Daniel Interview Podcast

Welcome to Episode 2 of the CPA Exam Experience Podcast from SuperfastCPA

I am Nate, and in this episode, I have a call that I recorded with a SuperfastCPA customer

a few months ago and I'm now just getting around to editing it for the podcast

So what this interview was, I got an email from a customer, his name is Daniel

He had been out of school a long time. You know, a lot of our customers are in that situation, or a lot of people taking the exams

are in that situation. They had come back to the CPA exam after being out of school for a long time

And he works as a senior accountant and he was kind of struggling with the study process

got a 74 on BEC twice. And so on this call, we cover a lot of stuff on this call, but primarily I'm just trying

to help him smooth out some of the bumps he's experiencing with the study process

And we go deep into the daily study process, what it should look like, and then towards

the end, we go through some mindset stuff, how to get over the self-doubt of thinking

you're not fully prepared, the self-doubt and kind of the panic during the actual exam itself

And then also how to... We really just cover a lot. So I think you'll find the content of this interview pretty helpful

At the same time, we kind of jump in and out of the study process just based on the specific

parts he's struggling with. So again, if you're kind of a first time listener or you've never been on one of our study training

sessions, that is the best place for you to start. We do these free one hour webinars where we walk through what your study process should

look like, and we frame it as the perfect two hour study session

So you learn how to study effectively, even if all you have is just two hours a day with

your main review course. You can sign up for one of those free sessions at superfastcpa.com slash training, or you

can just text PASSNOW, one word, to 44222. Or go to our main site and you can easily find a link to register for one of those trainings

All right, so that's enough of the intro. Let's get into this interview. Right

So what I was thinking of, I wrote some things down that will give you an idea of where I

am and maybe I can go through them before you give me some advice or things to do. Yeah

So basically, yes. Yep. Yeah. Let's just start with like, what's your kind of CPA journey been like

And yeah, just mix that stuff in. Like what have you struggled with or whatever you wrote down

Let's just go from there. Right. So like I said on my email, I'm 47, I've been working in accounting since I left college

and I wasn't a strong accounting student, but I've always had the desire to become a

CPA and have been struggling with it since maybe 10 years ago

I decided to take BEC because it was, you know, I said, let me get my feet wet and maybe

try the one that people say that is the easiest one. But I've been struggling with it mainly, I think, because I was not a very good test

taker in college or, you know, I was not using the right program or the right method to study

So that being said, now I'm getting, I took a test exactly one month ago and by now I'm

over the shock of failing it once more. When before, before I used to, it used to really hit me really hard and then I would

just stay away from it for more than six months, go back to my regular routine, doing my sports

and basically procrastinating. This time I'm basically over it, I want to get back into it

So while studying, I was following your method and this is the first time that I've done

the test within eight to nine weeks. Before I used to take a lot longer, mainly because I say, well, I need to learn this

stuff since I've been out of college for so long. But like you say on your recordings, it's, I'm shooting myself in the foot because I'm

taking too long and it's a marathon, you know, it's a sprint, not a marathon

So while following your method of study, I felt like I was making progress while resisting

the urge to move the testing date forward. I have to be honest and say I did not do a lot of the simulations or full practice tests

So now, studying now after I failed it a month ago, I feel somewhat lost because I don't

have that structure of studying in the morning and checking off, you know, the boxes in Wiley

and just moving on. So now I feel somewhat lost because I just want to put emphasis on this section that

I did not do good on or that I was weaker on

So while studying, for example, on hard multiple choice questions, I tend to complicate my

life because maybe I don't understand the stem of the question or I can't come up with

a strategy to solve the multiple choice question or the wording confuses me and I tend to concentrate

on the leaves instead of looking at the trees and forming a strategy to solve complicated

questions or simulations. So that being said, while studying and doing well, my confidence level goes up

But when I'm spending too much time on the multiple choice questions or get stuck in

a simulation, doubts start scraping in and the preparation experience is not so pleasant

anymore, mainly because I know that I won't have that much time on the test to do a similar

question or problem. Another thing is when I'm at the Prometrics Test Center, I tend to get too stressed at

the testing center, specifically if I don't know the topic or I didn't study well on a

topic. I know that I'm deficient in that portion. So that gives me stress, especially one of

the first questions that I see is specifically on that topic. That really hits me hard and my confidence level goes down. I think I'm handling the

time management well, but in country, the multiple choice simulation that stumps me

will play with my confidence and I think I'm losing lots of points because of that

Like I said, the last two times that I've taken BEC, I had a 74 each time

My mental state at the moment, I doubt myself a lot. I can't really, you know what I'm saying

can I really do this? If I pass BEC, which has given me so much trouble, how would I

pass FAR? That's where I am right now. Well, okay, so a couple of things of good news. First, if you've gotten a 74, honestly

like on a different day with maybe a few different questions, that would be a passing score

So you're extremely close. I'll give you some strategies that I'm pretty confident can get

you over that hump. And then the other thing is, the last thing you said about BEC, if

you can't pass BEC, how much would you struggle with FAR? That's not always true. Because

you work, did you say you work as a controller? No, I'm a senior accountant

Okay, but you work in financial accounting? Yes, I do. So like that, a lot of FAR will be right up your alley, stuff that you have just a lot

of experience in. And BEC does, can be very confusing, especially, I think you mentioned

the corporate governance. There's just a lot of, it's a lot of conceptual stuff. And it's

kind of similar to audit, where there's so much conceptual material, and so much of it

is so similar, that it can kind of be confusing. Or I mean, it is really confusing. And so

that is kind of a common experience with BEC. And then the other thing you mentioned, I

would recommend a shorter study window. And again, where you got a 74, I would, when you

decide to, you know, jump right back into this, I would set a, I would set a study window

of like, honestly, like four to five weeks. And just prepare mentally that you're just

going to hit it hard every single day. And it is more view it more of a sprint, like

this is shorter, but I'm going to go harder each day. And that, I just think that works

much better. Spreading it out further, it just really gives you more time to kind of

forget big pockets of stuff you've studied. So... In that four to five week window, I will hit harder the sessions that I didn't do well on

Not really, no. Here, I'll give you the full, I'll give you the full like strategy. The

only other thing I was going to ask is, when you study, are you making your own flashcards

or your own... Yes, I am. Okay. And do you do those in a..

I'm trying to follow your method as best as I can. And everything that you say on your

recordings and everything that I've read, that's the way I study, the same way that

you suggest. Okay. All right. So yeah, let's just start from the top then. So what I would recommend

exactly would be, so you set a test date that's like, gives you four or five weeks to study

And then each day, ideally you'll study in the morning, like you kind of mentioned you've

done in the past. And like a two hour session in the morning is kind of all you really need

to aim for. And in those sessions, I wouldn't go back lesson by lesson. I would work in

this format. You do one set of 30 multiple choice questions and kind of generate from

all topics. So you're just generating like basically a practice testlet. So 30 questions

pulled from all topics. And you work through that in test mode. So you're not seeing the

answers after each question just at the end. And then you kind of carefully go through

the responses and keep making your own flashcards. Do you use a digital like

What's the one I. Brainscape or no. Quizlet. Yes. Yeah. That one

Yeah. Okay. So that's good. So you keep making your flashcards. And the flashcards is a thing

where you want it to be an 80-20 type thing where you don't want to spend, like you don't

want to basically rewrite the textbook in the form of flashcards. You don't want to

take notes on every single thing. It's just stuff that you personally kind of struggle

to remember or struggle to understand. And you want to, as you're sitting there reading

explanations, explain it back to yourself like out loud. Explain it back to yourself

while you're sitting there out loud until you kind of get the idea. And then once you

kind of have it for that, just right then and there, write out a flashcard in your own

words. And that's what will work the best later on. So you go through that process

30 questions and then do another set of 30 questions and then follow that with a set

of five to seven practice simulations. And that, you want to get to where you can do

those three things. 30 questions, review. 30 questions, review. Five to seven practice

simulations and review. You want to be able to do that in that two-hour window. And you

should be able to kind of do that because by test day, you want to be able to go through

multiple choice questions, basically one per minute. That's just what you want to

shoot for to leave yourself as much time as possible for the simulations. And it just

prevents kind of the overthinking. And just jumping back to one thing you said, you just

really don't want to sit during the testing center and try to evaluate like where you're

at score-wise or like, oh, I didn't know this. That's like my fourth one I didn't know

So what's that going to make my score? At that point, everything's just, you know, you

can't do anything about that. You're in the testing center just to try to not stress out

about that kind of a thing. You just don't try to evaluate like where you're at or really

just how you're doing. And don't sit there and overthink certain questions. You just

you know if you know something or you don't. And if you don't, you basically make your

best guess or, you know, and move on. That's really all you can do once you're in the

testing center. So. Okay. One question. Yeah, go ahead. I did study with Wiley. I really liked it because of the stats that it gives back. It

gives answer on all options, you know, not just the one that you got right or wrong

I do have another method like Surgent. And since I didn't do well, let's say on a certain

topic, would it be a good idea to go to that program and do some of the multiple choice

questions there or just stick to Wiley 100 percent? If you have access to the other one, yeah, I mean, just to get maybe a different variation

of some of the questions like, yeah, you know, work that in as well. And then for your

weaker topics. So here's where. So that's basically your weekday routine. You know

you work full time and everything. So on weekdays, you just are kind of aiming for that

one hour session in the morning. Thirty questions, 30 questions, five to seven practice

simulations. And doing that like that, that alone, just that kind of cumulative review

I'm not a big fan of spending huge amounts of time on just like your quote unquote

weaker areas because you can and you will forget stuff from the other areas. I think

what works best is coverage of all the topics, just hitting all the topics just over and

over and over and over. And that's what those sets of 30 questions will do for you

Then on the weekends when you have more time. So on Saturdays and Sundays, aim for a longer

study session, like four to six hours. And that is where. So start that study session

with the same thing, 30, 30 and then some practice sims. And that should take roughly

90 minutes to two hours. And then the rest of that study session, you can go back. And

if there's still just some things like, again, maybe the corporate governance, then spend

some time going deeper in some of your absolute weakest areas or things where because I'm

looking at the blueprints right now and corporate governance essentially just is basically about

COSO and the internal control framework. And just to kind of go, it's kind of this set

of broad ideas that a lot of questions could come out of. There's a lot of ways they can

ask questions on this kind of stuff. So those are the kind of topics where a video lecture

can be pretty helpful, where you're getting this kind of base understanding of these broad

kind of deep ideas that a lot of questions can come out of. And it is a pretty like it's

17 to 27 percent of the BEC exam. So it's a pretty big portion. So on Saturdays and

Sundays, that's when you spend some time going deeper into the your problem topics

But yes, I the for a restudy, the first thing you want to do or the main thing you want

to do is those sets of 30 questions, 30, 30, and then a set of practice sims. And that

just really kind of helps you practice kind of the same format you'd see on test day

you know, testlets and then some practice sims. And you're making your own flashcards

as you do that. And then you you you still want to do the mini sessions throughout the

rest of your day. Like as many as many times as you've listened to the audios or whatever

keep listening to those when you drive to work, when you drive home, do some mini quizzes

throughout your day. And then the big thing, though, is our is our review notes. You just

read the review notes whenever you have a chance to pull out your phone for like three

to five minutes and you just read those from start to finish just over and over and over

as many times as you get through. Right. Should I spend some time doing a full practice test

See, I'm not I just I'm not like to me, that's just like an if you want to type thing. I

just I don't think that like gives anyone a huge benefit or not. And these these sets

of 30 questions that you're doing daily, that's essentially a testlet and you're doing them

in test mode. Again, you don't see the answers till after you've done all you've done all

30 questions. And that's basically and you do the practice Sims the same way. So it's

just like a testlet on test day of Sims. I just to then sit there for, you know, torture

yourself and do a four hour full practice practice exam. Unless you were having like

major issues with the time management. I just I don't think that's that important. As far

as the final review goes, this this will help you a lot as well. If at all possible, set

your test on a Monday and then then you have Saturday and Sunday before. I mean, if you're

able to take two days off work, you know, that the two days before your test date, then

that can work as well. But if not, you set your test on a Monday and then you do spend

all day Saturday and Sunday just doing a massive cram session. And all you're going to do

is just even more of the same format. 30 questions. 30 questions are meaning multiple choice

30 multiple choice. 30 multiple choice. One set of practice simulations. And you just

go through that format. You keep making your flashcards and then. So let's say that Saturday

and Sunday night, you've studied, I don't know, from eight in the morning till like five

at night. I'm not saying go like clear until 10 p.m. I mean, take somewhat of a break

Also, as far as work for every hour, work in like these 50 minute chunks where you're

absolutely uninterrupted. And then if you need to just take 10 minutes where you like

physically get away from your computer or look away from the screen or whatever. But then once

your 50 minutes starts again, you know, you your phone is on silent. It's turned on face

down so you can't see alerts or anything or set it across the room just so you are 100

percent 50 minutes out of every hour is completely uninterrupted. You know, high quality

study time. Anyways, so. So those two days and then the in the evenings of those two

cram days before your exam, that is where you will get your flashcards you've been making

this whole time and you'll start going through those on your phone just using the Quizlet

app or whatever. And you just go through those over and over and over again and then try

to fit in reading through our review notes like from start to finish one time. That probably

only takes like an hour, really. Like they're really not that long. And then test day morning

Get up early. Let's say your test was at 10 a.m. I just really liked getting up early

and just keep the cramming going, because like I said, it's a sprint and there is so

much information. I think it's very beneficial to have as much of that stuff just floating

around in your short term memory as possible. So like the weeks before, that's all time

spent trying to actually learn the material, have it kind of burned into your brain as

much as possible. But it's not all going to be committed to long term memory. And then

just this week before your exam and especially those two days in the morning of, as much

cramming as you can do, it's just going to help once you actually get to the testing

center. So get up, try to do another set of that 30 multiple choice, 30 multiple choice

set of practice simulations. And then try to get to the testing center like an hour

early. And I would just sit in my car and I would go through my flashcards one last

time. And like every time I did that, I would go in. Because essentially, if you're doing

the flashcards things right, where you're only kind of writing down things that you

keep forgetting or missing or you struggle to remember or understand, those flashcards

are going to contain the answers to your weakest areas. Right. So going through the

flashcards that one last time, like right before you walk in the testing center, I would

go in and I would, like you said, I would I would see something like the first few

questions just seemed like straight off what I had just reviewed in my flashcards. And

I knew it because I had just done the flashcards. Right. So yeah, so those things

that's like the perfect, perfect formula for a restudy. And you having a 74, if you

just if you executed that every day, I mean, I would bet a lot of money that you can beat

a 74 by just doing that exact thing for four or five weeks. From your mouth to God's ears

I will do it. I will do it. Believe me. Yeah. So I really I really appreciate you taking the time to bring these points back

to me. I will put them into practice and we'll set a date as soon as I can

All right, man. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was kind of writing some notes while you were

talking and I think I covered everything. Do you have any other questions about anything

No, I think we've covered everything. I got to figure out by myself how to get rid of

the fear and just be confident when I go in that test center and not second guess or doubt

myself. Just go in with whatever I have and be confident that I've done the work

Okay. So you saying that reminds me of one. There's a couple like, I don't know, kind

of concepts or conceptual ideas that it's kind of hard for me to explain to people through

typing something out or on some of my emails. And one of them is basically what you just

said, where as you go through all this practice and you're spending just 90 percent of your

time on practice problems, it can kind of feel like, like, I'm not sure if I'm even

though you're towards the end, you'll be getting most of the questions right. And if you've

been doing this every single day, you'll probably have seen a lot of these questions, you know

multiple times by then. And so, you know, the answers to the questions. But then when

you're away from your material, like walking around during the day, you kind of have these

thoughts of like, I'm not sure I really like deeply understand all this stuff or all these

topics. Or like if I had to get up and give a lecture on Koso, I wouldn't even know where

to start. And so there's that kind of self-doubt or that idea. And it's that goes back to what

I'm always talking about, where you're not trying to become an accounting professor through

this process. You just need to be able to answer questions on test day. And so just

kind of trust when you sit down and you start seeing questions and you can answer them all

That's all you really need to know how to do. And yeah, all that second guessing. I

know exactly what you're talking about, because I would think like I can answer the questions

when I'm sitting there studying, but I really feel like I don't have like this deep grasp

of, you know, from back to forwards, like the whole topic or all the lessons. Or I couldn't

like explain it to someone piece by piece, but I can answer the questions when I get

a question. And, you know, so you don't worry about that whole other side of like, I couldn't

write a textbook about Koso. You don't need to be able to, you know, you just need to

you just need to be able to answer the questions as they come. And so doing these sets of 30

30 and then practice Sims every day for four or five weeks, you will get very, very good

at answering questions, which, again, that's all you got to do on test day. So, yeah, you

don't worry about the other side of or just let the self-doubt kind of cripple you or

affect you in any way. Okay, so one last thing, and then I think I should call it a day. I don't want to take

much of your time. When I'm studying and I'm faced with a complex multiple choice question

and is it a good idea to just spend the time trying to figure it out on my own, thinking

that by working through it and pushing myself through it, I will gain the knowledge that

I need to be able to do it quicker later on? Or should I just go ahead and look at the

answer? And you see, I feel like if I look at the answer, I'm never really learning anything

But if I push myself through it, although I'm taking a long time, there will be some

benefit to that. Am I right or wrong? Yeah, so it's some of both. So let's say that it's like a calculation heavy question

And I guess there's two different answers to two different scenarios. If it's your first

time through and someone's doing like what I tell people, the question first approach

if you just don't even know where to start, then you don't really sit there and try to

struggle through it because you don't know where to even begin. But what you do want

to do is look at the answer, and then you sit there and you recalculate it yourself

multiple times until you understand it. So that's what you would do. There's not a whole

lot of benefit to sitting there and struggling for 10 minutes if you just literally don't

know where to start. You know, there's no point in doing that. So look at the answer

right away. Then what I would say is, wow, this is taking me so long now, I might not even have a test

answer. So that's where it really helps. Yeah, yeah. If it's some big hairy looking problem and you don't really know even how

to really dissect it or figure it out, just look at the answer. But then with the answer

in front of you, I mean, then cover up the answer and you try to get back to the same

answer, you know. And if you can't do it the first time, then look again and be like, okay

this is where the calculation, that's the step I missed. Then you cover up the answer

and force yourself to work through it from start to finish until you can get that same answer

Got it. Well, thank you very much, Nate. I really appreciate it

All right, Daniel. Yeah, it was nice talking with you. Let me know how everything goes

I will. I will schedule this as soon as possible and I'll shoot you an email when I get an

85 on it. All right, man. Okay. Thanks. I appreciate it