normal 40ish hour week and study after work and on weekends. I started working on FAR at the beginning of March and will sit for the exam on April 14th.

    ReplyDelete
  3. WoW!!! Good for you. You must comprehend information quickly. I feel that after each section I complete, I have to back to the earlier sections to review because I feel like I forgot the information. TOO MUCH information to absorb.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I wouldn't say I get it any faster than anyone else. It is really a matter of throwing enough time at the problem. On a side note, I'm a big fan of the progress tests in Becker. You can select which lectures you want to include and it gives you a random selection of questions from those lectures. They are a great way to keep the information fresh without having to work through all the problems again.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the tip! Question for you, on the day of the exam, can we get as many scratch papers as we would like??

    ReplyDelete
  6. You can have as much as you want in small quantities. The booklet has 4 or 5 pages in it. If you use it up you can turn it in and get more. This could be a problem for those that write a bunch of notes for reference at the start as they wouldn't have access to those notes after they turned in their first booklet of scratch paper. I haven't used much scratch paper overall on any of the three sections I've taken. Audit doesn't need much. I made one little diagram at the beginning and used one page to track how I was doing. REG I used a little for some of the calculation questions. BEC I used 2.5 pages (5 sides) but still had 2-3 pages left. While the homework seems to have tons and tons of calculations, I've found the actual exam isn't nearly as calculation intensive.

    ReplyDelete