ACA exams Nov 2019

[Studentonamission]

Wanted to start this thread to support others also going through this :)

Also any help on study tips or similar would be much appreciated! Thanks xx

Just wanted to say good luck! I did my ACA about 8 years ago now and it's totally worth it.

The best advice I can give is don't get too stressed. It really got to me at times and study non-stop. Have some me time!!

Another tip for longer questions are don't just write everything you know about the question topic - you can impress a marker with your knowledge on one question but if you write nothing for another question, they can't assume you know the answer and you're probably likely to fail.

Main study tip for me is to look at past exam papers and practice them. Even though the same question won't come up again, you might be able to use some of the model answer or it'll give you a different way of thinking about a topic.

Good luck and I hope to read a thread saying you've passed exams in the future! Xx

Thanks - they’re actually retakes for me, really appreciate the advice. I am sitting sbm and cr together in 5 weeks time :)

Do you have any general study tips? I am struggling with balancing study time with work etc and am still revising content - then need to start the QBs

1. Stop revising content. There really is no point as you will be taking your files into the exam room. Make sure you have clear examples though in your files for all the key areas of the FM part of the syllabus for SBM, such as hedging and valuation methods. Make sure these include lists of which techniques to use in which circumstances.

2. Don't overlook the ethics, audit and strategy requirements of SBM.

3. Focus on question practice now. Start with the Nov 18 exam, then Nov 17 as the lead examiner should be the same for your sitting.

4. Have you reviewed the examiner's feedback from the exams you failed? They are available on the ICAEW website. You may recognise some of the issues raised as things you did and you may pick up point's on their likes & dislikes.

5. Have you got time booked off for a resit course? If not, go to the online study support from your tuition providerwhich you had access to last time and work through the exam prep videos etc which are probably still available. You may find some resit hints & tips on there as well.

6. Divide your time in proportion to the marks for each requirement in each of the two questions. As CJ says, you must write something for each part. I tell my classes (a hint that I do really know what I'm talking about here) that they need to be consistently mediocre, showing that they know a little bit about a lot of stuff.

Ah, a trip down memory lane!

I qualified as ACA 29 years ago, so I'm sure a lot has changed.

At that time you had to pass all exams for each stage in one sitting, with the only leeway given being given a "referral" if you failed one paper by a small margin. You were then only required to retake and pass that paper to complete the stage. Any more than that and you had to retake every paper for that stage. Very stressful and I think the present system is much more sensible.

Good luck OP, hope you are successful. It's a great qualification and certainly opened a lot of doors for me.

You would have qualified just before me and Justine Greening, who has probably had a lot of doors opened for her as well! Most people now take 2 or 3 exams at a time, so it undoubtedly feels as though they are never ending. I'm sure we only had one or two chances a year to take them. Even worse than the ICAEW rules were our firm's guidelines - one marginal fail was allowed, but anything else & you lost your job. 6 of us started in my (now) Big 4 firm, but only 3 of us still had jobs 3 years later.

There have been a couple of these threads recently where someone asks for help with their Advanced exams then disappears, so our reminiscing won't derail the thread.

Yes only two sittings a year back in the 80s.

I remember a lot of the big firms tightening up exam policies after the recession bit in the late 80s. Any fails and you were straight out. I even remember one case of a big firm telling students they were being made redundant a week before taking their final exams. Ruthless.

The day I joined my firm was the day they told 3 NQs they had lost their job & 3 others that they could stay. It was brutal.