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CPA Exam: What's the Best CPA Review Course? [Current for 2020]
4K views
May 3, 2024
Full post here: https://www.superfastcpa.com/best-cpa-review-course/ CPAexcel Free Trial: https://www.superfastcpa.com/cpaexcel Surgent Free Trial: https://www.superfastcpa.com/surgent-free-trial Roger Free Trial: https://www.superfastcpa.com/rogerreview I'm Nate with SuperfastCPA, and in this post, instead of giving you a ambiguous overview of the different review courses, we're going to cover why most of the features and benefits that you see from the different review courses don't really matter at all or why they won't actually help you pass your exams any faster. In contrast to that, we'll go over the 2 or 3 features that your chosen review course absolutely must have. And some of the… some of these features aren't included in some review courses, and a lot of times, this isn't even something you hear talked about in the discussion about how to choose a review course. So, then we… as we go through those 2 things and narrow things down, at the end, we will give you a simple 3-step process for identifying the absolute best review course for you personally. So, let's get started. We're going to cover why the review course rankings or those review sites that they don't really give you the whole story or they give you too much of the story and they just talk incessantly about all the little details from each review course, when really, it only comes down to 2 or 3 things. We're going to cover the things that actually matter, like I just said, and then there are things pushed as features that really aren't that important. And by explaining what matters and what doesn't, we'll also cover a decent amount of study strategy and how the elements of what does matter fits into effective studying. We'll also cover a few things that you've probably never heard about CPA Review courses in general, and that's where we'll start.
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0:00
why most of the features and benefits that you see from the different review
0:04
courses don't really matter at all, or why they won't actually help you pass
0:08
your exams any faster, and in contrast to that, the two or three features that your
0:13
chosen review course absolutely must have. I'm Nate with SuperfastCPA, and in this video, instead of giving you an ambiguous
0:31
overview of the different review courses, we're going to cover why most of the
0:36
features and benefits that you see from the different review courses don't
0:40
really matter at all, or why they won't actually help you pass your exams any
0:45
faster, and in contrast to that, the two or three features that your chosen
0:50
review course absolutely must have, and some of these features are not
0:55
included in some review courses, and a lot of times, this isn't even something
1:00
you hear talked about in the discussion about how to choose a review course. So
1:04
then, as we go through those two things and narrow things down, at the end, we
1:09
will give you a simple three-step process for identifying the absolute best review course for you personally. So let's get started. So as I said in the
1:20
intro, this won't be just a shallow overview of the different review courses
1:25
We're going to cover why the review course rankings or those review sites
1:30
they don't really give you the whole story, or they give you too much of the
1:34
story, and they just talk incessantly about all the little details from each
1:38
review course, when really it only comes down to two or three things. We're going
1:43
to cover the things that actually matter, like I just said, and then there are
1:47
things pushed as features that really aren't that important. And by explaining
1:52
what matters and what doesn't, we'll also cover a decent amount of study strategy
1:55
and how the elements of what does matter fits into effective studying. We'll also
2:02
cover a few things that you've probably never heard about CPA review courses in
2:06
general, and that's where we'll start. So first of all, here's the big secret
2:12
that's not really a secret. Any full review course has the information that
2:19
you need to pass. So any big name review course that you've heard of, whether
2:23
that's Becker, CPA Excel, Roger, Surgent, Gleim, any of those has the tools that
2:33
you would need to pass. So in other words, you could pass with any review course. No
2:41
review course is two to three thousand dollars better than any other review
2:45
course, and the reason I say that is I get a lot of emails about this where
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someone's like, you know, I'm struggling with this review course. The one I have, I
2:55
heard that this other review course is better for this, and they just mention
3:00
one very minor feature. Or sometimes they'll email me and they've already
3:05
done the deed. They ditched the previous review course that they had
3:10
already paid for, and they paid another two to three thousand for the other
3:15
review course that they thought was going to solve all their problems. Here's
3:19
the reality. Your study process is going to account for ninety percent of the
3:25
results that you get, not what review course you're using. No review course can
3:32
give you the motivation and discipline to sit down and study every day. There
3:37
might be some incremental benefit to some of the different features that each
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review course, you know, says makes them the best, or some of these minor features
3:46
that one has and one doesn't, but again, any major review course can get the job
3:52
done. You and your study habits, or in other words, your study process, is what
3:58
really matters. Now here's a few things that don't matter. Any kind of adaptive
4:04
learning technology. I personally don't think it's a good idea to get less
4:09
exposure or to skip certain topics entirely based on some type of
4:14
diagnostic quiz or assessment. So if you're not aware, the whole idea behind
4:20
this adaptive learning technology is, whether it's all in the beginning, meaning if you're studying for FAR, you take this pretty big assessment or kind
4:31
of diagnostic type quiz where it's anywhere from a dozen questions to a
4:37
couple hundred questions. And you take that, and that, you know, based off the
4:45
answers you get right, it thinks that those are your strength areas, and the
4:50
stuff that you get wrong, it thinks are your weak areas. So again, there are no
4:56
magic features that make learning the CPA material easy, right? It's all
5:03
there, no matter how they present it, you still have to get to where you
5:09
understand a topic, assimilate the topic, and retain that information in your
5:15
brain until test day. That's the basic process, there's no getting around that
5:19
A review courses published pass rate is another thing that you can safely ignore
5:25
Every single one of the main review courses claims to have pass rates higher
5:29
than 90%, yet we know that across the board, pass rates of the real people
5:36
taking the exams hovers around 50%. I'm not saying that the review courses are
5:40
lying about this, but they pull these statistics from a certain group of
5:45
people, it's not just across the board. It's only from candidates that have
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qualified through certain parameters through the test prep software, or their adaptive learning technology, or whatever it is. They pull those people, and then
6:01
it's based on the responses they get. So it's not just everyone who signs up for
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our course, 90% of those people pass. It's nothing like that. Anything besides
6:13
just the basic things that you do need, like video lectures, text, practice
6:19
questions, practice simulations, and flashcards, those are the basics that you really need, and again, that all the main review courses offer. Anything else is
6:28
just kind of fluff, and isn't really something that you're probably going to
6:32
use that much. Now getting down to the three, or the things that really matter
6:38
This is the big, big thing, and it has nothing to do with quality of the
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learning material. You want to make sure that the package you sign up for offers
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you unlimited access, because people sign up for a course, things start to, things
6:54
happen. I get emails all the time about this, like my Becker Access ran out
7:01
which review course should I go with now, and 18 months goes by a lot quicker than
7:08
you think. That's just kind of the bottom line, and I have specific recommendations
7:13
for this. I break it down by price in just a minute. The second thing you want
7:18
is the ability to generate a custom quiz of some kind, where you can pull questions
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from topics of your choosing. Now the reason you want this, and here is one of
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our absolute best strategies that will almost guarantee you pass your exam if
7:34
you will do this every day. One of the main things that we teach our clients or
7:39
our customers to do, is to end every main study session. So every day when you sit
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down with your review course, whether you do a two hour session or a four hour
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session, you end that session where you go in and you generate a custom quiz of
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30 multiple choice questions, and it's pulled from all the topics that you've
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studied so far, like up to that day. So if today you finished lesson five, you would
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pull 30 questions from lessons one through five. If tomorrow you finished
8:12
lesson six, hypothetically, then that day you would pull 30 questions from lessons
8:19
one through six. The next day you do lesson seven, you get the idea. That is so
8:26
incredibly helpful, and that's part of this idea of constant re-review of all
8:30
the topics. To end each study session, you simply generate a quiz, custom quiz, of
8:36
30 questions that's pulled from all the topics you've studied up to that day. And
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you do that every single day, and you will have sky-high retention of all the
8:45
things you've studied by the time you get to test day, instead of slowly forgetting everything you studied. So before we move on and get to the pricing
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let's do a quick viewer poll. So in the comments below, what review course are
8:58
you using, or what review course are you planning to use, and why did you pick
9:02
that course, or if you don't have a course yet, why are you interested in the
9:07
course that you're planning on using? Just put your response to that in the
9:11
comments below. So breaking down pricing for unlimited access. So that I went and
9:17
did a couple hours of research on this for this video. Here's kind of the
9:22
breakdown, and this is from basically the least expensive package that includes
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unlimited access, meaning no time limits, down to the most expensive. So first of
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all, we have Surgent. So as far as I can tell, their base, they include unlimited
9:40
access on all their packages, and their base package is the Essentials Pass. I
9:46
have this range because this is the regular price, $15.99, which is not
9:52
bad. But you can get some discounts through their site. For example, they have
9:58
an exit pop, which is one of those like pop-ups that, it's like an exit
10:04
intent pop-up that pops up if you go to leave the page, and that
10:10
will offer you 15% off of any package. So if you include that, that would take it
10:17
down to around $1,360. So $1,360. The base, just sticker price, is $15.99. And as far as
10:28
what's included in the Essentials, in my opinion, it's everything anyone would
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actually need. You can pay higher for like getting the physical textbooks, and
10:37
then having access to like CPA coaching, stuff like that. These extra services
10:42
that I never used, and I don't really, I don't necessarily recommend, or I don't
10:47
think everyone needs that. You might personally be interested in some of the
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other features for their higher plans, and you can, you know, you can read through
10:55
what those are on their site. The next one is the gold standard, Wiley CPA Excel
11:00
Wiley is the one that I've been recommending to anyone that asked me for
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years. I just really like Wiley's format. Now I should say, Surgent really pushes
11:12
the technology side of their service, and I mean, I never studied
11:20
with Surgent. They get a lot of good reviews. There's a lot of good things
11:24
said about them online, or you know, from kind of the whole CPA exam world, I
11:31
guess, that I live in. I just hear a lot of good things about Surgent, and they
11:36
are the lowest priced. Their essentials pass has the unlimited access. CPA Excel
11:42
that is what I used to pass my exams. Their silver course is their lowest or
11:49
least expensive course, and again, that includes everything that I think anyone
11:52
would need. So at different times, this is the base price, $2,100. At different times
11:58
throughout the year, there are discounts that can get it as low as around $1,500. I do
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have a slide in a minute about how to get the best discounts on these review
12:07
courses. So CPA Excel is the next one. They have no questions asked. It's just very
12:14
simple. You get to the end of your access duration, and it always says right
12:20
when you log in. And it's as simple as live chatting one of their agents and
12:24
saying I need more time on my account, and they add a year, and that's basically
12:28
all you have to do. The next one is Glyme. So it's in the same price range as CPA
12:36
Excel. Glyme is known for having the most practice simulations. I think they
12:43
have almost double what the next most has. I don't know how, you know, I don't
12:50
know how valuable that really is. Like if you've gone through two or three hundred
12:54
practice simulations, how valuable would five or six hundred be? I don't really
13:00
know. I don't think it would be that valuable. But anyways, Glyme is very thorough
13:06
as far as like kind of what their thing is. I would say Wiley's thing
13:12
Surgeon's thing is kind of the technology, and they really push that
13:17
they have actual adaptive software. So, you know, again, I'm not an expert on that
13:24
Wiley's thing is kind of the bite-sized lessons. They have their all their
13:30
content broken out into a much more granular approach. So the lessons are
13:35
much smaller than something like Becker. I really like the look and feel of
13:39
Wiley's site as well. That might be a bias because that's the one I actually used
13:44
but they did a major update that made it a lot better in the last year or two that
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the old way, which is, I mean, it's been like six years since I
13:56
passed the exams, it looked completely different. And I like the new
14:00
layout better than it used to be, but I really like the look and
14:05
feel of Wiley. Glyme's whole thing is getting you extremely prepared. I would
14:11
say that their practice questions are harder or more in-depth than a lot of
14:17
the real questions you would see on the exam. So if you're into that kind of a
14:23
thing, it can get you just really, really prepared. It could also be overwhelming
14:28
to somebody because it is so thorough, and they go so deep in their
14:32
explanations, and they have, I believe they have the most questions as well. They
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just have a lot of practice material for you to use. And they have unlimited
14:43
access on their premium review as well. The next one is Roger. Roger is more of a
14:49
premium course, or it's becoming more and more like that. Just kind of the name
14:54
name brand recognition, the technology that goes into it, and then the thing
15:00
that Roger's course is famous for is the lectures done by Roger himself
15:06
So if, he has by far the most engaging lectures because he is just very high
15:14
energy. You can look up some of his YouTube videos to see what I'm talking about, but that's the thing that everyone mentions. If you can't get through a
15:23
video lecture to save your life, meaning you constantly zone out, and you know
15:31
it's just very hard for you to pay attention because this stuff is so dry and boring, which it is, then the Roger course might be something you want to look into
15:41
because he is so amped and high energy in his lectures, it's almost hard to look
15:46
away type thing. And at the same time, he's leading you through one topic after
15:51
another. So he's known for, Roger's course is known for the lectures, but they're
15:57
also very high on the technology, and they really push their adaptive learning
16:02
technology as well, like Surgeant does. But as you can see, it's close to double
16:07
the price. Their Elite Unlimited course, they have a lower course that just has
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the 18 months access. I don't think you should really get that for any reason
16:18
when you can get the Elite Unlimited, and at different times throughout the year
16:22
With the discount, sometimes it will be a thousand dollars off. The regular price
16:27
is $3,000 or $2,999. So depending on the time of the year, you watch for those
16:33
discounts and you can get it for $2,000. That's their highest end course. Then of
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course you have Becker. It's another one that's tiered where you have to buy
16:44
their premium course to get the unlimited access, and it's just a straight $3,000
16:49
Becker doesn't usually really do discounts or anything like that, so it's
16:54
pretty much just the flat $3,000 for their premium course. Becker is another
16:59
one that, you know, it's kind of just the gold standard. They can charge a premium
17:04
for their material because of the name-brand recognition, the reputation they've established over the decades of CPA review. And at this point, I think
17:18
that any of these, as far as effectiveness, you could go head-to-head
17:21
with Becker. I just, I don't think that it's, you know, $1,500 better, especially
17:27
if you're paying your own money. If your firm is just buying Becker for you, then
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you know, it doesn't really make a difference to you. But if you're paying
17:35
your own money, I just, I don't think that Becker is $1,500 better than something
17:42
like CPA Excel or Gleim. Okay, so tips for getting the best discounts. You will
17:48
usually get the best discounts from the site itself. You've got to be a little
17:52
bit strategic. Not that strategic, but here's really the key. The first thing
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you want to do, you don't just buy it the first day you land on their site. You want to get on their email newsletter or sign up for their email list somehow
18:06
There will usually be a pop-up that just pops up that says, you know, get this
18:10
discount for joining our newsletter or get our free exam guide and you'll get
18:16
the best discount, something like that. Get on their email list and then you
18:19
just kind of receive their emails for a few weeks, see what offers come up. The
18:24
other thing you can do is sign up for their free trial. That will, of course, you'll enter your email address as part of signing up for a free trial and you
18:32
can be sure that they will be sending you emails, including any
18:36
discounts that come up. Take advantage of any exit pops. I already mentioned that. I
18:42
know that Surgent does this. Several of the sites do this where there will be
18:46
some sort of pop-up. An exit pop just means the pop-up happens if you go to, if
18:52
it thinks you're leaving the page or the tab. If you're gonna close the tab, then a
18:56
discount thing will pop up or some way of getting on their email list. So you
19:02
want to get on their email list. Oh, if you miss the exit pop-up or you
19:08
close it through just reflex, you're used to doing that, you can open the site
19:13
again in an incognito tab and it will open up again. If you have a few
19:20
months before you'll start studying, you just kind of want to watch the different sites and see how they do promotions. The best discounts will be around Memorial
19:31
Day, Labor Day, the whole back-to-school thing in September, Black Friday, Cyber
19:36
Monday, Christmas or New Year's. So you're never more than a month or two away from
19:40
one of these big sale things that will usually come up. All right, so a few
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unique features that might matter to you personally. I kind of mentioned this with
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Roger. That would be the big differentiator I think. If, here's the
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here's when I recommend Roger to somebody. If you, if you've been out of
20:03
school a while, basically if you feel like you're starting from scratch with
20:07
the CPA exam material, then Roger is a really good choice because the lectures
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are so engaging and so easy to pay attention to. Now another thing that a
20:19
lot of review courses offer with some of their higher packages are things like
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mentoring or ask a professor type services. I know with Wiley, with the
20:27
higher packages, they basically just have forums attached to each lesson where
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if something is really confusing or really for any reason, you can ask a
20:39
question in the forum related to that lesson and within 24 or 48 hours an actual
20:46
professor will give you an explanation for your question. I didn't use that much
20:51
at all and again I don't, I personally don't think that's worth a thousand
20:57
extra dollars to buy one of the highest packages, but maybe it is to you. And some
21:02
of their services in this, in this area kind of differ where some you can send
21:08
emails directly to an accounting coach or a CPA coach, some of them call it. I don't
21:14
really know what's all included in that and for me I just like to study. If I had
21:21
a question I found the question in the material or I found the answer in the
21:25
material and I just never, never would even thought to use something like this
21:31
But it might matter to you. The look and feel and the overall interface, I'm going to get
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into how to use that to choose the best review course to you in just a minute. So
21:42
here are the three steps to picking the best review course for you personally. So
21:47
based on the, your budget and what features really matter to you, choose
21:52
your top two to three options. Okay, so that's pretty simple. Then all you do, you sign up for a free trial which
22:00
all of them offer. Sign up for the free trial with each of your top two to three
22:04
choices. And then spend at least five hours actually taking quizzes, doing
22:11
lessons, trying out practice simulations, watching some video lectures, using all the tools in the, in the review course during your free trial. Spend at least
22:21
five hours with each one because this is a big decision. You're going to be
22:26
spending a lot of time logged into this interface, whichever one you pick. So
22:31
spend at least five hours with each one. And by the end of that, there will be one
22:37
that you just simply like the best based on the look and feel and the usability
22:42
just how, how the different features work. And that's the one you go with. That's
22:48
all you have to do. And you'll be happy with your choice. You will have, you know
22:53
the other two choices to compare it to. So you'll never feel like, well, I wonder
22:57
what this review course is like, or maybe I should have gone with this one. And
23:01
actually using the review course inside for five hours each, you will have a very
23:08
good idea of which one you personally like the best. And that, that is the one
23:13
you should go with. So hopefully you found this video helpful. Again, I'm Nate
23:18
with SuperfastCPA. We focus on helping busy candidates pass their CPA exams via
23:25
strategy and study tools. We've helped thousands of candidates pass their exams
23:30
at this point. And the best place to start with some of our strategies is to
23:35
read our Busy Candidates Guide to Passing the CPA Exams Fast. You can get
23:41
it at superfastcpa.com slash free, or you can just text FastCPA, one word, to
23:49
44222. And also feel free to subscribe to our channel, hit the little
23:55
notification button so that you're notified when we publish new videos. I
24:00
hope you found this video helpful. And thank you for watching. And for the info
24:05
on the giveaway. So for this giveaway, we're giving away full access to the
24:10
Wiley CPA Test Bank to three winners. So that is a full account to the Wiley
24:17
CPA Test Bank. That's a $600 value each. The Wiley Test Bank has over 6,000
24:25
multiple choice questions and over 200 simulations. So you just add that to your
24:30
CPA study process and it just gives you another huge resource to tap into as you
24:38
work on your CPA exams. And so to enter that, the first step is to like this video, subscribe to our
24:47
channel, the SuperfastCPA YouTube channel, and then leave a comment on this
24:51
video from that previous question during the video. Comment on what review course
24:57
you're using or what review course you're planning to use and why. And then
25:02
step two, go to the link in the description or click the card that will
25:08
pop up, the YouTube card, and you enter the giveaway. The actual spot to enter
25:14
the giveaway will be at the bottom of that page. And if you're watching this
25:17
after this giveaway has ended, you can still go to that link in the description
25:22
and you will find a link to our current giveaway at the bottom of that page as
25:27
well. Alright, so thanks for watching and make sure to enter the giveaway
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