The best course virtually eliminates the risk of failure in the CPA exam and significantly reduces the time required to grasp the key concepts. The following list of factors will help you find the best CPA exam review course to help guarantee success.
1) Course Materials
Qualified teachers will make sure basic ideas do not take up the majority of teaching time. Instead, they will focus time to deal with the more difficult ideas. High quality courses also make their lesson plans available on a number of media platforms, including DVD, CDs and live webcasts. Also, when looking for a review course, make note of any expiry dates for the course materials. Some questions and simulation software will become disabled at a certain time after activation. Some courses only permit access for a certain duration before denying access completely. If you buy the type that expires, make sure that you will have ample time to digest the materials prior to expiration.
2) Practice Questions
Practice questions are a great way to make sure students know the key ideas and are able to retain them. They help make it easy to retain through use of practical real world examples.
Each of the CPA review courses take varying approaches with practice questions. While this may be the safest approach, it can also be quite time-consuming. This impacts on their exam preparation and chance to succeed.
Other courses take a different approach and restrict sample questions to provide a basic overview of all topics. The best CPA review course will contain only questions that are most likely to appear on the exam. This can be done by checking previous exams to identify questions which appear frequently. This will ensure the highest rate of return for the student's study time by allowing the student to focus on areas that will probably matter the most.
Many CPA review courses provide different levels of customer service. If ask questions and prefer to talk to teachers over the phone, then choose a review course which offers that service. Other courses provide online message boards and forums to enable students to interact with instructors and with one another. Before buying a review course, ensure it provides the right level of support you require.
4) Frequency of Updates
Due to changes in accounting-related legislature amongst other things, CPA exam study materials need to be updated quite regularly. The update frequency of course materials can impact on whether or not you are successful as courses that do not update quickly may teach antiquated methods.
Cost is something else to consider as it varies from course to course. However, price is only an issue if you fail the exam. This because CPA certified accountants can expect substantial pay rises. Bear in mind it is likely that one section results in failure if the 2008 Uniform pass rate is anything to go by - the average pass rate was between 47.49% and 49.10%. You will not want to re-study for and re-sit sections of the exam just because you decided to save a few bucks by purchasing a lesser quality review course.
Find out which CPA review course is the most highly recommended amongst the many CPA exam review courses on the market today.
Posted by richard77sutton
at 2:53 PM EDT
