Wednesday, July 11, 2012

FAR Experience

My FAR experience was a disaster, or so I thought. When I left the testing center, leaving 1 sim with all 0's because I ran out of time, I wanted to crawl in a hole and cry. We study for 2-3 months, 15 - 20 hours a week, and get 1 shot to pass. I tried to remain calm and keep my confidence but at the end of my first testlet I was @ 52 minutes in. What?! Where did the time go, ok so I went quicker on the 2nd and 3rd testlet, getting them done in 38 and 45 minutes, which left me with 1 hour and 45 minutes for my sims. I always do the research question first since I know the codifications good and generally find them pretty fast, but this time I spent 30 minutes looking and still didn't find the answer. So 1 hour and 15 minutes left to do 7 sims! Ugh! I got through 5 simulations with 15 minutes left, put 0's on the last one, and went back to the research which I found 13 minutes later. How could I get an industry specific research question when it was not a FAR topic?

MCQ's. I kept track of all the questions that I KNEW I got right and that added up to 27. I didn't want to count the calculation questions into this just because when I am rushed I make calculation errors, so I didn't include them. Only a few questions that I had no idea where they came from, assuming pretest questions or else I missed something in my study's. I skipped calculation questions until the end on the 2nd and 3rd testlet and I think that sped up my time.

Testlets - Questions I knew I got right per testlet
1 - 10 correct
2 - 7 correct <-- Pretty sure it was hard level, saw a AICPA released hard question on it :))
3 - 10 correct <--- Some weird questions

Knowing how many I had correct gave me confidence throughout the exam. That is until I got to the simulations.

Simulations - BRUTAL - ALL of them were extremely tough, except one. Even though that one wasn't tough I knew it would be time consuming with a ton of calculations and then journal entries to record it. Every single simulation required journal entries (which are the easy part, calculation is the hard part). Since I was running out of time, I didn't have time to re-calculate my answers so my confidence level was pretty low.

Looking back, I know within 90% accuracy that I got 3 of the simulations correct. The other 3 are up in the air, I am hoping for partial credit. If I had another 30 minutes I could have recalculated the other 3 and made sure I got them right and finished the one I didn't have time to complete. Praying that the one I left with 0's is the pretest simulation.

It's done and behind me now, so I am forgetting it and moving onto my audit studies.