Monday, April 19, 2010

Post Exam Thoughts

I had a pretty relaxing weekend.  I got caught up on a ton of house stuff I've been neglecting for months as well as saw friends and relaxed.

Thinking back on the exam is getting fuzzy already.  It was brutal overall.  I think I did alright on the MC portions of it.  I am hopefully at least 50% on the simulations.  The more I think on my written the responses the worse I feel.  I doubt there is any good way to be comfortable with this section of the exam.  Overall I still think I passed.  Assuming I did decent on the MC portion that should be enough to carry me through.  There is always the possibility that I'll have to retake this one, but I'll leave that stress for the week results get released.

FAR was the worst section of the four by a wide margin.  The amount of material and complexity of it is astronomical.  You could prepared for this section for a year and still end up with stuff you have no idea about.  I really am glad I saved this one for last.  If I didn't already have 3 sections behind me I would have been completely flustered during the test itself which would have been detrimental given the time constraints.  For those looking for reassurance on this section I don't know what I can offer.  Expect to go in nervous and come out feeling like crap.  The trick is to understand that ahead of time and not let it trip you up during the test itself.  Focus for the 4 hours and then feel free to stress after the exam.  You have to remain calm and focused during it though.

Good luck to those I've spoken to in the past week that are testing this week.  I'll be thinking of you on your respective test days.

12 comments:

  1. So do you think that Becker prepared you well for the FAR section?

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  2. As well as any course can. I saw two topics on my exam that weren't touched upon in Becker. This is inline with what I saw in the other sections as well. Those could very well have been pre-test items anyhow. FAR is just a nasty beast that twists everything you know to frustrate and annoy you.

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  3. Hey Dale,

    I am confused as to whether or not I should go back and re-do all the multiple choice questions before I start the Final Review Book. I have been doing the progress test and I have been scoring between 85 to 89.

    Even though that seems good, I still remember a hand full of questions from individual parts that are not coming up through the progress tests that I think I need to work on more. There are many like that, but there is no way to know which ones they are because I forgot to mark them and I would have to go back and just re-do everything to find them.

    So what do you recommend, should I just start the final review book and do the questions from the final review?

    Your input will be helpful, thanks! :)

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  4. If you are scoring in the high 80's I would move on to the final review stuff. If you feel like you are having issues with an individual topic you can rework that specific topic's questions.

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  5. Hey Dale,

    I have the Final Review Book and CD for 2010, however, when I put the CD in my computer it is not working. I do have the course CD downloaded on my computer. DO you any suggestions why it is no working. Is there another course CD that I do not have.

    Please let me know.

    Thanks

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  6. The cd drive may just not be auto-playing. Go to My Computer and then open up the cd drive. Look for a file called setup.exe or something similar and run it. If that does not work then give the Becker support folks a call or email.

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  7. Thanks for the help. I did not realize that there was another course cd that needed to be downloaded; i was using the original course cd, oops.

    Anyhow, I have a question. Section F8- the supplementary questions towards the end are hard. Did you run into the same issue? The questions are very unclear as to how to answer the questions. Do you think I will see anything like that on the exam.

    I scheduled to take the exam May 20th.

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  8. If you are talking about the supplemental questions that are a mile long and go on for about 30-40 questions then yes, those are nuts. No you won't find anything like that on the actual exam. Those were just brutal. They are worth going through once or twice though.

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  9. Thank you! :) You just put a smile on my face. But you are right, it is worth going through.

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  10. Are the multiple choose exam questions a mix of about 50% computational and the other 50% theory/informational questions?

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  11. For REG it was more like 60% theory 40% computational. For FAR it is hard for me to estimate. 50/50 doesn't seem like a bad guess, but it could be less computational than that. If it was 50% computational I think the MC questions would just plain take too long to do.

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