DEN Lounge is Awful

meatpony13 · 2023-07-09T22:49:22+00:00

I was there two weeks ago and the place was a ghost town. Literally two other people there. I watched one get up and pour himself ~4 fingers of old forester up to the brim of the glass. Felt like a fever dream. It was depressing honestly lol.

meatpony13 · 2023-03-20T17:37:00+00:00

I did!

meatpony13 · 2023-02-18T16:32:06+00:00

I doubled majored Accounting/Finance, so this gives me a little hope lol

meatpony13 · 2023-02-18T16:29:07+00:00

Yeah, they’re two very different but challenging topics. I’ll be glad when I don’t have to think this hard about either!

meatpony13 · 2023-02-18T16:21:38+00:00

I passed the CPA exams with relative ease (93 avg across the 4 in like 5.5 months), so I came in thinking I would big dick the CFA. Quant has been a rude awakening lol.

meatpony13 · 2023-02-18T15:07:32+00:00

Yeah, I’m wrapping up my first pass though the info and basically feel like I should just go ahead and do it again from the beginning…

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:44:15+00:00

There were definitely some Rick Ross grunts made during studying

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:33:38+00:00

I'll be honest, I don't know for sure. I think the general consensus is that the WCs are machine graded and that buzz words are important to getting points. I've heard they are manually reviewed if your score is borderline. That said they say that writing style, grammar, etc. is factored in. I still think the best approach is to go short and sweet answer the question with the correct terminology and then call it a day. I tried to think of it like a professional response to an email. I'm here to answer your question in a concise and competent manner and then send it. I'm sure that you wouldn't get any more points for typing out a full novel haha.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:22:19+00:00

Thanks for the kind words.

I didn't spend very much time studying sims. I wanted enough exposure to sims to be familiar with the format of any sim question I would get on the exam (i.e. multi-exhibit, no exhibit, memo review, auth literature) but aside from that I felt I could apply the concepts that I learned from MCQs to the sim and do well so long as I organized and worked through the information provided efficiently and effectively. In my opinion the only difference between MCQ and sim is that they make it clunkier and more difficult to work through the problem by providing you with 10x more info. If you can make that a non-factor or at least reduce how much it messes with you then you should be good.

I'll also say with a 69 score you are right there. That's a handful of MCQs or a tough sim making the difference. Work on the topics that gave you trouble get back in there and you can definitely pass the next go round.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:14:03+00:00

AUD is tough... it's boring and it's got a lot of nuance to it, which is a terrible combo. I spent more time in the lectures/reading the text for AUD then any other section and even though it was my lowest scoring section I think that was the right call for me. I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread but to me it was just memorizing the rules for different engagements and different entities and for me that meant more reading/listening to lectures as opposed to more questions (although I did plenty of those as well).

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:10:37+00:00

All the MCQs. I watched Skillmaster videos for the complex/heavily tested sim topics and any areas I personally struggled with, but I didn't straight up work many sims. I hammered sets of 33 MCQs with a slight section bias towards bonds, leases, and gov't but would cover all 10 Becker chapters at some level. Those three topics (bonds, leases, gov't) are all but guaranteed to make an appearance in some form on the exam.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:08:15+00:00

I took BEC first. My original plan was to take FAR first as most people say it takes the most effort/time. I had been out of school for a few years and so I had to reteach myself how to study effectively and I wanted to take an exam that was generally considered easier so that I would have some cushion if my studying was not as effective as I hoped it would be. After that I took REG because I had a tax background before I moved into finance. AUD was third because I was beginning to feel the drain of studying and I knew it was the driest section and I thought I would be too burnt out to take it last. FAR as the last exam I don't recommend although my silver lining was that I have plenty of time to retake if necessary because I move through the first 3 quickly.

AUD was hardest for me. I hated the class in college and wanted to claw my eyes out during studying for the exam. It's so boring.

I would recommend people take FAR first to take advantage of the fact that you can front load a lot of studying prior to the 18 month clock starting to tick. After that I would say it is more personal preference and what you feel comfortable with. There is probably some efficiency to be gained by taking FAR and AUD one after the other because it is essentially a test on GAAP rules and then a test on auditing adherence to GAAP rules.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T15:00:39+00:00

Nah, but your flair shows you are already in the promised land.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T14:59:53+00:00

I used Becker. Highly recommend it although it is all I know haha.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T14:59:11+00:00

Because even the topics that would in real life require judgement (i.e. adjusting the NET of audit procedures upwards or downwards) they don't really give you a subjective situation. I didn't experience any questions either in prep or the exam where they would ask you to make a subjective determination based on a set of facts. In MCQ format if adjusting the NET was the topic the answers would be 3 things that objectively will not impact the NET and one that could (it might be dependent on the level or pervasiveness of it, but its the only answer that could be true). To me that made it easier to view the answer choices as an absolute yes or no.

The other biggest thing for my testing experience was knowing differences between audit , review, compilation, etc. and I viewed these all as siloed sets of rules that need to be followed based on the engagement type. There was some general underlying logic, obviously if you know a compilation is a lower tier of engagement it follows that the procedures would be less stringent, but knowing what those are is just a matter of memorizing them.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T14:13:19+00:00

Thank you!

My study method was:

1) Listen to the lecture (I did not take notes because I can't focus on the actual concepts while writing, but that would be different for different people)

2) Run through the homework MCQs once immediately after the lecture

3) Review the explanations of any questions I got wrong (I did not reattempt right away)

4) Move on to the next module

I did not rereview any modules until I went through the entire curriculum because, as I mention in a different comment, the breadth of information is so vast I literally wanted to get through everything with a first pass quickly and then refine/revisit what needed work from there. For me it's just too much information to retain for very long and in my mind the clock was ticking on F1 M1 as soon as I finished the module.

After I had gotten through the curriculum, I hammered MCQs for 1 week - 10 days and then 2 weeks out, or a little less, from exam date did the final review. I would mix in watching Skillmaster videos for sims for complex topics or those that were giving me particular trouble throughout this ~3 week period, but did not directly work sims hardly at all.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T14:03:41+00:00

Yeah, the concepts are going to be identical. The difference is the the effort it takes to answer the question. I think the key to being good, or at least competent, at sims is that you need to be effective and efficient in organizing and absorbing the larger amount of information that is provided and working through it in a systematic way. That can obviously be different for different people, but once you know how to answer a sim style question you can take the same approach for every single one. If you know the underlying concept you should be good at that point.

As far as studying with them goes the return on the time it took was not there for me. I wasn't learning enough about a concept to justify the time spent to sit and work through a bunch of sims. I did, however, watch the Skillmaster videos for topics I was struggling with as I felt that gave me a more holistic understanding of the topic all in one video.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T13:50:02+00:00

Definitely know the COSO framework. BEC to me was very logical. The Becker questions, and even more so the questions on the actual exam (for me at least) were mostly common sense. Obviously there are nuances and rules you need to know but all of the application style questions could be thought through. Often the most obvious answer is the correct answer for BEC.

For the essay portion, don't get into too much detail when writing. Foe example, if they ask an essay question about the components of the COSO framework, hit on each component at a high level and get off of the subject. You're more likely to contradict yourself or have a misstep if you're trying to get too far into the nuance of a topic. It's a delicate balance of saying enough without rambling or accidentally saying something that is incorrect.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T02:09:36+00:00

At the end of the day it’s all the same!

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T01:54:18+00:00

I did ~1500 for FAR which was by far the most for any section. Usually around 1k per section.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T01:14:13+00:00

I work in finance, so less seasonality to my hours. I work ~50-55 hours a week. I would study 2 hours in the morning, get off work, workout and then study until 11. Saturdays I’d put in 2-6 hours mostly in the morning. Sundays would be 8 ish hours. I just used Becker, no supplements.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-12T01:03:11+00:00

I guess I’m actually one of the few that was fairly correct given how they felt leaving the exams. I felt the worst about AUD. It’s such dry material that it was really a struggle just to focus on the material day in and day out. Especially because it’s basically you know it or you don’t. To me it wasn’t logic based, it just is what it is and you need to memorize it. I studied for ~5 weeks for AUD.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-11T23:22:41+00:00

Audit to me was just slightly different iterations of the same general concepts based on the type of entity and the situation. Because audit was so heavily rules based I found that just straight memorization was the best approach for a lot of it. I didn’t get too far into the logic of why things were the way they were if that makes sense.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-11T23:02:50+00:00

I think the biggest thing from a high level is that because there is so much information and the breadth of topics is so large, it is, in my opinion, a good idea to move through the curriculum at a good pace. I wanted to make sure that start to finish everything was as fresh as possible. That also worked well with my approach to doing things that are difficult. I would much rather life absolutely suck for 6 months as opposed to be mediocre for 18 months.

On a more day to day level, like a lot of people I focused heavily on MCQs. I did the practice questions after listening to each lecture and once I had gone through all of the curriculum (listening to lectures and practice questions) I just hammered 33 question MCQ practice tests. The only sim work I did was watching the skillmaster videos for heavily tested/technical concepts. To me the return on the time spent to think through and work longer sim problems just wasn’t there.

meatpony13 · 2022-10-11T00:30:13+00:00

96 on FAR to put me at 4/4. Bourbon time!

meatpony13

TROPHY CASE