The thoughts and ideas presented here are more than just study tips. They are also life lessons that will help you put your learning first and take control of your destiny. Most of these tips are inspired by award-winning accounting professor, Joe Hoyle, while others are derived from experiences or motivational quotes and teachings. You might find that what you learn here will help you in other areas of your life, especially those that require a sustained effort.

The Fast Forward Academy team continually works to deliver world-class content to each and every student that utilizes our courses. We spend countless hours listening to students just like you to ensure that the tools and technology we develop bring the information you need to learn to life. It is our hope that you’ll apply the knowledge you gain from these tips to your studies using the Fast Forward Academy learning platform. We offer self-study courses, but by using our CPA community you are never alone. Help is just a click away in our community discussion no matter where you are in your studies. Be sure to help others in the community too, doing so will aid in your growth, comprehension, and learning.

1. JUST ABOUT ANYONE CAN NOW PASS THE CPA EXAM IF THEY DO THE WORK

2. PLAN THE WORK AND WORK YOUR STUDY PLAN

Knowing how to study for the CPA exam is a lot like trying to lose weight, in that you need to know whether or not you are making daily progress. To successfully lose weight, many folks track their progress by stepping on a scale, counting calories, counting steps, and setting a schedule for daily exercise activities. By tracking your progress and identifying what is working and what is not, you can make adjustments to your plan and increase your chances for success.

For example, if you see your weight going up, you might analyze your caloric intake, the number of steps you took the previous week, or the number of hours you spent in the gym exercising. With your studies, if you see that you are not progressing, you might analyze the amount of time you spent reading on that topic, the number of quiz questions you answered, or even your overall level of focus and concentration (because let’s face it, we’re not always 100% focused on the task at hand).

Track your progress and make daily notes on how things are going. At the end of each day, write down how much time you spent preparing for the CPA Exam. An easy way to do this is to give yourself a grade on your daily performance. On a calendar, give yourself an A, B, C, or an F. Yes, you can skip the D since we need to keep things simple. Or, If you like, you can rate yourself with stars. It doesn’t matter what type of grading system you use, as long as you keep it simple. This exercise will serve a couple of purposes. When you approach your daily studies knowing there’s a grade at the end, you are more likely to strive to do better. Another reason you want to track your performance is that it prevents you from letting bad habits get too far out of hand. Seeing trends in your progress will allow you to make adjustments to how your approaching your studies. If you score badly on a practice exam, you can easily go back to your daily log and see what things contributed to your score. Maybe you did not get enough sleep or perhaps you have some outside stresses interfering with your studies. No matter what the issues are, having a daily log will ensure that you are holding yourself accountable and give you an easy way to see if you need to adjust your plan.

Your practice exam scores will tell you just about everything you need to know about your preparation. Be honest and flexible with the way you rate your performance. If you did poorly on a couple practice exams early on but are showing improvement, there’s less cause for concern than if you were doing well and started to decline. Make sure your daily grade helps support your improvement. The whole point of this exercise is to keep you on the right path, not to waste your time by beating yourself up.

The most common issue students face today is distractions. This may require you to take an honest look at how you study. If you find yourself responding to text messages or checking Facebook during your study time, you are only hurting yourself. Each day ask yourself, “is the study time I am putting in quality time?”, “am I getting closer to my weekly study goal or am I flat-lining in my learning performance?”, “are my quizzes getting better or worse?”, “am I prepared for a practice exam?”, “are my practice exam scores improving?”

The daily log is one of the best ways to track your progress and when you do well, please be sure to reward yourself. The goal is to increase your knowledge while continuing to improve your scores. A small reward will give you the boost you need to push through the drudgery we all experience in our studies. Plan the work and work your study plan by grading yourself daily. When you achieve your goal, you will be glad you did!

3. GOALS? SOMETHING WRITTEN SOMETHING GAINED!

While some say, “nothing ventured, nothing gained”, you might want to consider, something written, something gained. If you ask most folks studying for the CPA exam what their goal is, they immediately say something like “to pass the CPA Exam.” While you, too, may have that same goal, it is more helpful to break it down into manageable pieces. Having an end goal of passing the CPA exam is great, but it’s too large of a task and since it is not defined by smaller, attainable goals, it leaves a lot of room for failure. There are way too many moving parts to passing the CPA exam and the only real way to succeed is to break that large goal down into daily action and achievements. Knowing how to study for the CPA exam starts with establishing these smaller goals; once you’ve identified these smaller goals, write them down on your calendar.

What are your daily goals?

Examples: Read for 30 minutes (minimum 15-20 pages). Watch 30 minutes of video lectures. Answer 50 FAR quiz questions.

What are your weekly goals?

Examples: Read for 4 hours (minimum 150 pages). Watch 2 hours of video lectures. Answer 150 FAR quiz questions.

What are your monthly goals?

Examples: Read 1/2 of FAR textbook. Score 85% or higher on my practice quizzes. Watch 8 hours of video lectures. Answer 400 practice questions. Prepare to take the FAR CPA practice exam in next 60 days and schedule FAR exam within next 90 days.

These are just examples, but do you see how these definitive goals require you to take daily, weekly, and monthly action? Having real goals written down on a calendar or organizer helps you take manageable steps toward the much larger goal of passing FAR, REG, BEC, and AUD. Each day needs to be one that’s moving you closer to your final objective; anything else is taking you further away. Be sure you include some days off for rest in your study plan. Most students need a couple days to decompress from heavy studying and CPA exam prep is no different. When someone asks you what your goals are, pull out your phone and show them your calendar. Tell them how you are working daily to prepare for your upcoming exam. Have deadlines for taking each exam so you can have them all completed within a 18 months or less.

4. AN INTENTION TO WIN MAKES WINNING POSSIBLE

Do you work with intention? Do you demand success or at least some kind of progress from yourself each and every time you open your books to study? When you compete in sports, play chess, throw darts, or shoot pool, do you play to win or are you out there getting your butt kicked like a soccer ball? Let’s face it, while most folks studying for the CPA exam are not playing in the NBA, they are most certainly playing to win. The question for you is, how bad do you want it? If you are not currently 100% dedicated, you need to be when it comes to CPA exam prep and self-study.

The CPA exam is a difficult sport of the mind, and it leaves thousands in its wake every year. When you log into your Fast Forward Academy CPA Review course or crack your textbooks for another study sessions, do so with the intention of winning. Fill your head with valuable information by watching video lectures and then, dig deeper into a subject by reading. Get involved with the community and see if you really are mentally in the game. Take some quizzes to see how much you retained, but whatever you do, study and prepare to win. If you don't study with the intention of passing, you are not fully committed. As obvious as all of this is, many students are simply going through the motions. You cannot afford to be one of them. If you find passion waning, take a moment to remember all of the reasons why you want to pass the CPA exam and this should help to reset your inner drive.

5. VISUALIZING SUCCESS IS VITAL TO PASSING THE CPA EXAM

Ronnie Lott is known to have rephrased an older quote: “If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.” This is very much like the old adage: “If I can dream it, I can believe it, if I can believe it, I can achieve it.” Success and achievement come from within and are attainable to almost anyone with the means to first believe they want it.

Competitive athletes use visualization, successful business owners, and almost anyone striving to achieve peak performance has at one time or another set a goal and visualized a positive outcome. By regularly seeing yourself achieve a goal or benchmark, you are changing the way you prioritize everything you do. Just wanting something badly is not enough to succeed at it though. Beliefs and dreams can only turn into achievements if the right steps are taken, and in the right order. From dreams come actions and as you take action, you are setting yourself apart from those that just talk. By taking action, you are now becoming a self-visualized doer! What would normally be a place to spend free time may come to be seen as a distraction. Old interests may become complete detours and dream-killing dead ends. If you want to achieve something like passing the CPA exam, visualize the end result and work daily to make progress.

When you get to the place where you truly realize just how bad you want to pass the CPA exam, break the process down into its simpler parts and take regular action. Are you driven enough and motivated enough to put in the sustained effort to get to the finish line? Sure, we all find excuses to not study and need outside motivation to get back into our coursework. Do you have a group that you can count on? The Fast Forward Academy CPA community is a great place to not only connect with others, but it’s also a great place to get the occasional nudge you might need. Just be sure to pay it forward and help others when they need it to. You will be surprised at just how much a few words can mean to someone struggling with a difficult topic or section in the reading.

If you feel your motivation beginning to wane, take a moment to help a few folks. The mental break and kind words shared with others will help fill your tank back up and remind you why you started on this journey in the first place. Yes, much of the motivation you have, comes from within and sharing and helping others is just one more way to recharge your internal batteries. As you study and take a quiz, constantly check to make sure you are understanding the questions you miss. Go back and see why you missed them. If you’re having difficulty grasping a subject, connect with others in a study group or join a community discussion to see what others have written there. Again, the Fast Forward Academy CPA review course offers access to an active community full of students and instructors that can help you. These connections will have lasting, positive benefits. To recap, visualize the end result, take daily steps to get there and help those that need it along the way. Your dreams can and will become achievements if you take the time to visualize and actualize your goals daily!

6. THERE ARE FOUR C’S IN THE WORD SU-C-C-C-C-ESS

Have you heard award-winning accounting professor Joe Hoyle’s 4-C’s for CPA Exam Success? CONFIDENCE, CARE, CONCENTRATE, & CALM.

CONFIDENCE

Most people know that with experience and practice comes confidence. Whether it’s competing in sports, taking an exam, or going in for a job interview, you need to know what your goals are. Having a plan will give you the confidence you need to succeed. The good news is that nearly any challenge can be broken down into manageable parts or steps. If you have a mental punch list which allows you to respond to each mini-challenge along the way, you will have confidence. Achieving CPA exam success is not for faint of heart, it requires a battle plan. You are going to war against an onslaught of questions. You win the war when you get enough points to pass. Walk into the exam room on test day ready to wage your battle with confidence. Doing so will help you pass.

CARE

It’s great to be confident, but this confidence needs to be tempered with great care. Being extremely careful means you are working through the questions at a good pace and reading them quickly but fully to ensure you are not missing the meaning. Questions can and will be missed when you approach them with haste. Just be careful.

CONCENTRATE

Not only do you have to begin the challenge with laser-like concentration, but you must also maintain that concentration for the duration of the entire exam. It can take a little time to settle into the exam, but the practice exams you’ve previously taken should have prepared you for this. Practice exams are invaluable to the process because they train you to enter a concentrated state of answering questions, so that come exam day, you’re very familiar with feeling and mindset. On CPA exam day, you will be in a room with others, but everyone will be quiet and focused. Aside from the one or two people asking to use the restroom, or the person that is annoying you when they clear their throat, you really just have your own thoughts to take you in or out of focus. Stay concentrated the entire exam; do not let your concentration wane at all. If you become distracted, reset and change your posture, stretch, or take a deep breath and continue on. Be mindful now of your ability to concentrate during your practice exams. Working on your focus today will go a long way on exam day.

CALM

You have to stay calm regardless of what happens during the exam. Don’t second guess yourself. Get into a mental state of calmness and stay there as you move through the questions and testlets. Significant spikes in blood pressure and heart rate can easily cause you to lose focus. Breathing exercises can be very helpful for times like these. Being able to get back to your calm, collected state is something you can practice before you take the exam using real-life situations. Feeling anxious or frustrated? Try breathing through it or visualizing things that make you happy. This can help you keep your cool and stay focused on the exam.

7. IT TAKES A COMMUNITY

Studying for the CPA exam can be a lonely road. You spend countless hours staring at a computer screen, reading your study guides and getting lost in the CPA prep course material. Sure, a little solitude is a good thing, especially when you need to focus, but too much can become maddening. Some of the extremes you might experience during hard-core CPA study can leave you questioning your path. Don’t let things go that far, take time to connect with others. A great way to connect and learn at the same time is to join a community. Fast Forward Academy offers access to an awesome community with students and CPA’s that can help. There are other communities out there, but we feel we have done a better job of connecting the study material in our split view window with the community. No matter where you are: in a video lecture, quiz or online textbook, you are merely a click away from people to connect with that are able to help.

Take time to reach out to those that can help you. Also, take the time to help others. You’d be surprised how much helping others revitalizes your outlook and emotional well-being. Some studies show teaching will help you better retain the information you are working so hard to learn yourself.

8. WINNERS MAKE STUDYING A HABIT

Yes, it’s obvious that you need to study frequently to have a chance of passing the CPA exam. We hear it all the time in our online CPA community here at Fast Forward Academy. Folks will say: “…sometimes I just need a push or some words of encouragement to get me going.” If this sounds like you right now, it’s okay. We all need an occasional nudge to get back on track at times. If you feel like it’s getting gradually harder to begin your studies, it might mean you are experiencing some burnout. This is perfectly normal, as long as it does not become a daily or weekly occurrence. If you feel yourself slowly grinding to a halt or worse yet, not being able to get started at all, then you absolutely need a reset. One of the most essential CPA study tips is to give yourself the necessary time to refresh yourself; you need to know when to take a break. But you also need to know when to get back on your study routine and prepare for passing the CPA exam.

The best way to overcome an inability to initiate studying is to first take a break and do something to disrupt the track you are on. You may try visualizing yourself in your career after you pass the CPA exam. You might consider taking a walk or a run to clear the mind. You may even need to think of how you would feel if you don’t pass the CPA exam.

Now that you have admitted you have a problem, you need to prevent it from doing any more damage to your goals. Science tells us it takes our brains just under 70 days to create a good habit. Schedule your study time in half-hour or hour-long sessions with a short break every 30-60 minutes. Your break should serve to restore your energy, not zap it. Stay away from activities that drag you down emotionally. You should have a place that is as consistently comfortable and quiet as possible. Keep in mind, nothing is perfect and you may need to tune the world out a little in order to focus on your reading. Be sure to reward yourself each week for staying on track. If you spend 60-70 days self-starting you will find it takes less energy with each passing day to get yourself going.

If your plan is to pass the CPA exam within a year or less, it’s important to make all those seconds, minutes, and hours count. Make a study a habit as soon as possible, it's one of the best things you can do to accomplish your goal.

9. PREPARE FOR THE CPA EXAM WITH A SENSE OF URGENCY

Do you ever find yourself getting distracted as you sit down to study? Do you sometimes look at your phone to read the news, text messages, emails, or social media before jumping into your CPA course? How you approach your studies can and will dictate how well you do on the CPA exam. While preparing for the CPA exam is like preparing for a marathon, you need to break that marathon down into smaller runs that you can attack daily. But, no matter what your daily goals are, it is nearly impossible to get much done without a sense of urgency. Without making a conscious and concerted effort to end chat time and turn off any other distractions, you will never be able to truly shift gears into study mode. Study mode begins when you approach your reading, your quiz questions, practice exams, or even your video lectures with a sense of urgency. Without urgency, there are a million other more important things on the horizon. By not having a sense of urgency, you are more likely to be pulled, pushed, and swayed into time-wasting, non-beneficial activities. Don’t sabotage your study routine. Focus on passing the CPA exam and direct all your efforts to that end until you succeed.

Just as an Olympic swimmer jumps into the water with force and intention, you too should jump into your studies with the same enthusiasm and purpose. It sounds cliché, but think about the way you approach your studies when you have an exam the following day. Most people that put off studying until the night before magically have focus, purpose, and are working with a sense of urgency, because they have on option at that point. While it’s difficult to maintain the intensity all of the time, in order to be successful on the CPA exam, you need to be sure that you’re bringing a sense of urgency to the majority of your study sessions.

Question: “How do I put urgency into my CPA studies”, you ask? The answer is simple, make a proclamation that you will take the exam for REG, FAR, BEC, or AUD in three months. And continue to prepare for a new section every three months. Write the exam date on a calendar visible to everyone. Put the exam date in your phone with a reminder. Tell your friends and family your plans and that your time for the next 2-3 months is dedicated to preparing for a section of the CPA exam. People unintentionally hold themselves back, but now you know some CPA exam preparation tips to keep you on track to pass.

The difference between dreams and goals is that a goal has a start and completion date next to it. To achieve means to live, act, work, and study with not just purpose, but urgency. Having a written goal that you are now accountable for achieving won’t make preparation harder, it will make it possible!

10. TRACKING YOUR DAILY PROGRESS MEANS BEING HONEST WITH YOURSELF

Productive study time is a direct result of setting goals and working your weekly study plans. Your study plans represent a lot of self-sacrifice and a commitment to become more prepared for the CPA exam than you were the day before.

Before you study, make the decision to do so with purpose and the intention of getting better. Know what you want to study and just do it; knowing how to study for the CPA exam starts with knowing what to study. At the end of your study session, ask yourself the following questions:

• Did I learn something new?
• Did I tune out the distractions around me and focus on my studies?
• Did I help someone else understand a difficult subject to help further my own learning?
• Was my day productive?
• Did I accomplish my daily study goal, whether it was to read a set number of pages in your textbook, watch a set number of video lectures, or answer a set number of quiz questions?

If you answered yes to these questions than give yourself an “A” or “4 stars” or something positive to track your daily success. If not, figure out what was holding you back and move on. To truly track your progress, you not only need to be honest with your performance, but you also need to do it daily, just like brushing your teeth.

11. ONLY THE STRONG PERSEVERE

Preparing yourself for the CPA exam is a veritable marathon. Sure the old adage is “only the strong survive,” but surviving alone is not the path to passing the CPA exam. One must persevere to pass! Ask any competitive marathon runner and they will invariably tell you that when they are not training, they are giving their body some much-needed recovery time. Everything you do to prepare for race day is a planned, conscious effort to succeed. Preparing to pass the CPA exam is no different. Your body and mind need to be up to the challenge. Just as anyone can go jogging as a hobby, anyone can also read a few pages here and there or take a practice exam. The point is that preparing for the CPA exam is no hobby and should not be approached like one. Considerable effort and time needs to be spent daily for any meaningful preparation.

Being ready means you will need to persevere in the face of many challenges vying for your time and attention. Friends may ask you to go out on evenings when you are planning to study. Telling your friends you will catch up after your studies means you are placing greater emphasis on passing the CPA exam in the future than you are on having fun now. You will find that when you make decisions to persevere, the people around you will recognize it. Those that care about you will ask how are your studies going, or they might ask when you are taking the exam. The truth is what you focus on will grow and just as you are focused on persevering to prepare for and pass the CPA exam, those around you will also recognize how important this is to you and be cheering you on.

Just as winners find reasons to keep winning, the inverse is also true. Those that lose, typically have a list of excuses for why they did poorly. Finding other places to spend your time instead of studying will take you further away from, not closer to, your goal of winning. Walter Elliot was quoted as saying: “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” This quote is very appropriate when we talk about preparing for the CPA exam.

You need to work hard and at times, you may feel like there is not much left in the tank. When you really apply yourself, you should feel tired when you’re finished just like you just ran a mental race. You should also feel a sense of accomplishment that you set goals and achieved them, no matter how large or small they may be. After a productive study session, you should be feel good knowing you gave it your all during those last few hours. Take pride in your daily work and preparation. Better things are in store for those that persevere!

Winners persevere, hobbyists dabble. Don’t dabble when it comes to your studies and your future. Prepare for exam day like it’s a race and you will win!

12. YOU DON’T NEED PERFECTION, YOU JUST NEED PERSISTENCE TO PASS

There might be times during the exam when you feel like your head is spinning. You will come across questions where the answer does not immediately come to mind, or, where you simply do not understand what the question is asking. Don’t panic or give up. This is normal. If you approach these situations with a solid game plan, you can recover and pass. The first thing you should do when you find your pace slowing on a difficult question is to flag the question. This way, if you need to come back to the question later, you can. Next, narrow down the answer choices. Are there any choices that you know for a fact cannot be the right answer? If so, eliminate those. if you can narrow your choices down to 2 possible answers, go ahead and choose the best of those 2 and move on. This 50/50 approach will prevent these difficult questions from stealing more of your time; time that will be needed to correctly answer other questions.

Moving on may also give you a chance to find clues or jog your memory, so you can go back to those that you did not confidently answer on the first attempt. If you do not allow the tough questions to rattle you, you can spend your energy on questions that you know how to answer correctly and get to the end of the exam. You only have so many minutes and you must use them wisely. Striving for perfection will take you down a rabbit hole you will never get out of. You only need enough points to pass and that is the only goal!

13. PASSING THE CPA EXAM REQUIRES A STRONG MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT

As with any important, life-changing goal, knowing the reasons why you want to pass the CPA exam will be crucial to your success. You will be making sacrifices, such as going out with friends less frequently than you once did, or perhaps you’ll have to cut back on watching TV. Of course, you should plan for and allow a few activities to steal small bits of your time along the way. After all, you’re human. But these activities should not be allowed to interfere with your mental, physical, or spiritual well-being.

If you find important relationships are strained, reward yourself on productive days with a break that you can spend with a friend or loved one. Are you getting regular exercise? If you have ignored taking care of your body to have more time to study, you are hurting yourself more than you are helping. To pass the CPA exam, you need to be both mentally and physically fit. Eating fast food, skipping exercise, ignoring your friends and family are not the keys to success. You might spend so much time doing damage control later that you start questioning your path. The mental fitness required to take a high-stakes exam is often accompanied by physical fitness. Your mind cannot perform at its peak if the body is compromised.

The same holds true with personal relationships and conflicts. You cannot go into exam day with drama circling in your head. It is important to your mental health that you maintain positive relationships while preparing for the exam. Even if you cannot spend as much time with friends and family as you would like, those that love you will understand you have goals and that you are working hard to achieve them. The key is to not completely ignore everyone in your life and really, it’s not necessary if you stick to a regular study plan. Remember, the reasons why you are on this path and make your study a habit with 70 days of self-starting. These 70 days will help you shape the next few months of study and increase your chances of becoming a CPA.

14. AIM FOR 85 TO SURVIVE

As you may know, you need a score of 75 to pass each part of the CPA exam. Unless your goal is to earn the Elijah Watt Sells Award, it’s an utter waste of time to score more than 75. Once you pass the CPA exam, nobody cares what you scored. Preparation for the exam, however, is a different story. To succeed with some degree of confidence, you need to figure in some margin for error. Aiming high in your studies is different than trying to nail a perfect score. By consistently getting an 85% (or higher) in your quizzes and practice exams, you are setting a goal and giving yourself an insurance policy come test day. Let’s face it, things come up. You may get exam day jitters, or maybe something caused you to lose a little sleep the night before. Not giving yourself a cushion can cause you stress, especially as you see a run of questions that you are not ready for. Your blood pressure goes up and now you are feeling stressed. The worst thing you can do to yourself come test day is to go in blind or unprepared. Having the 85% goal while you study ensures you stay on track leading up to the exam and gives you a much needed cushion to survive the exam battle.

15. OVER-STUDYING IS JUST AS BAD AS UNDERSTUDYING

While many students think it’s a good idea to push beyond burnout, only to regroup and then push some more, nothing could be more detrimental to your CPA exam preparation. While it’s imperative that you jump into your studies with a sense of urgency and purpose, going too hard for too long will cause burnout. There’s a difference between studying with a purpose and working in burnout mode for days on end. Sticking to a daily and weekly plan will ensure you are hitting your benchmarks and staying on track with your studies. If you feel yourself struggling to keep up with your study plan, a couple of things may be to blame. Either you are missing days and are not making them up, or you have not given yourself enough time to get through the material. If this is happening to you, it’s a good time to tweak your study plan before you hit burnout. Over-studying is really no better than under-studying and both can return a similar result come test time.

Yes, family time is reduced, hobbies are diminished, and many other things you did before embarking on this journey are set aside. It’s true, you will need to shuffle your priorities, putting your CPA preparation at the top of your list, but it’s also important to not lose yourself either. You want to be able to look back on this time in your life when you were studying with some degree of fondness. You need to find a balance and only you will know when that balance is reached. If you feel important relationships are being strained, take time to reconnect with those you love. Reward your efforts on your days off with something productive and healthy that takes you away from the stress you were feeling the day before.

When you hit a wall in your performance, it’s important to recognize it and take corrective action. While watching television is a great escape, not much has ever been accomplished watching TV. You might find when you take your recharge day to watch TV, you pick up right where you left off in burnout mode the following day. Be sure to do things that recharge your mind, body, and spirit. Watching TV is more like hibernation than it is a recharge. It’s okay to escape into something mindless, just be sure it's filling you back up with positive energy to give you the boost to start over again the next day.

To recharge the body, spirit, and mind, you might go for a walk, try yoga, or go to the gym for a workout. Over time, you should find some clues as to what’s working and what's hindering your performance. Remember, your goal is to pass the CPA exam. If you are not working towards that goal, you are working against it. Even at times of rest and relaxation, you want to make sure these things are positively building you up in a restorative way and aiming you through the finish line.

16. NEVER LEAVE ANY ANSWER BLANK ON THE CPA EXAM…EVER!!!

Is there a penalty for incorrect answers on the CPA exam? Answer—No! Your passing or failing grade is only based on the point value of the questions you answer correctly.

Conclusion: Never leave any answer blank on the CPA exam, ever!! Remember this phrase when taking your exams: “when in doubt, work it out!”

It seems elementary, but when you are unsure, you want to eliminate as many bad answers as possible. You need to eliminate the obvious bad answer or two as quickly as possible and then make your best guess. Getting each MCQ to a 50/50 choice as soon as you can means you are getting 1 out of every 2 questions right, rather than 1 out of every 4. You also need to mark these questions, so you can go back later and check your answers when finished with the rest of the exam. 50% odds are better than 25% odds, but by keeping a good pace as you move forward with the rest of the exam will ensure you can come back and improve upon the 50/50’s.

If you see a question that you do not know, try not to panic. Getting your heart rate up and your blood pressure pumping from exam-induced anxiety is not advised. Look for any hints within the question that will help you eliminate the obvious stinkers. Two or three of these answers do not fit and your mission is to locate the obvious answers that cannot possibly be correct. Clearly, as on any MCQ you can expect to get 1 out of 4 questions correct by guessing, and that is way better than leaving something blank. Your goal is to increase your odds of winning with the information you have in your brain and what you can extract from the exam as you move on. The difference in extracting these few points by working smart and increasing your odds can be the difference between passing and failing.

17. PERPETUAL DRIVE COMES FROM WITHIN

If you failed a section of the CPA exam, it most likely means you skipped a step that was crucial to your studies, or you need to reexamine how to study for the CPA. The best time to recover from a failed exam is right after taking it. Unfortunately, many students make the mistake of waiting too long to perform a post exam review. If you failed an exam, go back and review your study log. What days did you give yourself the lowest rating? What subject matter were you studying when you gave yourself only one star or an F? Look for a pattern to see what days you did poorly in your studies and go back to review that material.

Go back and look at your quiz and practice exam scores. What material did you have the most difficulty with? Do you feel like you understood the concepts or did you just memorize the answers to questions? Take some time to drill into this material and talk about it in the community or in a study group. Write new flashcards and create your own pre-exam cram notes for your next exam. The things that you knew and correctly answered are still fresh in your brain. Fix the things that need to be fixed and get back in to pass your exam.

It’s okay to destress a little after failing an exam, but don’t wait too long to get back at it. Your success depends on perpetual drive and action until the mission is accomplished. Get back on the saddle and hit the CPA exam study guides again. You’re not starting from square one the second time around; you’re building on an already stable foundation.