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Best CPA Review Course for 2022?
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May 3, 2024
In this episode, we are about to learn which CPA Review Course for 2022 is best to use or does it really matter? Find out ways to nail your CPA exams with the review courses you already had in your hand. IMPORTANT LINKS: Master your study process by attending one of our free study training workshops: https://www.superfastcpa.com/study-secrets/ Enter our free monthly podcast giveaway: https://www.superfastcpa.com/enter 00:00 Best Overall Review Course for 2022 01:24 3 Things Much More Important than Your Review Course 01:33 1. Daily Routine 03:35 2. Study Methods 07:44 3. Re-review 09:57 Recap
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0:00
So what is the best overall CPA review course? Is there one CPA review course that is significantly
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more effective than all the others to help you pass your CPA exams? I'm Nate with Superfast
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CPA and I get asked this question all the time in two forms. First, obviously new CPA
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candidates that are wondering what review course they should pick. They're really confused
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They're not sure what the different features are and a lot of people just kind of assume
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that there is one best review course. The second form of this question is people that
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are really struggling with the study process and they'll email me and say something like
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I have X review course and it is just not working for me. I think I'm going to switch
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to Y review course and I think that will solve all my problems. What do you think
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So I'm going to surprise you here and say there is not one review course that is significantly
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better than all the other review courses. Assuming you have sufficient access, like
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you have a main review course, any of the ones that you've heard of, Becker, Gleim
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Wiley, Roger, Surgeant, any of the main review courses have the information that you need
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to pass. So in this video, what we're actually going to cover is the three main things that
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are much, much more important than what review course you're using. So the first thing is
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of course, your daily routine. All right? Your $3,000 review course, it doesn't do you
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any good if you are not using it consistently and effectively, which we'll get to, if you're
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not using it consistently on a daily basis. Now, if you struggle with consistency, what
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is likely going on is you are setting too big of a goal for yourself. Now, most people
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you're probably working full-time. If you're trying to study four to five hours every day
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and you're working full-time, that is incredibly hard to do. And not only is it hard to do
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it's not really a matter of willpower. Just behaviorally and the way that, I mean, everyone's
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lives are busy, right? It's just almost impossible to find and effectively study for four to
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five hours every single day. So the first and main thing that you can do to make your
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study routine, to make it more likely that you will be consistent is, this is almost
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counterintuitive, it's to make your main study sessions shorter. In fact, what we teach our
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clients is how to have a two-hour main study session. And on workdays, that's all the time
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that you need to spend with your review course when you know how to study effectively. Now
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going into all those study strategies and how to use the MCQs most effectively, how
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to use your video lectures most effectively, or I should say strategically, that would
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take a lot longer than this video. But that is why we have our free one-hour training
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webinars where we will walk you through our study framework, which is how to use your
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review course, doesn't matter what review course it is, how to use your review course
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much, much more efficiently and much more effectively. You can sign up for one of those
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at our website at superfastcpa.com or by clicking the button on this video, or there should
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be a link down in the description. Now, if you have that covered and you're dedicated
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you're regimented, you figure out how to study each day consistently, the second thing that
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is much, much more important than what review course you're using is your study methods
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Is your studying effective? Do you have an actual strategic way that you move through
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and dissect each lesson? You figure out what is most important from that lesson in the
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same context that you need to know how to apply it on test day. Is your studying effective
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Because again, it is very possible, and this happens all the time, I just need to mention
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the pass rates or the fail rates for the CPA exams. Everyone out there for the most part
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has a main review course, like I said, Becker, Wiley, Gleim, Roger, one of those, and everyone
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out there more or less follows the same format of watch the video, read the chapter, do the
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practice questions, but the pass rates are right around 50%, not great. So it's very
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possible to be dedicated, hardworking, to be putting in multiple hours every single
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day, and this process ends up taking years and sometimes, I mean, close to ten years
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We've had a lot of customers, several on our own podcast that were working on their exams
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for between five to ten years, and they're dedicated, hardworking, they're just missing
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a few of the right tweaks that would bridge the gap and make their studying effective
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It is not just about hard work or the hours put in. When you learn how to use the resources
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in your review course strategically, then it is much easier to be highly effective and
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highly efficient. So you can have two people that are both putting in, let's say, two hours
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a day studying. The first person, you know, because they don't know any better, they just
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turn on the video, try to watch the whole thing. If it's a 20 minute video, they might
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have to pause it, re-watch it several times before they feel like they understand it
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So that 20 minute video can easily take one to two hours just to get through the video
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And then, person over here, they jump straight into the questions, they strategically go
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through the questions to see, okay, what are the key things that keep being asked about
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Or what are the key formulas that are mentioned? How do these calculations actually work in
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question format? And in the same two hours, these two people can get totally different
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results from the same two hours. So that is just obviously the big difference in knowing
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how to study strategically. So again, we won't go into all the specifics. The free study
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training webinars that I mentioned, the link is in the description. Those will walk you
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through the specifics of how we teach our clients how to study
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All right, so let's say that you do manage to study every single day. You stick to your
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routine, you get through all the lessons, and your studying is pretty effective when
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you do sit down to study. Now, if you're following the traditional study method, you go through
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lesson by lesson. You're essentially trying to master each topic as you go through. Now
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let's take FAR, for example. There are over 200 topics tested on FAR, and these are dense
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technical topics. So you spend all this time up front to learn 200 different topics, but
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you are now six to eight weeks removed from the stuff you covered in the beginning. I
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mean, even two weeks is a long time because each day you're refilling your short-term
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memory with all new information on the next new lesson. So if you really think about that
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that format does not make any sense. To go through lesson by lesson, cover 200 topics
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difficult topics, and not look at anything that you've previously covered, and then try
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to basically relearn everything in a one to two week final review. So it's no wonder why
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so many candidates get into the exam and start seeing questions and realize, I've forgotten
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tons of what I studied. Like I know this topic, but I just can't grab that one piece of information
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from my brain because you're six to eight weeks removed from when you studied it the
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first time. So the solution to this, this is going to sound so obvious when I say it
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is to build re-review into your daily process. So you spend a portion of your study time
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each day going back and re-hitting, re-practicing all the topics that you've previously been
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through. Now the next level of this is to actually jump around among all topics, spend
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a portion of your day even going forward, going ahead of things that you've formerly
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studied in your review course. And this is how our study tools are set up, our review
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notes, our audio notes, and our quizzes. This is what we teach our clients to do. This is
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called retrieval practice. And that's not something that I came up with, but it's proven
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to be, if you Google retrieval practice, that's proven to be the most effective form of learning
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if you're trying to learn and assimilate and retain new complex topics. The basic idea
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with retrieval practice is to spend a certain amount of time each day trying to pull previous
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information out of your own brain. And so you're jumping back, covering topics, re-practicing
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topics that you've already been through, and then, because our study tools are simplified
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and easier to understand, they're designed to be used on the go, that's why you can jump
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ahead and you start chipping away at future topics. So when you use our study tools, you're
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constantly jumping forwards and backwards and vice versa. It's like a workout for your
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brain in these same topics that you're trying to learn so that you can apply them on test
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day. There's also a 30-minute exercise that you do with your review course to end your
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daily two-hour study session. Again, we cover that in detail in our free study training
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webinar. So if you've never watched one of these study training webinars, it is one hour
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that will literally save you months and months of time and frustration from trying to have
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to figure this stuff out on your own. So to recap, the three things that are much more
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important than what specific review course you're using is your daily routine and making
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sure it's consistent. If you're struggling to be consistent, make your daily routine
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easier, make it shorter. And once you get consistent with a shorter main session, you
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will have a lot of momentum because you're being consistent and you can start to add
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more time once you're consistent with a two-hour daily session if you choose to. But a lot
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of our clients never add more than the two hours in the morning with their main review
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course. The second thing is your study methods. When you sit down to study, how do you actually
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study? How do you use your review course? It's very possible to spend two, three, four
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hours every day and not really accomplish that much even though you're investing that
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time. So if you're going to invest months of your life into this process, into these
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exams, you want to be sure that when you do sit down to study, that it's highly efficient
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and highly effective. Again, that is the main thing you will learn how to do on our free
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study training webinars. And number three is to build re-review into your daily process
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instead of spending eight weeks mastering topics one by one, but then slowly forgetting
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half of all this stuff you've spent so much time learning. Instead, you make daily re-review
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part of your process so that you're constantly improving on all topics as you get closer
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to exam day. That obviously makes so much more sense. And again, you will learn our
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two main strategies on how to do that easily without having to find a bunch of extra study
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time just by going through your normal day on those free study training webinars. So
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you can click the button on this video or the link down in the description to sign up for one of those free trainings. You will not regret the hour that you invest to attend
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one of those free webinars. So I hope you found that helpful. Thank you for watching
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and we'll see you on the next episode
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