By planning your CPA program ahead of time, you can ensure that you are better prepared to successfully pass the exam. Most candidates spend 200-400 hours of time studying throughout the exam; that is around 20-25 hours per week, which can be a considerable time commitment on top of their other duties. The agreed view is that it takes about 400 hours to study for the CPA exam. This is divided into about 100 hours for each of the four sections.
The Financial Accounting and Reporting Test (FAR) requires a lot of numerical calculations. Alternatively, the Business Concepts and Environment Test (BEC) requires fewer calculations. The goal of more than 300 hours of study gives you between 80 and 100 hours for each section of the exam. You may find that you need to focus more hours of study in one area than in another, which is totally fine.
The key to a successful study is consistency, so be sure to include frequent study sessions in your schedule to keep the information up to date. From there, most preparatory courses offer self-paced online lectures that follow the chapters of the textbook. CPA preparation courses generally provide candidates with a textbook for each section of the exam, flashcards, recorded online (or live) lectures, multiple-choice questions, longer simulation practice problems, and mock practice tests. Finding the right CPA preparation course will make or fail your attempts to pass this notoriously difficult test.
These preparation courses make studying less daunting by helping candidates draw up an exam schedule with deadlines and breaking down material into small pieces. Wiley provides excellent CPA study materials, however, I think my results would have been similar with any of the best CPA prep courses out there. There are many who end up buying the wrong CPA review courses the first time, fail the exam and end up having to pay for two CPA courses before finding the right one. The ability to demo the product before you buy it is important because a CPA prep course can be a significant financial investment.
Using the wrong CPA preparation course could cause you to fail one or two sections and cost you months of CPA study time along with the feeling that you can't do it. Online costs did a course-by-course breakdown, but ai wondered about total costs, including applicable fees. Choose a CPA preparation course that fits your learning style and helps you focus on the key topics that will actually be included in the exam.
