(no subject)
Tonight's exam was, by far, the toughest exam I've faced with the CGA to date. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I can't say much about it.
The course is marked on six competency areas. There are four core competencies - financial accounting, taxation, assurance (audit), and ethics. There are also core-related competencies (management accounting, finance, IT, and business environment) and professional qualities competencies. Your MCQs and cases each have a certain number of competency opportunities. A right answer in the opportunity (e.g. one MCQ, or a particular topic in a case) will give you a pass for that opportunity. You have to pass a certain percentage of opportunities in each of the six competency areas - we were never sure if it was 50% or 65% - to pass the course.
I have prepared pretty much non-stop for this exam for the past 10 days. The practice exam format was fairly standard, with a bit of variation on the number of MCQs or timing of particular cases. The format we practiced was 25 multiple choice (40 minutes), two 50-minute case studies, and one 100-minute comprehensive case. I reviewed almost everything I ever learned in my prior courses, did all the practice cases, and multiple choice questions, and felt pretty confident that I could do decently well on the exam.
Because of the competency basis, the cases especially require you to apply multiple concepts, often across separate disciplines (e.g. tax and ethics) together to come to an appropriate solution. It's not enough just to know the material, but you have to integrate and apply it. Reading each case study takes time, and you don't really have time to digest it and make an outline before you need to turn around and write a comprehensive response. Half the time, you're not sure how much to write. Do you "memory dump" everything you know on an issue, or try to be concise? Memory dumping is inefficient, but the more you cover all the angles on a topic, the more likely you will get all the available competencies. You just might run out of time at the end of the exam.
The exam itself was extremely challenging, moreso than I had expected. It's four hours longAs with the practice MCQs and cases I'd done, Anyway, I knew all of this before the exam, and had kind of been counting on adrenaline to help me. And while it did, I didn't quite allocate my time the way I'd planned, and got to the end of the last case and had a real rush to finish (lots of bullet points - which we're not supposed to do, but I had no choice!)
Knowing the exam statistics, I looked around at the hundreds (!) of people writing and thought, "30% of us aren't going to make it". I've never gone into a CGA exam before thinking that I could be part of that 30%, but as I looked at the classmates I studied with, and thought about how we'd each done during the course, I wondered if I was at the top or the bottom of this class. I feel like I'm squarely in the middle, but I know I could have done more, learned more, prepared more. If I could do it all over again, I would have spent more time this summer reviewing material from my prior financial accounting, audit, and tax. If I had reviewed earlier, I could have started practicing cases sooner, and been more efficient in my course assignments.
The course is marked on six competency areas. There are four core competencies - financial accounting, taxation, assurance (audit), and ethics. There are also core-related competencies (management accounting, finance, IT, and business environment) and professional qualities competencies. Your MCQs and cases each have a certain number of competency opportunities. A right answer in the opportunity (e.g. one MCQ, or a particular topic in a case) will give you a pass for that opportunity. You have to pass a certain percentage of opportunities in each of the six competency areas - we were never sure if it was 50% or 65% - to pass the course.
I have prepared pretty much non-stop for this exam for the past 10 days. The practice exam format was fairly standard, with a bit of variation on the number of MCQs or timing of particular cases. The format we practiced was 25 multiple choice (40 minutes), two 50-minute case studies, and one 100-minute comprehensive case. I reviewed almost everything I ever learned in my prior courses, did all the practice cases, and multiple choice questions, and felt pretty confident that I could do decently well on the exam.
Because of the competency basis, the cases especially require you to apply multiple concepts, often across separate disciplines (e.g. tax and ethics) together to come to an appropriate solution. It's not enough just to know the material, but you have to integrate and apply it. Reading each case study takes time, and you don't really have time to digest it and make an outline before you need to turn around and write a comprehensive response. Half the time, you're not sure how much to write. Do you "memory dump" everything you know on an issue, or try to be concise? Memory dumping is inefficient, but the more you cover all the angles on a topic, the more likely you will get all the available competencies. You just might run out of time at the end of the exam.
The exam itself was extremely challenging, moreso than I had expected. It's four hours longAs with the practice MCQs and cases I'd done, Anyway, I knew all of this before the exam, and had kind of been counting on adrenaline to help me. And while it did, I didn't quite allocate my time the way I'd planned, and got to the end of the last case and had a real rush to finish (lots of bullet points - which we're not supposed to do, but I had no choice!)
Knowing the exam statistics, I looked around at the hundreds (!) of people writing and thought, "30% of us aren't going to make it". I've never gone into a CGA exam before thinking that I could be part of that 30%, but as I looked at the classmates I studied with, and thought about how we'd each done during the course, I wondered if I was at the top or the bottom of this class. I feel like I'm squarely in the middle, but I know I could have done more, learned more, prepared more. If I could do it all over again, I would have spent more time this summer reviewing material from my prior financial accounting, audit, and tax. If I had reviewed earlier, I could have started practicing cases sooner, and been more efficient in my course assignments.