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

I feel the pain of all those who have sat for this paper more than once. My first p5 attempt was June 2014 and i failed with 36, i was scared it would be the first of many attempts since a lot of people i know had written this paper more than 4 times. I then asked someone who had cleared this paper on first attempt what i needed to do. His advice was to focus on past papers from 2011 to date so that i could understand and get used to the examiner’s language. That was the key to my clearing P5 in December 2014 and that ended my ACCA journey. Having also achieved membership, i wish to encourage all struggling with this paper to practice practice and not to ever lose hope. ACCA is about question practice and not merely mastering theories and principles. P5 is not an easy exam but its also not impossible. Remember that.

@kelly2010 said:
I feel the pain of all those who have sat for this paper more than once. My first p5 attempt was June 2014 and i failed with 36, i was scared it would be the first of many attempts since a lot of people i know had written this paper more than 4 times. I then asked someone who had cleared this paper on first attempt what i needed to do. His advice was to focus on past papers from 2011 to date so that i could understand and get used to the examiner’s language. That was the key to my clearing P5 in December 2014 and that ended my ACCA journey. Having also achieved membership, i wish to encourage all struggling with this paper to practice practice and not to ever lose hope. ACCA is about question practice and not merely mastering theories and principles. P5 is not an easy exam but its also not impossible. Remember that.

i hate p5

@samiirah said:
dear all, acca feedback survey is out.pls make sure we all fill in the survey to xpress our cncerned for this paper.

ACCA will never change the style or wording of the paper. They believe it is a paper which seperates the boys from the men and so will try to maintan their ‘high’ p5 standards.

I believe the questions will increasingly get tougher, so more people can pay more money to resit especially now that there four sittings per year.

@akshay34u said:
I can say that the paper was fair. Question 1 surely was lengthy with lot of appendices. It became difficult to assess additional metric for response 2 of the question.

I attempted q2 and q3. Q4 had something about management style. Thats why did not attempted it since I skipped this in my revision :p.

Q3 was a challenging one. Had to calculate KPIs for Customer perspective on the BSC.

Overall, all the relevant models were already applied to case scenarios, thus eliminating potential easy marks. It became difficult to asses information when everything was already input on model.

Hope to pass the paper.

Have a good day.

This is my 9th time writning this exam I hope it will be my last. If i do not pass i will switch to P4 which will be my last

@adski989 said:
You’ve spent 5 years doing this one paper??!! That’s crazy!

sounds ridiculous but when you consider there have been only two sittings every year and if you miss any sitting in any one year…..then it’s possible esp. when you have an examiner from hell. I know someone who sat a paper 12 times

Why not switch to audit or tax? Both are not as ambiguous as P5, and are easier to pass….. I I fail on my second attempt I am switching to audit.

I passed P7 … so is tax easier ?

Wow i feel your pain for the exam. This was my 2nd attempt. I know for the first i was no prepared one bit, i just did the exam because i paid for it but this time around i read all the material but while in the exam i kept re-reading the requirements and at some point could not figure out what the examiner wanted.
It is really sad that we feel this way.

@lzyjzy said:
I though it was a very fair paper. Definitely not easy, but it was the right level of tough – challenging but not ridiculously difficult. The questions were also clear (except maybe Q2c but I wasn’t sure how to link non financial internal / external to the alliance) and there was no info overload (ha ha). It was time challenging but you could definitely finish it on time if you paced yourself – which I did, and managed to finish right on the dot, except maybe would have liked to elaborate more on my last sentence but ah well!

Self studied this paper as I’m working, and enjoyed the syllabus, am hoping for a pass as its my last paper.

I did p4 last December and can see a huge difference between the quality of exam paper set. Both syllabus were interesting but the p4 exams tend to be a mess of info overload and ridiculous time pressure. Huge contrast to this which was reasonable.

thank you!!! this is probably one of the first positive quotes ive seen about this paper – much appreciated since i will be sitting it come Dec,

Didn’t know humor was not the way to go on a forum like this, and people do love inferring things here.

What I meant as I did Q1 best to my understanding but due to “Historic Trends” of previous exmas where students thought they were answering the question until examiner uploaded his, I will have to wait for examiners answer to conclude if I understood the question. I did not actually wrote historic trends.

I have done all the papers set by examiner twice. At times I will read the question and will not no where to start, Or write an asnwer and when I moved on to the next part realised I had answered the later part in the first part. Preparing for this paper was hardest and it made P4 look like a breeze. So my biggest fear was I will read the question and will not know how to start.

So yes, I did find Q3 was very easy with clearly worded question and fair mark allocation and one knew what to write and how much to write.

Q1 – I’m not sure you will get any marks for discussing historic trends – I think the marks were about the suitably of the metrics given the company has a low asset base and outsources all its activities….

8 marks for EVA around – lack of ability to control WACC, goal congruency with maximising shareholder wealth but suitably for divisional performance – in terms of controllability and comparability in teh light of the new product launch and associated marketing spend????

Q3 – are you sure – yes it was easy to do some ratios – but did you recommend and justify in the context of the scenario (not just general context) – i.e. where the marks are…

I hate P5

LOL)))))