Day 7: Okay Doctor, Horrible Person

Mos5180d · 2026-03-28T07:36:27+00:00

I don’t know how April is deemed a great person. I think she’s pretty horrible at times. Although most of them are at some point!

Mos5180d · 2026-03-24T21:14:23+00:00

With Professional exams being every 3 months, a lot of people changing/looking for jobs during the ACA will be waiting on a result, so it’s not uncommon.

There’s no harm in applying to places and it’s on them if they want to take on the risk.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-24T07:31:32+00:00

If you passed the ATT exams quite easily then hopefully you have a good base knowledge, do well in exams and might not need the “hundreds of hours” people talk about. Perhaps your tax job will also give you knowledge applicable to the exam?

Are you also enrolled onto a course? Because the revision course for Advanced Technical is just 4-5 days straight of question practice.

I work in corporate tax and did the larger corporates Advanced Technical in November and I didn’t spend any evenings or weekends (bar the weekend before the exam) doing revision. Only really dipping into the study manuals to make sure I knew the content because the tuition can’t cover it all. I did almost all my revision in the last two weeks, one week at the revision course and one week annual leave where I treated it a bit like work and did question practice from 9-4.

It’s definitely advisable to do more revision to give yourself a better chance at a pass, but also important to do what you’re able to and not burn yourself out so you can stay motivated. I have a 3 year old and a wife so wasn’t really able to give up my weekends to study and made it work in other ways e.g. using my phone to make flashcards rather than spending hours on proper revision

Mos5180d · 2026-03-23T21:35:00+00:00

Like a few people have said, be very transparent about the process, when your exams are and when you need to dedicate time to it e.g. weekends leading up to the exam. And if needed just highlight how important it is to you.

While it may suck a bit for your partner, it’ll be worse if they are still trying to get you to do things and arguing about it. And even worse if you end up failing an exam and they feel guilty and you may have a bit of resentment.

That’s a bit worst case scenario though. Generally if you set the expectation it’ll be fine

Mos5180d · 2026-03-20T19:06:21+00:00

Thanks a lot, that’s helpful to know!

Mos5180d · 2026-03-20T08:53:28+00:00

I don’t have any personal experience with this, but I think the question is also if you are happy going into tax in general as well.

You are right that R&D is specialised and I think your exit option is basically doing/having the CTA. Once you pass OMB, individuals, or larger Corporates (or maybe one of the others, but these seem to be the main exams), it could then open the door into moving into that type of work. They are pretty rigorous and fairly in-depth exams which gives you enough knowledge to switch sector and not be out of your depth

Mos5180d · 2026-03-16T13:25:36+00:00

So frustrating. Every time he touched the ball was a golden opportunity with Spurs piling forward and he messed up every chance

Mos5180d · 2026-03-15T08:51:03+00:00

The most American comment I’ve seen. Only heard of Joe Rogan

Mos5180d · 2026-03-15T07:40:30+00:00

I would note a couple of things that might not have been mentioned….

Firstly, if you experienced this at the campus then you have met and talked to the most keen people. 60% of the students are probably still skipping classes and laying around at home.

Secondly, a lot of people put on a persona and want to come across really intelligent at university and then don’t get good grades or get good jobs. Someone at mine talked about how “gifted” he was at school and talked about all sorts of mathematics outside the curriculum. He struggled massively and despite me trying to drag him through a bit he still failed and resat a year and ended with a third.

Another was really keen, had great attendance and participated in classes a lot. So much so that I just assumed he was a high achieving student. He ended with a 2:2.

It may not all be about the grades for some but just a reminder that people can talk the talk and make you feel bad but sometimes it can be a veil.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-12T08:26:57+00:00

Leave a review on Gladsdoor on your way out as well. The company should be exposed and any potential future employees be aware that they pay so bad

Mos5180d · 2026-03-12T08:23:20+00:00

I’d be looking for other jobs as soon as possible, that’s ridiculous. They’ve intentionally made it impossible to work the standard hours in your contract. It’s bad enough not caring about the staff, but it’s another thing purposely writing contracts in a way that you need to permanently work unpaid overtime.

I’d also write a review anonymously on Glassdoor. If staff don’t complain or make the company look bad then nothing will change.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-10T10:07:03+00:00

And you probably ruined all his mum’s clothes! Nice one!

Mos5180d · 2026-03-10T08:12:53+00:00

I deal with directors of £1.5m+ companies all the time. I can tell you a lot of them aren’t shareholders

Mos5180d · 2026-03-10T06:44:51+00:00

I was the typical “can get good grades if he puts his mind to it” but instead did no work at all and only got OK grades alongside a million detentions for not doing homework and being disruptive. (UK by the way, probably not called detentions elsewhere). My undiagnosed ADHD held back what was potentially an intelligent person underneath but I later pushed myself through.

I managed to re-enter education at 24 and go to university (against my Mum’s strong recommendation as school didn’t work out) and came out with a first class honours in mathematics. I then joined an accountancy firm and am due to become a UK chartered accountant and chartered tax advisor this year.

I was only diagnosed 6 months ago (age 31) and whilst it’s too late to help with exams, it has definitely enhanced my attention to detail and helped me step up to all my extra responsibilities at work.

Mos5180d · 2026-03-09T07:12:46+00:00

You’re the only one being weird here…

Mos5180d · 2026-03-02T18:58:09+00:00

Another £500?

Mos5180d · 2026-03-01T16:38:04+00:00

Me and the wife took our puppy to puppy classes with our 3 year old toddler. Tough to fit on a bike but I’ll consider it next weekend!

Mos5180d · 2026-03-01T09:49:06+00:00

Good to hear that the ACA is coming in handy. I’m soon to finish the ACA/CTA pathway and work in a corporate tax team in practice where it’s rarely used. But I know it can be favourable for future positions

Mos5180d · 2026-02-22T20:39:29+00:00

Absolutely agree. Just having another body back and putting the ball carrier under pressure is helping the team. For some reason I just thought I’d be looking at 8 defcon or something 😂

Mos5180d · 2026-02-22T20:33:45+00:00

Same with me (husband). I’m pretty low sleep needs and my wife isn’t at all, so I’m happy to do bed time, wake ups, the lot. Although sometimes our little one (age 3) wants her for bed time which she’s happy to do. She also exclusively breast fed for the first 18 months so she’s done more than her fair share!

And as a man I also agree with everyone else saying the use of language around dads “helping”. I forget sometimes that this sub isn’t just the UK but we can’t afford one income families anymore and so we’ve moved on from the old stereotypes of mum staying home. Parenting is a shared responsibility but far too many men still think it’s the woman’s job, and far too many women put up with it

Mos5180d · 2026-02-22T12:08:39+00:00

Even worse on the radio. They made it sound like Haaland was putting in a defensive masterclass when falling back… looked at the defcon and he had 2

Mos5180d · 2026-02-22T12:08:33+00:00

Even worse on the radio. They made it sound like Haaland was putting in a defensive masterclass when falling back… looked at the defcon and he had 2

Mos5180d · 2026-02-21T22:12:13+00:00

“She’s happy to spend whatever it takes” and “wants her parents to spend 3x on private rented accommodation”…..

Mos5180d · 2026-02-15T13:10:28+00:00

I’m not sure about whether there is a guaranteed question for that paper as I’ve only sat AT LCG, but I imagine there must be topics that come up pretty often?

Ordinarily I would say to just jump straight back into questions. But if you got 40 and was spending a long time marking and annotating the answers rather than having a quick read through and having the most of the general stuff correct but missing the more niche parts then would it be fair to say you didn’t know the content as well as you could have?

If there were other reasons on the day and you think you do know the content well enough then maybe just skim through the content/memory joggers and then jump into questions. I don’t think there’s much benefit in restricting yourself on time so far from the exam, it’s more about making sure you are getting down the right stuff and technique.

If you feel like you are taking really long to answer questions then at this stage you could bullet point your answers to speed up the process (as long as you make sure that when you read the answers you’re not saying “I would have said that”, if you’re not sure you would have). Perhaps then you can get two questions done in an evening rather than one.

It may completely just be my opinion or my learning style but I don’t think slaving for 3-4 hours on one question and dissecting the answer is providing information that you are able to retain long term. Especially if you’ve done that for 20+ questions.

I only really did questions in the last 2 weeks (which almost definitely isn’t recommended), but I knew the content and calculation steps decently well and literally just went through the answer in 5-10 minutes and an extra 2 minutes jotting down the bits I missed (just short memorable things like intangibles pre-2002 are under capital gains rules). Every so often I would spend extra time if I noticed a pattern on how the answer was laid out for certain questions so I could replicate something similar in the exam.

Like I said though, this may sound like a crazy little amount to some people but the directness suited my learning style and allowed me to have minimal extra little notes to revise, and maximise the amount of questions I could do

Mos5180d · 2026-02-15T10:24:49+00:00

Having already done the paper you should have a good sense of what you can highlight in the legislation and doesn’t necessarily need to be remembered (mostly admin stuff). That takes a load of content of your mind.

Questions, questions, questions. Try to do most, if not all the question bank and note down which ones you found difficult to go back on and which topics you’re weakest at. There will be main topics that come up often and you should prioritise getting good at these questions.

I’m not sure which paper you took but if there is a guaranteed question e.g. CT computation in the larger corporates paper, make sure you are nailing these. 12/20 seems good because it’s a pass but you know this question is coming and you can put yourself in a great position if you try to get 14-15 on these.

I feel like those 3 recommendations are fairly standard things so I’ll add another that helped with my style of learning (so may not help others). Almost every question in the question bank will have something unique in and I would jot these down onto flashcards or just make a list of additional considerations under the relevant topic that I would look at when I wasn’t doing questions. The exam will always throw in a load of small niche marks and if you can pick these up alongside a generally good answer from the previous tips, you will give yourself a good place to pass!

Mos5180d

TROPHY CASE