My general tips for completing ACCA exams

Hi all,

A quick message to thank Opentuition for the fantastic service provided here. I passed my final ACCA exams in December 2016 all with first time passes thanks to the resources provided here. I did this working full time, and sat my first exam in December 2014. All exams I self studied for and never once paid for classroom lectures or revision courses.

I thought I would provide some tips or insights on how I completed the exams. General disclaimer: this seemed to work for me, I’m not saying it will work for you. But some people may find this useful.

1. Sit exams regularly – when I first started exams were every 6 months. But now they are every quarter. Make the most of this opportunity.

2. Don’t sit too many exams each time! This was crucial working full time – I never contemplated sitting three exams per session and only sat two exams in three sittings.

3. Revision technique/method – you may be unwilling to accept the advice from OT that watching their videos and then practising is enough to pass but it really is! I used BPP practise and revision kits and went through every single question and mock exam in those before the exam. This after having watched the OT lectures and making rough notes on the printouts available. This is the key piece of advice I’d like to share: if I had to start all over again I’d aim to complete every single question in a revision kit twice (not the once I did). Practising questions and exams makes all the difference.

4. I also read all of the technical articles per course. Though I don’t recall seeing a question directly on an article these were very beneficial for understanding the course content. Also print off the syllabus and make sure you have at least a rough understanding of every single point on these.

5. Study whenever/wherever you can. Concentrated study (i.e. in a library without distractions) is crucial prior to the exam but leading up to this make the most of little pieces of time wherever you can. I regularly used the 15 minute train journey to and from the city to watch all or part of an OT video. 15 minutes twice a day over a week is 2.5 hours and I’d have been commuting anyway. I made myself wake up earlier in the mornings and generally did an hour of study before work too. Making these changes gave me 7.5 hours extra study every week over someone who may have waited to be at home after work to start their study. Doing a few extra hours (2-4 per day) on the weekends gives around 12 hours a week with extra just prior to an exam. You see how quickly the hours can add up this way.

6. Once you get to P level exams try to choose the options you did best in at F level. If you want to take two P level exams per session try to match an “easier” one with a more difficult one. I’d suggest matching P1 or P3 as the easiest P levels with one of the more difficult ones.

That’s about it. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them. The absolute keys for me were fitting study into “spare” parts of the day and practising from the BPP revision kit.