CPA Exam candidates: rejoice. Waiting up all night or getting up early in the morning to check your CPA Exam scores are a thing of the past.

When I set out to dialogue with the AICPA and NASBA about the CPA Exam, my goal was to simply shed some light on the entire process and give candidates a better understanding of what was going on behind the scenes – particularly while they waited to get their scores back. What I did not anticipate was:

1. the AICPA taking the time to answer my questions
2. some tangible change in the score release process by talking with NASBA

My conversation with Patricia Hartman, NASBA Director of  National Candidate Database & CPAES Examination Operations, is still on-going and will be released soon, but it has already brought about a significant improvement in the score reporting process:

CPA Exam candidates will now get their scores through NASBA five to six hours earlier than in previous windows.

People who are new to the process might sluff this off as no big deal. However, those of us who have stayed up all night – or have gotten up so many times the night of score releases that they might as well have stayed up all night, will see this as significant progress.

Under the old process, NASBA scores came rolling in around 3:30 am EST, which made for MANY sleepless nights for those of us hoping/praying that scores would magically appear in the wee hours of the morning, only to have 7am roll around and nothing to show for it but bags under our eyes and frustration.

Patricia told me today that she went to IT and asked them to move the batch scoring process to #1 in the que. Instead of running at midnight CST, they are now starting the process at 7pm. Instead of scores coming out at 4:30am CST, they will now come out between 9pm and midnight CST the night before (plan on it being closer to midnight than 9, though).

The only caveat with this is that there may be some glitches with shifting things around, but just know that starting with BEC in this window, scores should be coming out 5-6 hours earlier than normal…giving candidates plenty of time to go out and celebrate or drown their sorrows – whatever the case may be.

The updated score release predictions (for NASBA only… California, Illinois, Virginia, etc. CPA Exam scores should be released as originally scheduled) are as follows:

• May 17 – BEC
• May 19 – AUD
• May 20 – REG
• May 21 – FAR

update: AICPA released BEC earlier than expected…here's some bold prediction updates (reckless and not for the faint of heart…)

• May 14 – BEC
• May 15 – AUD
• May 18 – REG
• May 19 – FAR

Thanks for reading.

-Jeff

Photo courtesy of Flickr user J Weissmahr under this Creative Commons license.