Thursday, August 11, 2011

I’m Running Out of Time!

It hit me earlier this week that I am running out of time to study. I looked at my calendar and saw that August 20th is next Saturday! I can’t believe the month of August is almost halfway over!

Sometimes while taking the CPA Exam, you get a similar feeling that you are almost out of time but you are only in the middle of the Exam. They always say (and I have learned through experience) that people run out of time the fastest on FAR and REG. However, this can happen on any part when you don’t properly budget your time.
As you know, I am using the Roger CPA Exam Review Cram Course and Roger explains how to budget your time in this video.
You can do this before you sit for the Exam. I like to memorize the breakdown and jot it down on the scrap paper as soon as I start the Exam. This gives me a guideline I can use to pace myself to avoid running out of time.

For example, with FAR, you are given 4 hours (240 minutes). You have 3 sets of 30 multiple choice questions and 7 part task-based simulation questions. For each set of multiple choice questions, you should budget 45 minutes (or 135 minutes total). This leaves you with 105 minutes to complete the task-based simulation questions or 15 minutes for each task-based simulation question.
The breakdown is as follows with the Exam clock:
                4:00 – start
                3:15 – finish mc 1
                2:30 – finish mc 2
                1:45 – finish mc 3
                0:00 – finish TBS

Do you budget your time on the Exam to stay in control of your progress or do you just answer questions and hope you don’t run out of time?

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