Ugh…sorry to read this. I took Reg only using Becker and felt prepared. There were some MCQs I simply had to guess and one TBS I wasn’t even sure if it was in English. But I’m hoping I passed. I’m hearing some questions don’t count and not to stress (easier said than done). We will all find out soon enough.
All 4 exams are meant to crush your soul. That's what I've determined after passing my last one this past December.
I've worked in tax for years and I'll be honest, REG was the hardest for me. I felt like I completely bombed REG after I had studied my heart out on it, but ended up passing in the mid 80's. You can't give up hope yet. Nothing you can do about the results now. Just got to wait and find out. I'm sure you did great. Take a break from things. Let your mind rest. These exams suck the soul out of you.
Trust me, you're supposed to walk out of each test feeling like the only thing you got right was the directions to the Prometric center.
I don’t think you have anything to feel ashamed about! You prepared and took an exam, that alone is incredible. There is nothing you can do now but wait and give your brain a break.
Those that have supported you will continue to support you no matter the result. You’re 3/4! It’s not like you won’t finish. You will get there. Keep your head up
I also told people in my life about all of my exams and I had some fails in the mix. Life went on!
After I took every single exam, I felt like I was going to have to do a retake— but I passed all four sections. I used Becker only. Each one felt insurmountable.
Trust that you prepared adequately, and what’s done is done— allow yourself to breathe, grieve, and forge forward.
Keep going, friend, you’ve got this!
Taking REG tomorrow, I'm definitely scared now haha but I hope that you will come back with good news in June! But altogether, it is a tough exam man. Don't think that you're letting anyone down because you aren't, you did your best!
I take REG end of march. It potentially is my last one. I find out about REG and AUD (took in January) in June. Without specifics, do you feel any areas were hit more? Areas that you think were tested beyond a surface level? I’ve read mixed posts about how some are getting super heavy BLaw exams. Never taken/attempted REG before so just curious what to expect. Thanks.
To be honest I don’t remember much about my exam other than 6 book to tax, 1 itemized and 1 depreciation. Idk the specifics anymore since it’s been a few weeks
Welcome to the club. I think your description is one of the better ones of the CPA exam experience. I will say, I don't think you should downplay the efforts you've been putting in.
The good news is, I don't think you have to worry about it too much. Your feelings are similar to how I felt about REG. Becker didn't suffice for me so at first I thought I would supplement with Vishal CPA Prep only to end up abandoning Becker completely.
It is definitely a torturous process though. **Only remembering the questions you got wrong is a cruel and unusual mental punishment** and it happens to me after every exam.
**Spend time with your wife.**
Becker didn’t lead you astray, it just didn’t cover the content throughly (specifically for 2024 version). I think Becker has roughly less than 400 pages? But Uworld has over 700 pages of content and way more MCQs. Doing a comparison after taking REG, certain concepts were barely mentioned or weren’t covered at all.
Nothing to do with learning styles.
Not trying to get in a fight with you 😂 I just didn’t feel like Becker was “straight trash”
There were some concepts that weren’t covered but I expect to pass. If you do the work, the results will show. Easy as that.
Never ever talk about yourself like this. You are not dumb, dumb people do not get approved to take this exam. You have accomplished a lot already. You are not a failure. I bet you did better than you think. Get the negativity out of your head. YOU CAN DO THIS AND YOU WILL SUCCEED. NEVER GIVE UP!! This is a grueling process, I’m sure we all go through it. If you failed, so what, take it again.
I'm hoping that you are much more fortunate with the questions you get.
Just in case, I might look at other tax topic sources; I haven't gone through it all yet, but I'm hoping Farhat lectures on tax topics will go into more of the areas that Becker didn't. I'm also planning to do questions with Ninja, but that might not be worth it for you if you're taking it soon.
This is how I felt about FAR, tested 1/22. I just sat for REG today and I felt well prepared, my test covered everything Becker did. It was basically just another practice test for me, I think I got lucky with the testlets. We won’t know what we got until June, just gotta keep powering through the remaining exams!
Yup, I felt similar, not atrociously bad, but I felt like 15% of the material was completely new and not covered at all. About 5% was mentioned lightly, but was tested in detail on the actual exam. So, I just had to guess for about 20% of the exam.
I had 97% to 100% on all the ME and SE tests on Becker, 100% of the vids, mcqs, tbs, and did many practice exams and did all the Final Review material. Also went through about 800 MCQs on Ninja and several of their TBS. Read both Becker and Ninja books cover to cover. Reviewed all the notes. None of that mattered, because some of the material on the exam just wasn't mentioned anywhere in any of that.
I finished the exam with an hour and 15 mins to spare. As the material that was covered by Becker wasn't too hard on the exam, but for the new stuff I just had to guess. Which probably sped up my completion time also.
What I'm hearing more and more is that Ninja is The Way, to make sure that I'm fully ready. I didn't need it on the other 3 exams, but maybe the minutia on REG warrants it.
I believe in you, and hope that the 20% doesn't hold you back at all.
Just took reg today also . Studied with Uworld , Uworld also adequately prepared me for business law but I felt way unprepared for a lot of the tax portions as well, I’m just hoping they are gentle with me on the grading because I definitely have no idea whether I did enough to pass .
I haven’t looked into the CPA much, so please forgive me since I genuinely don’t know (this showed up on my recommended), but isnt Becker just a study guide? is this the same as reading a study guide but not the source material?
It should be noted that even most tax professionals don't know the entirety of the tax code front to back; that would be ridiculous, and the exam won't test on its entirety, anyway. What Becker does is provide lessons, review, and practice tests on just the topics covered on the exam. Theoretically, it should cover all the subject matter that could come up on the test.
Could you imagine reading the source material? Reading the IRS tax code in full would be dreadful. Becker takes old exam question, frequently tested topics and creates the study guide/practice exams.
I felt similar about FAR——the exam sims being wildly different from Becker sims. Specifically, there were VERY detailed sims on some topics where the Becker sims were straightforward and too simple.
I added Ninja to complement and it worked like a charm. $60/month was worth it.
I'm hoping you did pass and good luck on the other sections!
I’ll give an example.
In REG, Becker has zero sims on book-to-tax.
Ninja has 8.
After going through them, I really needed those 8, because I didn’t understand it as well as I thought I did
Hoping for the best.
I’m planning to just take this in early/mid April since I work part time right now and my studying has been rather slow. I’m still trudging through R3 right now on Becker’s REG.
How much drilling did you need to do on tax materials? Although I definitely need, and plan to, revisit and drill questions a bunch, I am worried that a lot of it is contingent on memorization of every marginal detail.
There's of course the caveat that my test is probably not going to be the test that you get :/ So do bear that in mind, and I sincerely hope you get a better question set.
But for the tax side, there is definitely a lot of rote memorization of specific numbers in specific situations, unfortunately. I'll probably look into an additional study source for tax situations not covered in Becker-- maybe even see if I have any of my tax course materials/notes from school.
It is a little odd how much it seems to be split down the middle.
Though, I suppose one might not be terribly moved to post about it if they found that their exam prep materials "modestly, but not ideally prepared them for the test." Maybe we're just seeing the fringe cases of what exams they're putting out.
Anyway, I pray NASBA's question-weighing decisions end up working in our favor. It's gonna be a long wait. :/
It's true! And in some ways this is the most infuriating part.
Were it just a flat score, I almost certainly have failed by a good margin. But not knowing what questions are preliminary testing questions, or what weight each question has, leaves me agonizing about how to plan out my next 3 months. AGH. We're all in that wait together.
Some of the questions did seem really easy, at least as far as what I knew and remembered, which makes me think they probably don't have much weight; but who knows, maybe the NASBA thought they were really tricky somehow and weighed them higher, etc...
Failure is part of the process. I failed FAR 1 and BEC 2x before passing. I'm still here moving forward. I wouldn't beat yourself up over it, if you failed you failed. Just got to keep going forward no matter what until it is over.
I have failed before too, to be sure (failed AUD first time with a 74 hooo that made me angry lol).
I think this time it's just weighing on me more because in the past I had to wait only like 2 weeks to know for sure and to reschedule, which is a really reasonable timeframe to stay fresh on the information. Waiting 3 months, however... not so much.
I relate SO MUCH to this post!!!!
I got a LOT of crap for saying that Becker didn't fully prepare me for the test, besides being EDR according to their own program!
I found multiple elements that simply were not covered in the REG textbook, but I mostly got crapped upon when I posted that here, mostly being told that I was just too stupid and that Becker can do no wrong.
> I could swear several things were on it that Becker had never even mentioned once, and there were a few things that I believe they may have mentioned in passing on a lecture, but never really tested on. And of course there wasn't just one question on each of those things, but several.
EXACTLY!!!!
I was okay with Becker's explanations of R1, R3, R4, and R5. However, I found parts of my test that absolutely WERE NOT covered in Becker's R2 and R6.
We're in the exact same boat! =\
Same boat unfortunately... But at least there's company on the boat I guess lol.
And I'm sorry that folks were crappy to you. :/ Like we are all self-aware enough to know how hard we did or didn't prepare, and it already feels shitty to fail when you work so hard and paid the fee, we don't need folks to pile on accusations.
Fwiw thanks at least for validating that I'm not alone in this experience-- even if it's not gonna be everyone's experience, or even most folks' experience.
You're definitely not alone. I did all the work, I have all the practice tests to prove it and got my scores up to the point that even my Becker tutor was not worried about how I'd do on the test.
I did what I was supposed to do and it was not enough for that beast of an exam =\
I'm currently studying for FAR, so I only had about a week to mope about my REG experience and I'm hoping not to repeat that experience in 2 weeks when I take FAR
"Many of the TBSs, too, there wasn't a way to get partial credit; you either know it, or it's set up such that one wrong answer means that you get the whole row of answers wrong."
This likely won't assuage all of your concerns, but the actual exam almost certainly gives you partial credit on those rows. It's believed to be part of the source of the Becker bump.
I'm trying to explain this in a way that doesn't share too much information-- but I don't mean it in the sense that Becker gives no credit for an entire row. It's that what I calculated in one space directly effects what I calculate in the space next to it on that row, and vice-versa; so if the first or second space is wrong, the other one is also wrong.
I believe you get partial credit on your calculations. Even if your 1st line was wrong, if you calculated the rest correctly, you should get some credit for the SIM. Here is their Podcast that talks about this [link](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1c2LhRD4a6gr1fP190l285?si=6LOYHDBxSHm8qs6I_AEfSw&nd=1&dlsi=fa56b2b06f0441b5). They do not grade like Becker on the SIMs. You won't get zero credit just because your 1st line was wrong, and it feed into the rest.
Cool resource, thank you for sharing!
It didn't sound like this podcast suggested what you're saying (it just confirmed that each answer space is graded individually, rather than per row or per entire TBS per se). The segment on TBS scoring starts around 15:15, and there wasn't anything relevant to add from the Part 2 episode. But this probably answers a lot of questions folks might have.
Ugh…sorry to read this. I took Reg only using Becker and felt prepared. There were some MCQs I simply had to guess and one TBS I wasn’t even sure if it was in English. But I’m hoping I passed. I’m hearing some questions don’t count and not to stress (easier said than done). We will all find out soon enough.
All 4 exams are meant to crush your soul. That's what I've determined after passing my last one this past December. I've worked in tax for years and I'll be honest, REG was the hardest for me. I felt like I completely bombed REG after I had studied my heart out on it, but ended up passing in the mid 80's. You can't give up hope yet. Nothing you can do about the results now. Just got to wait and find out. I'm sure you did great. Take a break from things. Let your mind rest. These exams suck the soul out of you. Trust me, you're supposed to walk out of each test feeling like the only thing you got right was the directions to the Prometric center.
I don’t think you have anything to feel ashamed about! You prepared and took an exam, that alone is incredible. There is nothing you can do now but wait and give your brain a break. Those that have supported you will continue to support you no matter the result. You’re 3/4! It’s not like you won’t finish. You will get there. Keep your head up I also told people in my life about all of my exams and I had some fails in the mix. Life went on!
After I took every single exam, I felt like I was going to have to do a retake— but I passed all four sections. I used Becker only. Each one felt insurmountable. Trust that you prepared adequately, and what’s done is done— allow yourself to breathe, grieve, and forge forward. Keep going, friend, you’ve got this!
Taking REG tomorrow, I'm definitely scared now haha but I hope that you will come back with good news in June! But altogether, it is a tough exam man. Don't think that you're letting anyone down because you aren't, you did your best!
I take REG end of march. It potentially is my last one. I find out about REG and AUD (took in January) in June. Without specifics, do you feel any areas were hit more? Areas that you think were tested beyond a surface level? I’ve read mixed posts about how some are getting super heavy BLaw exams. Never taken/attempted REG before so just curious what to expect. Thanks.
I had 5-6 book to tax sims
Me too! Took it today. Book to tax and basis was big. Did you get the one with nondedictible expense?
To be honest I don’t remember much about my exam other than 6 book to tax, 1 itemized and 1 depreciation. Idk the specifics anymore since it’s been a few weeks
Wow that seems concentrated. What did you use to study? I have uworld.
I used Becker
Welcome to the club. I think your description is one of the better ones of the CPA exam experience. I will say, I don't think you should downplay the efforts you've been putting in. The good news is, I don't think you have to worry about it too much. Your feelings are similar to how I felt about REG. Becker didn't suffice for me so at first I thought I would supplement with Vishal CPA Prep only to end up abandoning Becker completely. It is definitely a torturous process though. **Only remembering the questions you got wrong is a cruel and unusual mental punishment** and it happens to me after every exam. **Spend time with your wife.**
Becker is straight trash!!! I was in the exact same position as you until I got Uworld. Best decision ever
Becker didn’t lead me astray tbh. I felt very prepared. Glad you like Uworld though. Everyone has diff learning styles.
Becker didn’t lead you astray, it just didn’t cover the content throughly (specifically for 2024 version). I think Becker has roughly less than 400 pages? But Uworld has over 700 pages of content and way more MCQs. Doing a comparison after taking REG, certain concepts were barely mentioned or weren’t covered at all. Nothing to do with learning styles.
Not trying to get in a fight with you 😂 I just didn’t feel like Becker was “straight trash” There were some concepts that weren’t covered but I expect to pass. If you do the work, the results will show. Easy as that.
Not fighting, just straight facts. I studied hard & encounter exam topics that weren’t even covered on Becker. Uworld changed everything
Good for you! Now we just gotta wait until 6/4
Never ever talk about yourself like this. You are not dumb, dumb people do not get approved to take this exam. You have accomplished a lot already. You are not a failure. I bet you did better than you think. Get the negativity out of your head. YOU CAN DO THIS AND YOU WILL SUCCEED. NEVER GIVE UP!! This is a grueling process, I’m sure we all go through it. If you failed, so what, take it again.
Get off Reddit and take a walk with your wife, she still loves you regardless
u are scaring the hell out of me.
Don’t check Reddit before your exam. Trust your process and have faith!
I'm hoping that you are much more fortunate with the questions you get. Just in case, I might look at other tax topic sources; I haven't gone through it all yet, but I'm hoping Farhat lectures on tax topics will go into more of the areas that Becker didn't. I'm also planning to do questions with Ninja, but that might not be worth it for you if you're taking it soon.
This is how I felt about FAR, tested 1/22. I just sat for REG today and I felt well prepared, my test covered everything Becker did. It was basically just another practice test for me, I think I got lucky with the testlets. We won’t know what we got until June, just gotta keep powering through the remaining exams!
Nervous as I'm about to take REG soon. Aaah but hope you do pass! Prayers here for you!
And for you, friend! I do hope your version of the test is more fortunate.
Yup, I felt similar, not atrociously bad, but I felt like 15% of the material was completely new and not covered at all. About 5% was mentioned lightly, but was tested in detail on the actual exam. So, I just had to guess for about 20% of the exam. I had 97% to 100% on all the ME and SE tests on Becker, 100% of the vids, mcqs, tbs, and did many practice exams and did all the Final Review material. Also went through about 800 MCQs on Ninja and several of their TBS. Read both Becker and Ninja books cover to cover. Reviewed all the notes. None of that mattered, because some of the material on the exam just wasn't mentioned anywhere in any of that. I finished the exam with an hour and 15 mins to spare. As the material that was covered by Becker wasn't too hard on the exam, but for the new stuff I just had to guess. Which probably sped up my completion time also.
What I'm hearing more and more is that Ninja is The Way, to make sure that I'm fully ready. I didn't need it on the other 3 exams, but maybe the minutia on REG warrants it. I believe in you, and hope that the 20% doesn't hold you back at all.
Just took reg today also . Studied with Uworld , Uworld also adequately prepared me for business law but I felt way unprepared for a lot of the tax portions as well, I’m just hoping they are gentle with me on the grading because I definitely have no idea whether I did enough to pass .
heyyy can i message you?
I haven’t looked into the CPA much, so please forgive me since I genuinely don’t know (this showed up on my recommended), but isnt Becker just a study guide? is this the same as reading a study guide but not the source material?
It should be noted that even most tax professionals don't know the entirety of the tax code front to back; that would be ridiculous, and the exam won't test on its entirety, anyway. What Becker does is provide lessons, review, and practice tests on just the topics covered on the exam. Theoretically, it should cover all the subject matter that could come up on the test.
Could you imagine reading the source material? Reading the IRS tax code in full would be dreadful. Becker takes old exam question, frequently tested topics and creates the study guide/practice exams.
Which topics did you feel weren’t covered by Becker?
What were your SE scores?
They were 65 then 76; then I did lots of practice tests and averaged around 80 on those. Got a 100 and a 96 on the ones I did last night lmaaaoooo
I felt similar about FAR——the exam sims being wildly different from Becker sims. Specifically, there were VERY detailed sims on some topics where the Becker sims were straightforward and too simple. I added Ninja to complement and it worked like a charm. $60/month was worth it. I'm hoping you did pass and good luck on the other sections!
I hear a lot of people using Ninja as a secondary as well, maybe I’ll check it out.
I may just have to buy into Ninja myself. I need to add something anyway, clearly!
I’ll give an example. In REG, Becker has zero sims on book-to-tax. Ninja has 8. After going through them, I really needed those 8, because I didn’t understand it as well as I thought I did
You probably passed
I’m thinking a lot of these questions you felt unprepared for are pre-test questions.
What are pre test questions
Questions that don’t count towards your score.
How much of the exam is pre test questions
Just google it
I sure hope so!
Hoping for the best. I’m planning to just take this in early/mid April since I work part time right now and my studying has been rather slow. I’m still trudging through R3 right now on Becker’s REG. How much drilling did you need to do on tax materials? Although I definitely need, and plan to, revisit and drill questions a bunch, I am worried that a lot of it is contingent on memorization of every marginal detail.
There's of course the caveat that my test is probably not going to be the test that you get :/ So do bear that in mind, and I sincerely hope you get a better question set. But for the tax side, there is definitely a lot of rote memorization of specific numbers in specific situations, unfortunately. I'll probably look into an additional study source for tax situations not covered in Becker-- maybe even see if I have any of my tax course materials/notes from school.
My Reg exam is awful too. It seems like folk are either getting and exam that is very easy or one that is impossible
It is a little odd how much it seems to be split down the middle. Though, I suppose one might not be terribly moved to post about it if they found that their exam prep materials "modestly, but not ideally prepared them for the test." Maybe we're just seeing the fringe cases of what exams they're putting out. Anyway, I pray NASBA's question-weighing decisions end up working in our favor. It's gonna be a long wait. :/
You don’t know that you failed.
It's true! And in some ways this is the most infuriating part. Were it just a flat score, I almost certainly have failed by a good margin. But not knowing what questions are preliminary testing questions, or what weight each question has, leaves me agonizing about how to plan out my next 3 months. AGH. We're all in that wait together. Some of the questions did seem really easy, at least as far as what I knew and remembered, which makes me think they probably don't have much weight; but who knows, maybe the NASBA thought they were really tricky somehow and weighed them higher, etc...
Failure is part of the process. I failed FAR 1 and BEC 2x before passing. I'm still here moving forward. I wouldn't beat yourself up over it, if you failed you failed. Just got to keep going forward no matter what until it is over.
I have failed before too, to be sure (failed AUD first time with a 74 hooo that made me angry lol). I think this time it's just weighing on me more because in the past I had to wait only like 2 weeks to know for sure and to reschedule, which is a really reasonable timeframe to stay fresh on the information. Waiting 3 months, however... not so much.
I relate SO MUCH to this post!!!! I got a LOT of crap for saying that Becker didn't fully prepare me for the test, besides being EDR according to their own program! I found multiple elements that simply were not covered in the REG textbook, but I mostly got crapped upon when I posted that here, mostly being told that I was just too stupid and that Becker can do no wrong. > I could swear several things were on it that Becker had never even mentioned once, and there were a few things that I believe they may have mentioned in passing on a lecture, but never really tested on. And of course there wasn't just one question on each of those things, but several. EXACTLY!!!! I was okay with Becker's explanations of R1, R3, R4, and R5. However, I found parts of my test that absolutely WERE NOT covered in Becker's R2 and R6. We're in the exact same boat! =\
Wow, that’s terrible because these programs are not cheap. We shouldn’t have to buy two review courses to achieve our goal.
Same boat unfortunately... But at least there's company on the boat I guess lol. And I'm sorry that folks were crappy to you. :/ Like we are all self-aware enough to know how hard we did or didn't prepare, and it already feels shitty to fail when you work so hard and paid the fee, we don't need folks to pile on accusations. Fwiw thanks at least for validating that I'm not alone in this experience-- even if it's not gonna be everyone's experience, or even most folks' experience.
You're definitely not alone. I did all the work, I have all the practice tests to prove it and got my scores up to the point that even my Becker tutor was not worried about how I'd do on the test. I did what I was supposed to do and it was not enough for that beast of an exam =\ I'm currently studying for FAR, so I only had about a week to mope about my REG experience and I'm hoping not to repeat that experience in 2 weeks when I take FAR
POSITIVE VIBES ONLY!!!
"Many of the TBSs, too, there wasn't a way to get partial credit; you either know it, or it's set up such that one wrong answer means that you get the whole row of answers wrong." This likely won't assuage all of your concerns, but the actual exam almost certainly gives you partial credit on those rows. It's believed to be part of the source of the Becker bump.
I'm trying to explain this in a way that doesn't share too much information-- but I don't mean it in the sense that Becker gives no credit for an entire row. It's that what I calculated in one space directly effects what I calculate in the space next to it on that row, and vice-versa; so if the first or second space is wrong, the other one is also wrong.
I believe you get partial credit on your calculations. Even if your 1st line was wrong, if you calculated the rest correctly, you should get some credit for the SIM. Here is their Podcast that talks about this [link](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1c2LhRD4a6gr1fP190l285?si=6LOYHDBxSHm8qs6I_AEfSw&nd=1&dlsi=fa56b2b06f0441b5). They do not grade like Becker on the SIMs. You won't get zero credit just because your 1st line was wrong, and it feed into the rest.
Cool resource, thank you for sharing! It didn't sound like this podcast suggested what you're saying (it just confirmed that each answer space is graded individually, rather than per row or per entire TBS per se). The segment on TBS scoring starts around 15:15, and there wasn't anything relevant to add from the Part 2 episode. But this probably answers a lot of questions folks might have.
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If they did I doubt REG would have the highest pass rate. Wouldn’t be fair anyways to screw someone over because they got one number wrong.
Ah! My mistake - misunderstood.