Battling the CPA Exams?

So, why are the CPA exams so difficult

I'll wait just a minute for you to turn on your sound if you haven't yet. The CPA exams have a fail rate of 50-55% and they are widely considered to be the most

difficult professional exam that there is, and that includes the bar exams for attorneys

and the board exams for doctors. There are three specific reasons why passing the CPA exams is so difficult, why so many

people fail multiple times, and why many candidates eventually just give up and never

actually become a CPA. Who am I? My name is Nate. I'm a newly minted CPA, and I run the website superfastcpa.com, which is geared towards

helping busy candidates pass as fast as possible. Now, the short version of my own CPA story is that I spent three months studying the

normal way, only to fail far on my first try. Then I switched to some of my own ideas for studying in a completely different way, and

in the next three months I passed all four exams. This is my NASBA score sheet as proof

You'll see that those dates add up to just over three months. Now, let's get back to the three reasons why the CPA exams are so difficult

The first one is retention. Learning all the concepts and rules alone is staggering

There are literally hundreds of different topics that the exams cover, and many of them

are difficult and calculation heavy. But not only that, you have to learn them over several weeks, and then remember everything

that you've studied well enough to actually pass on exam day. This was one of my biggest stumbling blocks when I started studying, and I figured out

a way to overcome this once I tried out my own methods, and I'll tell you more about

that in a minute. The second challenge are your actual study methods

What do you actually do when you sit down to study every day? Is it effective

Do you have a specific plan you follow, and are you making progress

When I talk to other CPA candidates about how they study, they all tell me the same thing

You know, I start out watching the video lecture, I kind of zone out, then I try to read the

chapter or skim the chapter, then I try out a few questions, and I can't really get any

I don't know what it's talking about, so I go back to the video lecture

You know, and then it's an hour through your study session, and you kind of give up for

the day, and then the next day, the very same thing happens again

So I hear that over and over and over, and I know that's how it is because that's exactly

how my first three months were. So this was another huge struggle for me

Every day I would jump around to different resources in my review course, and as time

went on, I just felt more and more overwhelmed. When I sat for FAR that first time and saw the exam in person, a few things jumped out

at me, and I knew exactly how to study from that point on

And after trying out my own ideas for studying, I literally studied less each day, I had a

clear plan for every single study session, and I knew that I was making progress each day

And so the study process itself was a lot easier to deal with mentally because of that

The third challenge is just literally not having enough time in the day

So most CPA candidates work full-time, usually in the very demanding field of public accounting

and there's people in your life that want to see you after work like family and friends

And so fitting in three to four hours a day of CPA study is literally not possible for

most people. And on the other hand, that's about how much you need to study to pass the exams within

the time frame. So how does that work? You literally don't have that much time, but that is how much time it takes to study

I kind of come up with a solution for that. But back to my story for a minute to illustrate this

The three months where I studied for FAR and failed that first time, I had all day every day

It was the summer before I started my job in public accounting. And I started my job a week before I sat for FAR that first time

So then I had started my job, and the three months afterwards when I ended up passing

all four sections, I was working full-time. So I was able to study and pass all four sections with much less daily study time than the first

time around. So obviously I had made dramatic improvements in the effectiveness and the efficiency of

my study methods. Now I can't give you all my best advice on how I did all that in this short video

But what I have done is I put together a free online training class where I will take longer

and walk you through my best tips about these changes I made that made such a big difference

in helping me pass all four sections in just a few months while working full-time

So this training class is completely free to attend, and I guarantee you you'll find

it well worth your time because it will save you so much time in passing your exams

So to register, all you need to do is click the link or the button below this video or

go to superfastcpa.com slash training. Also, if you're on the training live, I will be giving you a free copy of my CPA flashcards

So these are a digital copy. You can use them on your desktop or on your smartphone

There's over 750 flashcards, and they cover all four sections. The big advantage to these is that they are completely customizable, so you can add other

flashcards to the decks or customize the wording on any of the cards to something that's

easier for you to remember personally. So again, to register, just click the link or the button on the video that will take

you to the registration page, or just go to superfastcpa.com slash training in your browser

and I will see you there