*** P5 June 2015 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

I did P7 – passed that at 52%, all other papers first time via opentuition self study.

@acparmar said:
ACCA asks our opinion as to what we think of the exam. Every year I get an email asking me to give my feed back. I have made it clear in the past that questions are too complex and scenarios are too long and confusing. So far they have not taken any notice.

I noticed that when I made some remarks about the website, they have taken note of that! So we have to keep telling ACCA through our feed back that P5 has been unnecessarily made complicated. After all the exams finish, they put on the website, asking for our feed back. It will be good to make use of it and tell them how fed up we are with P5 style.

Yes, I ready the questions about 5 times and still could not make sense of them. I thought there must be some printing mistake why I cannot understand the questions, but of course, they are deliberately arranged to confuse us.

Whoever is the examiner needs to sort himself our i am not sure he just find happiness in making us all suffer he should get a life once in a while.

The money we spend on ACCA is too much i think.

I’m still thinking what I could have done better for me to finish and understand the requirements. The questions were so vague esp Q1. Had I done the optional questions first, it could have been better qns 3 and 4 of cause.

Q1 part question, I remember doing this:

4.2mil of additional materials
800k of marketing
500k of auditing

made 5.5 mil of additional costs to catch up, with the selling price of $75 I ended up getting $5 500 000/$75 = 73 333 units for it to breakeven and maintain the same level of profit.

Well that’s how I went about it. Don’t know if I did the correct thing, seems my answer is different from everyone else here.

Ladies and gentlemen, this paper is not as straight forward as it seems.Suprises are on the pipe line.Good luck to everyone.

My first time sitting P5 and despite feeling that some past exam papers were terrible, I didn’t think this was too bad. I can’t say for sure that I think I’ve passed it (you never can with this type of exam), but I know that I’ve given it a good shot.

I agree with what’s everyone saying on here and it is a very tough exam. I’ll share a few tips that I did to unravel the maze of this and apply a logical approach. As you’ve all said, it’s not about knowing the subject matter, but more about how you cope with all in the information in the exam.

I felt very panicky in the few days leading up to the exam and very overwhelmed by the low pass rate and resits of P5. On the morning of the exam, this hadn’t changed, but then I realised that panic was my enemy and if I had any chance at all, I just had to stop giving in to panic and just ignore it. Remarkably, this seemed to work and calm me down. Taking deep breaths seemed to help too.

Next came the reading time. I spent this reading the requirements, highlighting the relevant words (eg in Q1 a), I highlighted Appendix 1) and deciding which options to do and in what order. I then planned out my time giving 1.6 marks for Q1 (as more to read) and 1.7 marks for the options (less to read). I then wrote down timings next to each question, so for example, I knew that by something like 11.57 I should be starting Q2 b). This might sound time consuming, but it seems to control my time management during the exam. I was 10 mins behind on Q1, but caught up on the options papers, writing my last sentence when the time was up.

Next I read through Q1 highlighting everything important. (I’d got about a third of the way down the Q1 scenario by the end of the reading time.) I write the letter M in the margin next to anything that’s a mission or objective, and I write the requirement letter next to any text in the scenario that gives more detail of the requirement. This really helps when you get to the next requirement as you can quickly cross reference the additional detail in the scenario. When I do the first requirement, I ignore anything not relevant, so eg, for the first requirement, I haven’t bothered to read any of the other Appendix which aren’t relevant at this stage. It helps me focus and helps me concentrate.

This technique should help no matter which P5 exam you do. I know it certainly helped me through.

I hope this is of no help to anyone as you all will get a pass 🙂 However, if you are faced with a resit, this technique may help get those precious few extra marks.

audit was 0.5m

I am writing 6th time, what are the options available if p5 does not allow to complete acca.
is that examiner is acca qualified, person? also now difficult to switch p4 or p6, 7 year period may be over by the time, lost acca title with life

It’s not fair after all the hard work that has gone in. I still feel I won’t be passing this exam

It was well time pressured and vague

I want to say something abut acca exams, acca as institute only given a syllabus but acca never tried to supply notes , those who sell kits and text, even confused how to complete one subject matter in one section, notes are not summarized,any one who rely on these text never pass p5,p4, p3 also p2 is dam confused, i realized this matter in f9, never pass by reading these text books, some kits, they write their own answers, not the examiner’s.
one . i failed p5 five times, this time i felt ok, the reason i only read pass papers, i put in to bin those kit and text.
the acca should supply notes for each subject.even examines does not write articles, i could not find Mr Alex single article , instead nick rayan is writing? why .
acca should realize that acca should not be just certificate purpose, it must be knowledge purpose.Some students pass acca fully at the age 23 to 25, just by memorizing, most of then full time student, in my office one day acca member came for an interview , I just given a test, he could not write what is accrual accounting and any single Jv given, I felt shame on acca,
The reason is acca create a business for book writers and tuition providers.Certain Kaplan and bpp tutors are flying other counties for revising and tips, tips never work in acca, Tutors are charging heavily.
acca must ban giving tips.
one of the tuition provider in dubai, sending emails for revision saying that acca marker is attending in revision and great tips, also they said bPP mock and tips are provided, I went in this class and paid 1200 AED for 3 days, now 12 months passed, still i am waiting for mock that they promised.
acca never take responsibility of notes, why they are not breaking in to Kaplan and BPp.?
Please note p5 cannot pass readng text or kits. only examiner answers plan will help, he knows his style, but pbB or kaplan does not know.

Hope acca will give attention to start providing only syllabus, but notes also, then this students conflict will end. acca will give knowledge, not certificate.

@dwilliam468 said:
I’m still thinking what I could have done better for me to finish and understand the requirements. The questions were so vague esp Q1. Had I done the optional questions first, it could have been better qns 3 and 4 of cause.

Q1 part question, I remember doing this:

4.2mil of additional materials
800k of marketing
500k of auditing

made 5.5 mil of additional costs to catch up, with the selling price of $75 I ended up getting $5 500 000/$75 = 73 333 units for it to breakeven and maintain the same level of profit.

Well that’s how I went about it. Don’t know if I did the correct thing, seems my answer is different from everyone else here.

But they don’t make $75 profit per unit. This is how I approached it….

Assuming they sold all 2m, then their previous profit was $108m (2m x ($75-$21))

With 0.8m advertising, 0.5m audit and increased costs of 10% the unit cost became $23.75 ($21*1.1+0.5/2+0.8/2) So profit became $51.25 per unit

To maintain profit of $108m they had to sell 108m/51.25 = 2.107m units

So they had to sell 107k more

Neyazi, bpp o kaplan is just delivering knowlege n concept to us , whereas for acca exam, it requires analysing skill & critical thinking skill ,cant blame the publisher.

may be the examiner wanted for us to know that P5 isn’t easy.