[marsou]

I switched from AAA to ATX, I have to say it was much easier but… time pressure is a real issue!

I was not able to complete the last exercise, in 15 minutes, I was not able to understand a single question.
If someone remember:
Why we calculate a disposal of share on income ?
Why there are no cost at the time of death ? I may have seen it in the materials but one more time it may be a single sentence on a 1 000 pages book….

[marsou]

4th time I sit this exam, it is the most difficult exam I have seen due to its length and requests.
It is a nightmare ! The more we move forward in time, the more this paper is difficult.
Time management was critical although the expected answers were not difficult, it was too much time consuming to properly plan and write the answer even when limiting to the marks !
I did all the past papers, none are as difficult as the two of 2020. This one makes no sense at all in terms of expectations from ACCA. It is disappointing…

[marsou]

Thank you ! I was about to check it. I will analyse it and hopefully find my mistakes.

Reading previous comments and yours seems to relate to my feeling that I prepared too much for this one. I relied on AFM where working hard got me a pass first time. I am starting to see a bit of clarity here. This exam is very different from the others.

Thank you to everybody that posted here, for me this post is more helpfull than anything else I found.

[marsou]

Hi everybody,

I know it will go nowhere, but I wanted to share my experience as well because this exam can be very frustrating:

I attempted AAA in Dec 19 and failed with 47%; not a big surprise, the exam was very difficult, questions were difficult to understand and approach and I lacked 15 to 20 minutes to properly finish. Also I am very close of the pass mark, I am aslo very far from 100% and can only blame myself.

I thought not a big deal, it is the last one and I got the 3 previous paper first time, so I will study more and attempt the best grade possible as a challenge. I took a very different approach to my studies, and invested more time than necessary for a retake:
– I decided to follow the retake guide from ACCA
– I worked on the questions verb (explain, describe, etc…)
– I worked on the timing to answer questions
– I have done again and again many past papers, partial and full, I marked my answers with ACCA marking tool being very light in the mark given (I almost always had pass)
– I have read and learned answers from BPP study kit
– I studied BPP exam techniques
– I read again the technical articles and watched all the videos from ACCA
– I deepened my knowledge of the syllabus and IFRS (SBR is an essential exam according to ACCA to pass AAA, which is good for me as I got 69 pass)
– I used much more opentuition to diversify my sources as in the past BPP and Kaplan were not always reliable
– I worked on my answers structures according to the technical articles
– I work with auditor although I do not work in audit and I was able to relate a lot of the syllabus with practical situations.

As a consequence of all of these, not only I understood the questions, also because they were very similar to past papers but I completed the whole exam which happened once only in the 4 previous papers…

….and I got a FAIL with a 45 marks !

Before reading comments here, I decided to request an administrative review as I thought I would get pass and fail for each item but they only give it for the whole question. Therefore, I only know that I failed all questions.

Now I am stuck for my retake, because I don’t know what to study…
I still don’t understand how I failed to reach 26 points in the first question (mostly because there are 4 professional marks that I worked on to get them and I never leave the first question before being sure I’ll get 30 marks for it (excluding the professional marks)).

I am thinkg about taking unrelated courses such as properly writing in English and in a conscise manner…or doing like for the first paper, on the third times, I did not study anything, just paid, did go to the exam to please my surroundings… and pass whoever knows how…

Moreover, for an association that prides transparency, the lack of transparency on the marking is quite shocking. Why not disclose the detailed marks or at least a detailed fail and pass to really help students ?

[Author]

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