The 3 Big Challenges of the CPA Exams

So as a CPA exam content provider, we interact with CPA candidates on a daily basis, a lot

of CPA candidates. The interesting thing is that everything that we hear, it really comes down to three main challenges

Almost all CPA candidates struggle with one of these three big challenges at least, but

I would say most CPA candidates face some aspect of all three of these challenges

So the three challenges that make the CPA exam so difficult to pass, first it starts

with overwhelm. And when we say overwhelm, usually when someone gets their login to their review course, they

log in and they work through the first few lessons, they start to realize how vast the

material is, how large the amount of topics are, how much material there really is to

try and cover and learn. For example, if you look at the FAR blueprints, that's just for one section, there are over

200 topics listed on the FAR blueprints. So the average candidate, they start working through that material and they're overwhelmed

with the amount of material, but then they're also overwhelmed with the actual study process

When they do have time to study, what do they do to actually navigate that material and

try to learn it effectively and efficiently enough to stick to their study timeline

So that's the first big challenge, is just general overwhelm. The second challenge is pretty simple, it's time itself

Just in a lot of cases, literally not having enough time in the day

So the average CPA candidate, again, the average candidate, they're working full-time while

they're trying to pass these exams. Basically, almost no one anymore is going to live in-person classes

Almost everyone, again, they're working full-time, so they're doing the self-study thing

They have access to a digital course and they try to fit in a three or a four or a five-hour

study session sometime during the day. Most candidates try to do that after work, and I have a whole rant on that that I won't

get into here. But the basics are after a 10-hour workday, your brain is basically mush, and then you're

going to try and do the hardest thing that your brain has had to do all day, which is

a four-hour CPA study session. It doesn't work well. So not only that withstanding, it's the time itself

People are working full-time. It's very hard behaviorally to have your set routine and then assume that you're just going

to add in some four to five-hour a day project, meaning your daily study sessions

So it doesn't happen for most people every single day, which is really what it takes

You can't be missing days of studying. So that's a problem. The third thing is, so let's assume that you get your study process figured out and that

you manage to sit down every single day for your study sessions all the way through an

eight-week study plan. The third problem you'll run into is retention. You get to your final review and you realize that you've forgotten at best half of all

these things you've studied before. So that's a big issue. These two things don't even matter, and they're hard enough alone, but they don't even matter

if you can't retain the material you've studied to the point where you can go in and at least

score a 75 on test day. So what we teach our clients is a daily study process that deals with each of these issues

So the solutions, and this sounds simple or obvious, is a surgical study process

And that might sound stupid. If you're listening to this, you would think, well, obviously you have to have a study process

that works. The funny thing about that is no review courses come with best practice training on how to

actually get through 200 plus topics in six to eight weeks. Review courses don't come with really instructions on how to actually do this

And the other thing people don't consider is you've gone from this learning format

referring to college or your master's degree, where a professor is kind of taking care of

the learning process, how you receive the information piece by piece. You're going into this completely on your own

And these four sections, any one of these four sections is more than likely more difficult

than any college class that you had. So it's a very difficult process

So we teach a very specific study process where you go through the material in a structured

but the exact same way, whether it's a difficult lesson or a simple lesson

So you learn how to move through the study or move through the lessons surgically

Surgical study process. When you know exactly what you're going to do when you do have time to study every day

and it's exactly the same way, this alone takes care of a lot of problems

The second thing dealing with time itself, what we teach our clients is a short main

session which is two hours. A two-hour session that you do in the mornings plus something we call mini sessions

I don't have time to get into all that, but this is what we teach our clients

A short main session that's two hours and the idea is that you do it in the morning

before you leave the house. So it's done, nothing can come up, and you do not miss this whatsoever for any reason

Two hours every single day. You do try to do four hours on Saturday or Sunday

When you have this, when you have a study process that works and then you're doing a

two-hour main session every day plus these mini sessions, this again, this takes care

of a lot of problems because you don't miss your daily two-hour session

The reason we teach this is two hours every single day is much more effective over the

course of your study timeline than trying to do four or five hours and you end up missing

two or three or four days a week. If you're trying to study four or five hours a day and you miss one day, you're looking

at eight to ten hours the next day, but you have to go to work

That just obviously doesn't work and that's why people's study timeline get destroyed

very quickly if they miss one day of studying because it usually turns into a week or two

of just kind of taking a break because you're so stressed out

You push your test dates back and all hell breaks loose. For retention, you have daily re-review built into your main session or this two-hour session

You dedicate a half hour to re-review. That means you're constantly going over everything you've studied previously

This is another thing that no review courses, they don't have this built into how you're

supposed to use the materials. You can do this with any review course

You don't need any specific review course to apply our strategies. It can work with any review course

Getting into this, what we have is a free training where we walk through this process

in detail and it's completely free. These trainings take about an hour

It's in a webinar format. You attend these sessions. Each session is limited, but you can attend one of these sessions and we'll walk you through

what we mean by a surgical study process in detail, how to move through every lesson

Again, whether it's a difficult lesson or an easy lesson. Then we show you how this fits into two hours a day and how it's more effective than probably

what you're doing right now, trying to spend four or five hours a day studying and how

you build in this daily re-review or also what we mean by mini sessions and what that

entails and then the daily re-review that you build into this two-hour session

We go through this in detail. You'll find it very, very helpful

At this point, thousands of CPA candidates have gone through the same training

To register for one of these sessions, you can just go to superfastcpa.com slash training

or you can click the button or the link that's on or below this video, wherever you're seeing

this or you can text pass now, one word. Let me write this

Pass now and you text that to 44222 and you'll be texted back a link to just sign up for

one of these trainings. I promise you this won't be a waste of your time

Again, we've taught this to thousands of CPA candidates. You may have seen one of our videos before

Maybe you've never attended this training. I don't know. But I would recommend if you're in the study process or you're going to be in the study

process at some point in the next year that you attend this training. This is stuff that you won't hear anywhere else

This is what I personally used. I went from the normal way of studying to these ideas in a crude form

We've refined this over the last few years in a crude form of this, but this allowed

me to go from failing one section, studying five to six hours a day

Then I started my full-time job after my master's. I had two hours a day to study, so I kind of took an 80-20 approach, just what made

sense to me. I ended up passing all four sections back to back to back to back in a span of three

months total. I'm not a super smart brainiac. I was middle of the pack at best in my master's degree

This stuff has worked for a lot of our clients at this point. Again, attending this training is completely free

Register for a session at superfastcpa.com training or click the button or whatever on

this video or below the video. You'll go to the registration page or just text PASSNOW to 44222

We'll see you on the training