Interview with F6 Genius Hunt winner, Fiona from Kampala, Uganda

Can you tell us more about yourself?

I am 27 years old and from Uganda. I currently work with Deloitte and Touche as a Tax Assistant. I study ACCA at Management and Accountancy College (MAT) in Kampala. Striking a balance between working, studying and spending time with family and friends is as challenging as anyone can imagine. However, I create some reading time in the course of some work days (depending on how busy my work schedule is). This is usually in the morning hours (before 8am when I officially start my work) and I do about 30 to 45 minutes daily and then attend classes in the evening. My weekends are reserved for family and friends, save for those on which I have lectures to attend.

Do you get support from your firm? Like time off work or do they pay for your tuition etc?

My firm is very supportive of my studies; it pays my tuition in full and grants me study leave of one week for each paper at each sitting. We also receive a bonus when we excel in our exams, which is quite motivational and definitely had a role to play in my success.

Which Study Texts and/or Revision Kits did you use, or find most useful in your studies?

Based on ACCA’s announcement of BPP as the sole platinum publisher, my college issued us with BPP study and revision kits for the June 2011 session. So I used BPP in preparing for my F6 exam.

You have scored such high marks, many students must wonder what is your study technique?

I ensure I attend all my lectures, or as many of them as I possibly can make time for – classes make things much easier for me when I get down to read the study texts. I read the contents of the study texts substantially before beginning question practice. In this way, I am faster at answering the practice questions as I do not have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to answer a question or why a question was answered in a particular way.

I also listen to the lectures on Opentuition when I get some free time during and after work – mostly over lunch and before I return home on those days when I do not have evening classes.

My other favorites are the technical articles published in the Student Accountant magazines. There are things that come out clearer in the technical articles. The F6 exam forexample had a capital gains tax (CGT) question relating to transfer of shares by a mother to her daughter upon the mother’s death – it was on one of the examiner’s articles that I found out such a transfer is out of scope for CGT purposes and falls under Inheritance Tax instead – so I did not waste time computing the CGT on that transfer.

What do you think was the most important factor in your success in your ACCA exams?

I can think of three factors that all played a vital role in my success – confidence, time management and a reasonable attempt at all questions – I prepared adequately for the exam by attending 90% of my classes, reading the technical articles and examiner’s reports and doing most questions in the revision kit. This made me very confident when I got to the exam. I timed myself appropriately while answering the exam and ensured i moved to the next question the moment I had exhausted the time I allocated for each one of them.

How did you find out about OpenTuition and how much do you think OpenTuition resources helped towards your success?

A colleague of mine at work gave me a print out of Opentution slides when I had just enrolled for ACCA. That was when I got introduced to Opentuition and decided to register with it. I have since then referred to it mostly for the online lectures and notes.

Thank you for your time and again congratulations!