After spending over a decade coaching professionals for the US CPA exam in India, we have received a ton of suggestions to solve simulation-type questions from a range of CPA test takers of varied ages and backgrounds. The testimonies collected from both alumni roundtables and interviews have significant mentions on how simulation questions have haunted their nights before the CPA exam.
Today we have decided to draft some general to-do which helps all our CPA aspirants to keep their exam anxiety at bay.
Tip 1: “When all else fails, follow instructions.” – Anne Lamott
Start speed-practice to solve MCQs for your CPA preparation. The more you speed up on the short answer you will have enough time left to get back to the simulation questions that you have bookmarked before. It’s crucial to read the instructions as it will help you navigate the following questions better.
Tip 2: “Golden rule of life: never underestimate your rivals.” – Sid Waddell
Don’t let the research sims get in your way in becoming a certified public accountant! Be careful with the compression part in the tests and try understanding what the essay reads. Take out 10-15 minutes time and make sure you make good use of authoritative literature tools and you would surely get them right.
Tip 3: “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” – Marshall McLuhan
To solve the simulation questions, AICPA provides a range of tools to solve the questions quickly on exam day. The tools mentioned include –
- Calculators
- Excel spreadsheets
- Authoritative literature
- Spell check
- Exhibits & highlights
Make sure that your CPA training package includes a real-time mock exam experience to get you a practical walkthrough to use the tools efficiently and get the maximum help to solve the CPA exam.
Tip 4: “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.” – Lord Chesterfield
Make sure you plan your minutes. Count it as a d-day haul for the CPA exam and distribute the 4 hours –
- 90 minutes – to speed through the MCQ
- 150 minutes – to finish the simulations
It is a notion that Certified Public Accountants are always on-time. Take it as CPA practice in the making of competent accountants.
Tip 5: “Repetition makes perfect.” DeAndre Hopkins
Having said that, repetition resolves the difficulty for CPA’s task-based simulations-solves, one needs to know the right way to do it. Let’s say ‘Repeating + improvements’ make it perfect. Mark your mistakes, learn them, and make sure you are not repeating them right at the next round of revision.
Tip 6: “Set realistic goals, keep re-evaluating, and be consistent.” – Venus Williams
As you master the lesser difficulties, you will be better equipped to take on greater challenges. If you are solving 10 MCQs a day for a chapter, pick any 1 simulation question and try solving it. This will eventually help you to get closer to your CPA goals.
Tip 7: “Mental strength requires a three-pronged approach.” – Amy Morin
Apply a three-pronged strategy, and ensure you have kept a few backup plans to place you at a better score while solving the simulations. Either you can hear out our CPA alumni at events or ask your assigned mentors or craft your own ways to solve sims faster with cent percent accuracy.
Tip 8: “I suspect all readers are scanners.” – Don Fry
Exact your choices for the simulations and scan through the passage and highlight the keywords with highlight tools provided during the CPA exam. You will be able to pick the most accurate and correct answer.
Tip 9: “Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.” Leo Rosten
Stay prepared for the surprise. There will be simulations on topics that you might not be aware of. It’s advised to keep the odds to solve right at the end.
Tip 10: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen
The moral of the quote is each simulation you answer, gives you the opportunity to reach closer to accomplishing your cutoff marks for your CPA exam. It is definitely difficult to score 10 upon 10 in all the questions, yet, don’t leave any unsolved and ensure that you have to go through the questions at least once.
In the US CPA exam, multiple-choice questions are excellent to reinforce concepts and test your key concepts. Through MCQs, AICPA learns the test taker’s – remembering, understanding, and application capability, whereas TBS tests your practical skills and exploratory analysis capabilities. This makes TBS equally important to test your capability simulations and refers to 50% of your score on all 4 of your CPA exam parts, making TBS even more crucial to scoring the optimum cut-off during the CPA exam. Further, as per our subject matter experts, we learned that one requires more than 2 hours of time to solve the simulations and settle the scores, so start practicing today with the pro-tips to glide through the simulation bouts.
