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@smichail said:
Twisted figures, twisted wording, obscure reasoning questions and work to do for 4-5 hours instead of 3. Somebody might have great fun by humiliating students like this.But for the other parties in the “game”, there is nothing fun to waste 120 frustrating hours over 3 months, by night and during weekends, to learn for such a disaster and to fail the exam in such a manner.
Not to much lesson to take from this, only a tough attack to students’ psychological health and self esteem. Poor those who must accept such a situation, for getting a license to work to earning their livings….
I completely agree. I’m a Big Four senior getting no help with my exams (they’re not even paying for my fees or giving me time off to study). These exams are an unforgivable cruelty. They don’t test your knowledge as much as they test your ability to take a test through extraordinary handwritten time-pressured situations. It’s as far from actual work as it gets. I’ve always wanted to, upon finishing the ACCA, pen an angry letter to the Examiner, but I’ve worried there might be repercussions.
@hufckinger said:
Managed to write 23/24 pages solid and finished 10 mins before the endI just can’t conceive how people write that fast. I practice before the exam and I still get have to race against legibility. I think I filled 17-18 pages. Finished 100%, but didn’t have time to show my workings for turnover, so probably missed a mark there.
Between OK and Hard for me. As usual, I was writing the entire time and it was a race against my hand/wrist/arm going numb. I have a shoulder impingement from weightlifting, so there was considerable pain at the end. I hate these tests. Only 2 hours of sleep as well due to nerves.
I did Q3, Q4, Q2, and Q1 in that order, as I knew Q1 had the most fluff with the RoMMs.
Q1 Analytical — there was a question on a past paper about the function of risk assessment analytics (in the 30s in BPP’s revision kit). Saved my ass here.
Q1 RoMMs — hate hate hate identifying RoMMs because it’s so backward from the way we do it in the real world (we don’t chase every little stupid risk). Missed capitalization of interest completely. Tried to make the case that deferred tax asset was a hot-spot due to the tax inquiry that the movement in it (5 million was utilized) needed to be examined.
Q1 Ethics — Said NO to both. The language of the question said that the client was asking you to “support” them, which screamed advocacy threat, among other things. Felt like easy marks so I made damn sure to stop the stupid RoMM-writing with enough time to crank out some material here.Q2 — Felt strong all around, but forgot which IAS covers construction/WIP revenue (13? 14?) Hopefully didn’t miss a mark. This one was so easy to cherry pick quality issues out of and get strong marks on. The Finance Director’s refusal to account for it correctly puts into doubt the entire accounting function, so I wrote that a couple of the other contracts may need to be examined to make sure there’s nothing weird with recognition going on.
Q3 — Avoided
Q4 — First one I attempted. Felt like easyish marks.
Q5 — Second one I attempted. Technical articles saved my ass here on the exposure draft. I’m angry at BPP because even though BPP had it in their study guide, it did not have the level of detail present in the technical article. Thank goodness I read both. I still didn’t feel that I had enough points to capture all the marks, so I hope there were 1.5 marks per explained point on the exposure draft.
Hoping to hell I passed. My special center doesn’t do the September window, so it’d be a $400 trip to try a retake that month, or a very, very long road trip. In the US.
54. They make it too hard. I was keeping score internally as I did the exam, assuming worst possible performance on each attempted section, and still got something 60 or above. The almighty stuffy “Examiner” must have disliked something.
Whatever. They can keep it. Not looking forward to P7, with its 29% pass rate this time…
Can anyone specify whether consideration for goodwill is translated at the current rate or historical rate? I forgot this important fact before taking the test and used historical, since it resulted in a prettier number 🙁
Q1 — Time-consuming. Dealing with a net pension liability instead of a separate liability/asset threw me as I wasn’t sure how to deal with contributions/payouts. The foreign exchange made things needlessly complicated and I kind of wish we’d gotten a sub-subsidiary or D-shaped group instead.
Q2 — Avoided. Seemed like a classic technicality trap.
Q3 — Joint operation. Could not remember for the life of me which IFRS governed that, so I hope I didn’t lose a point. Wrote that nothing should be provided for as management’s intent alone is not enough to constitute an obligation to transfer resources (it needs a legal or constructive obligation). I’ve seen this get fudged in the study materials, but for god’s sake, that’s what the flashcard says. BPP absolutely hammers home that major repairs are not to be provided for, so I’m going to absolutely enraged if the examiner finds some stupid excuse for it.
Q4 — Easy points on the 4 remaining steps, but the part about what qualifies someting for IFRS 15 treatment — I don’t remember this in BPP at all, so I waxed poetic on what doesn’t qualify for IFRS 15 treatment (financial instrument stuff, sale of PP&E, etc.) and hoped for the best. I wrote that the copier sale required a contract liability per IFRS 15 terminology (deferred revenue) as title wouldn’t transfer. I was confused on whether the 2-year intervening period constituted a lease, or if I needed to discount anything, or what. For the percentage of completion job, I recalculated the POC to 60% or somewhere around there (ugly number) due to the revised estimates, and then I messed up the balance sheet in epic fashion by taking cost less profit to arrive at some kind of contract asset. Sigh…
It’s too much to memorize. I’ve dumped 250 hours into studying P2 and it’s still too much to bear while working with a Big Four firm that’s unsympathetic and refuses to give me any study time. It’s my bad luck, too, that the test dates all sync up with year-end busy seasons. Sometimes I think I need to quit working for a year to pass this stupid test.
