General ACCAHow much time do you spend?

Depends what you are comfortable with and how hectic your lifestyle is lol!
Each year I aim on doing two exams in June, and one in December (or using Dec for resits if necessary). So far Ive passed everything on the first attempt so fingers crossed.
I start studying for the two June exams in January and spend 8 hrs (2 hrs per night Mon - Thur) then give myself Friday night off. Up until about 4 weeks before the exams I only study on Sat/Sun if theres something I want to go over or if Im at a loose end.
After the June exams, I have a break and start studying again in August for the Decemeber exam.
During July I try to get some PER done.
Hope this helps!
Good luck.

It depends on how do you do it. I study an hour from Jan-Feb, for each paper (1 hr for each paper, like 1hr for F4 and 1 hr for F6) revising all the days work. From March I pick up my pace, doing Past Papers and checking out Examiner Reports studying my answers with examiners reports. and in April I include time attacks on my studies, writing my answers in given time.So I start with an hour/paper and in May it turns into a five-six hour episode. Been doing this since O' Levels. It has helped so far, But maybe you should plan something that suits you. You should choose your own timings BUT on daily basis. The time should be when your mind is charged (in morning, or if you are working some where then take a nap for an hour or two and then saddle up.) because you don't have to learn the study material by heart, you need to understand it and practice on it so that you have extensive knowledge about the paper and you can clear the subject on exam date. A cup of tea is always cheering. And be confident during your practice runs of past papers. A lot friends I know, get into trouble because they panic, if you can't work out an answer, leave it, move on completing your paper as you can always grapple with it in extra time after you've completed the rest of your paper.
Hope you perform well this June.
Best of luck!!!

Interesting you mention this.
I am logging my study time for two exams, on the basis that I think each exam requires roughly 100 hours in total of study time.
I guess it's largely dependent on what is considered effective studying, ie gazing out the window doesn't count.

F6 was the first exam I did. And personally I think it's a good one to start with. Both papers are tough, but at least they're interesting. They also mix element of knowledge and application as well numerical. My tip would be to get quick, confident and accurate with the numerical elements. Up to the point where you almost do it without thinking. That way in the exam you may have little more time to check.


Good luck.

I just want to say to everyone who wrote about their study techniques, I am planning to adopt your suggestions so I can complete all my ACCA exams. I was planning to give up. I started in 2007 and i only passed 1 exam - F8, got exemptions from the Level 1 from doing CAT. 'I'm planning to go to University in September. I have 5 years left so I want to complete it hopefully. Any suggestions will be welcomed.

1 to 1.5 month daily 6 hrs for each paper enough

Hi members, I have read all your comments and they are very useful. I am returning to studying after many years away :(. Aiming to do two exams per sitting starting this December.
Was thinking of doing F4 plus one other, any suggestions which one will go best, I have already completed F5.
Thanks

Just thought I would balance these answers and say I dont pick up the books until one month before and do 1 hour per day and then 20 hours the weekend before the exams, couple in the morning before the exam (Mneumonics etc). Terrible preperation in comparrison to the above people and I wish I was more like that. I have passed 9 out of 10 so far but no great scores, scraping through.

This sounds good but not sure if I would have such a ghost success rate. Is this because you have other committments - I have two children, do voluntary work and work full time !

hi,

I recommend to everyone taking some time off to finish your exams - i took 6 month off and I did 6 papers (dec - 2 papers, june - 4 papers) in that time...

i do on avarege 9-11 hr per week in Mar & Apr and 30-35 hrs per week in May & June and i work full time, so its a matter of commitment and how many hours you are comfortable with.

Having my exam in 10 days time but can't focus or concentrate anymore. Can't do more than 4 hours a day :( I feel that Ian not motivated enough help plssssssss :(

it does not really matter much how much time u spend studying.what really matters to me is how much u able to grasp for all the hours.Studying to me is all about learning and application.it is always good to make sure that the little u grasp should be able to influence the way u think and express yourself from that moment onwards.In this way u may not need to spend so much time studying but instead applying u study each time

What is most important is for you to have knowledge of how the exam comes like. Then work on your strengths and weaknesses../

Hi how much time should a FIA student spend per week ?

Hi any one can upload his or her time table i want to have an idea am very bad on time management thanks in advance

Marky 123

Lucky you by passing everything how do you study I understand you give 2hrs per paper for 4 days a week how do you do within that 2hrs reading or doing practical question please answer me dear

yes. within that two how you do it? i mean just reading the study text, notes or kit what??

Ok lets see what I can do.
Its hard to say really.
The first rule, and you MUST stick to this one rigidly, is be firm with yourself. Do not allow yourself to slack - if you really dont want to study one night - you must make the time up another day.
The first thing I do is (using a spreadsheet) I make a timetable from the day I start studying right up to the day before I do the exam.
I split this into segments of how I want to study. Typically 7pm-9pm Monday to Thursday, I NEVER study Friday evenings - that is my night off..
I then split the weekends into an optional session Saturday am/pm for reading or question practice, and Sunday the same.
Then I mark onto it the days I know in advance I am going to be tied up and cant study.
I try to allow at least 3 weeks for revision and question practice.
I also log everything so that I can see where my time is going and what I need to concentrate more on.

From a study point of view, When I do theory I read and make my own notes from textbooks (Usually Kaplan), and I also follow rigidly the Opentuition lectures.

I am studying F9 at the moment on the same basis.

Hope this helps

Best of luck to you all :)

PS Ive tried to upload a copy of my timetable but not sure how to do it?

@marky123 said:
PS Ive tried to upload a copy of my timetable but not sure how to do it?

U'll see the DOCUMENTS tab. click on it. UPLOAD A NEW DOCUMENT at the bottom of the page.

thanks for the advice Marky. I am a full time working mum with 2 kids. Finding it so hard to stick to a study table with all i need to do, but time is running out wildly and I am stressing big time. I think I will be giving your method a proper go. Just need to stay awake past 9 as I will only be able to sit down later at night.

Hi Marlisle, I am also a full time working mum of 2 and have just started ACCA last week though BPP online live classrooms, I feel your pain with trying to stay awake past 9 and finding the time to study, its really difficult :( ... I was just wondering ... I completed AAT in 2008 so have been out studying for some time while I got married, had my second child ... I feel like i've forgotten everything! I am exempt from the first 3 papaers due to my AAT qualification but my question is, how much of AAT do you need to remember to get through the ACCA papers? ... any advice appreciated.

Hey other mummies!
I have also 2 kids (2&4yrs old) and full time work. I study in the mornings, because that is the only time at day when I can be alone :D So if I leave home 7:30 in the morning, I wake up 4:30. It gives me approx 2h for studying (of course I have other things to do in the mornings too).

In the evening, I go to sleep same time with kids, usually at 9pm. If I feel very tired after week, I take it back by taking some extra nap on Sat and/or Sun.

@pinkfizz82
Hi there.
I qualified my AAT back in 1994 (Yes 1994!! lol) but ACCA still granted me a conditional exemption.
I know its not really a comparison since I completed AAT such a long time ago and it will have changed dramatically now - but I found ACCA to be completely new. My hardest paper so far was F5 Performance Management - I would say I could remember about 10% of this from AAT days!!
I think my biggest advantage is that I have worked in Audit and Accounts Practice since 1991 so have kept up to date with modern accounting that way.
I basically started each subject from scratch. The paper I found easiest so far was Taxation due to my workplace knowledge.
I would guess that AAT is now very similar to ACCA F1, F2 & F3.

Hi ninska - there is no way I could wake up at 4.30am, even if I went to bed with the kids! Thats amazing, wish I could do it but I'm definitely no morning person haha.
Hi Marky123 - Thanks for this, having spoken to my tutor now who also says the same, that ACCA is from scratch and I'll remember things from AAT as I go along, I'm not as worried as I was, as I work for local governement I dont get involved in a lot of what I learned at AAT but I'm hoping its all still in there somewhere (altho a second child may now have killed a few more brain cells!! haha) ... I didnt do taxation at AAT either so this will all be new to me ... can only but try :) when i figure out how to fit in the studying!;) ... I had considered doing the first 3 papaers but it just seems silly when I get the exemptions anyway.

Hi again,
My exemptions (as I understand it from conversations with ACCA) still enable me to be classed as chartered when I complete the qualification, but if I ever wanted to set up in practice as a Chartered Accountant I would have to forfeit my exemptions and take exams F1, 2 & 3.
As I have no plans to do this I will be happy just qualifying! :) But who knows - at the end of it I will see how I feel - If it only means another session of exams it may be worthwhile forfeiting! - Surely if I can at that stage pass F4 to 9 and the dreaded P's then surely I can pass the Introductory stage.....!!! lol

If your AAT qualification is recent then you really have no need to sit the exams - you still get full benefit as if you had sat the exams. Mine was just because it was over 10yrs ago that I qualified.

My biggest regret now is not carrying on straight after AAT - but you know how it is, 20 year old guy back then, beer, cars, girls lol - much more fun than studying ACCA!!

Best of luck anyway

Hi, I thought I'd reply to this since it was informative when I was trying to decide whether to do an ACCA or not. I learn with BPP. For each exam, they do 3-4 'days' of lectures (a day equals 6 hours), after which I write up the lectures, which usually takes another 4 hours, so that's about 40 hours to complete a course. This 40 hours is spread over a month usually. Then between the course ending and the exam I complete the practice question kit BPP provide, which is something like 2500 minutes, which is another 40 hours. Then I do some mock exams, BPPs online tests, and rote learning of formula etc, so add some more on there. I do an exam every 3 months, which equates to 2 months 'on' and one month 'off' (to relax) i.e. 1 month for the course, 1 month for revision, 1 month wait until the next course beings. Broken across the whole 2 months it probably adds up to about 2 hours a day. Which would be 14 hours a week. It is a lot of work, but if you are determined it can be done. I've completed F1-F8, and I'm due to take my F9 exam in two weeks. I find the weeks before the exam to be really intense. I've always done it exam by exam (one exam a quarter), I cannot understand for the life of me how people sit two exams at once, my brain would explode. But people do! Thanks Luke

Thanks a lot Luke for sharing this! Surely is helpful! Its a good strategy to give 3 months solely to 1 paper... It gives better space for focus, preparation and eases down the pressure, though some would find it to be a bit boring to do just 1 paper per sitting. Im totally not in the favour of doing more than 1 paper per sitting(too much pressure!). But there are those I know who give 3 papers in one sitting (I will NOT recommend that honestly! ) We should avail all the 4 sittings efficiently. In order to secure a better pass and avoid re-sits. This is something i have learnt. I did F1, F2 and F3 together in the same sitting... And it was crazy! Thank God I passed in all of them! So now I have started doing 1 paper per sitting. But with a different strategy. There are some papers which I know i will need more than 3 months like F6 and F8. So for F6 what i did was i started preparing for it from the day I started F5. I slowly prepared for F6 with F5. Gave F5 in June '18 and will give F6 in September' 18 (next week) This gave me about 6 months for F6. I know for many this might be too much... But i know myself... I needed more time for the concepts of f6 to feed in my head! I will do the same for F7 and F8. F7 in December and F8 in March but will start of preparing 'slowly' for F8 along with F7. ( i will need to give more time for F8 since its a theory paper) And you rightly mentioned Luke, the weeks before the exams are really intense. For me it's always like, "Too Much to do, Too much to get done with but too little time in hand." The panic mode automatically switches on... Which should not so. Hope this helps any one who reads this.

@marky123 said: @pinkfizz82<br /> Hi there.<br /> I qualified my AAT back in 1994 (Yes 1994!! lol) but ACCA still granted me a conditional exemption.<br /> I know its not really a comparison since I completed AAT such a long time ago and it will have changed dramatically now - but I found ACCA to be completely new. My hardest paper so far was F5 Performance Management - I would say I could remember about 10% of this from AAT days!!<br /> I think my biggest advantage is that I have worked in Audit and Accounts Practice since 1991 so have kept up to date with modern accounting that way.<br /> I basically started each subject from scratch. The paper I found easiest so far was Taxation due to my workplace knowledge.<br /> I would guess that AAT is now very similar to ACCA F1, F2 & F3.

AAT is fresh start accounting. It just takes a basic knowledge of accounting to attempt the AAT exam. ACCA is the toughest one and it for accountants looking for career progression.