Aida is a NINJA CPA blogger.

On April 24th I retook the BEC Exam. I first reapplied for May 15th, but then my colleague (CPA) told me that she would retake the exam next week, because there is a chance that you may overstudy.

As you may know – there are a number of changes to the format of the exam. I believe if you knew the content before the changes, it shouldn’t be an issue to complete new simulations. The only challenge, in my opinion, is that the simulations are very time consuming.

I also think that one might make a mistake by confusing decimals. I am not sure how the new simulations are graded, but I hope to get at least partial credit if my rounding wasn’t right.

Little tips for new simulation problems:

Right at the beginning, look at the question the examiners are asking. That way you will know what to concentrate on while reading the giant problem.

Once you read the question, try to anticipate what the examiner might use as problem data. This helped me to act quickly, remember necessary formulas, etc.

Pay a lot of attention to the rounding requirement – the worst thing that might happen that you solve the problem but miss the rounding.