Passing P5

Hi everyone

I wish to share some thoughts with you on paper P5. Being an option paper at final stage of ACCA, it can be real challenging. I sat for my last exam in Sep 17 and was delighted to pass 56 marks and now am an affiliate.

However I wish to add it came after a few failures, I had 3 attempts and had 49, 49 and 37 consecutively. I was terribly upset and more depressed I had to go through the same things again and again. I was in the same mind frame as many of you are feeling … saying ‘ I will keep sitting until I get it’.

But you won’t pass it until you challenge P5 by having a contingency plan, an approach that tell you that you will overcome this obstacle. My advice to you is having a methodological approach with P5. I didn’t give up and I made some personal assessment until I was 100% convinced that P5 is what I want to do and ‘I enjoy this subject’.

Henceforth, I developed my approach as from 3 months before exam:
– I started training physically and mentally – running in the park made such a big impact, I noticed that was giving me mental power. By exercising I started to gain mental strengths and had more of a positive outlook and focused.

– I bought the latest study materials – study text & Exam Kit by recommended providers

– Every weekend I sat 5 hours per day going through the study text and typing using a word doc in my laptop and also adding a mind map after each topic.

– During the week days, I set 3 days, I was productive in the early morning doing exam questions Section B only the topics that I covered on Saturday & Sunday.

– I started listening to audio from accaglobal webcast and Youtube called ‘accountancycollege’, very useful when commuting to work or travel.

– I refrained using too many websites or tuition providers video or textbook because it deviated my plans.

– I listened to all webcast from ACCAglobal – exam techniques & approaches.

– Lastly, summarised notes into more mind mapping structure.

– ACCAGlobal website – reference on P3 & P5 published notes & articles were key drivers towards the end of my last month.

– I kept 3 weeks to be in the library, 3 full days out of 7 days. I focused doing the Section A in date order in the morning. In the afternoon – 2 Section B questions and attempted corrections on the same day.

Keep motivating yourself and remember this paper has little credit if you use knowledge- based approach. You require to be more specific to the question needs and be practical and analytical. Try to use models and the elements that drive their success.

Be like Usain Bolt when you’re sitting for the option paper and remember it is like taking a postgraduate hence be analytical and cover all chapters. Keep going beyond … stretch your goals.

Good luck 🙂 It makes a massive difference once qualified and also you have worked very hard to get there, you can beat P5.