Meg is a NINJA CPA Blogger.

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person in the CPA studying world who just can’t seem to grasp the test application process. I have registered for 4 tests, showed up to 3 and passed 2.

Each time I go through the registration process, it is completely new to me. I must have done it before, but I sure don’t remember it!

This last time the process worked like this:

September 10th: YES!! I passed Audit, I can stop studying for it and move on to the next section.

Now I have to interrupt with a little NTS. Not a notice-to-schedule, a NOTE TO SELF: “Meg, this is dumb. Once you have prepared for the test to the best of your ability and you have taken the test … Move on! Quit studying for the potential fail!”

But I didn’t listen to my smarter future self, and I wasted a good chunk of my 18 month window studying for a test I already passed. Yes, dumb.

Then I celebrated and wasted a few more days. Finally, on September 17th I went to the Illinois Board of Accountancy website to register for my next exam. Hold up … you can’t register. You have to pay $40 to ask to take the exam. Side Note: this is dumb.

Then, after I paid to ask to take the test, I waited about 15 work days for my NTS (note to self: Meg, your notice-to–schedule doesn’t come yet!). So basically, I waited 3 weeks for a NTS that was never coming, because why? It turns out I am just asking for a payment coupon.

They tell me I should have received my payment coupon almost instantaneously. I don’t see it in my e-mail or spam (but I’m pretty dense on this, so maybe I read it in my sleep and deleted it?)

Finally, I think I have it all together and I go onto the NASBA site to apply for the test. So I pay the $171.25 to take the test. I am really excited about scheduling the test when it turns out, now I wait for my Notice to Schedule to take the exam. This is apparently the 14 day wait.

Each time I go through this process I think, “I could have done this a better way,” yet without fail, I seem to repeat my mistakes. Hopefully, I am half way home on this CPA study journey (fingers crossed…knock on wood…). Maybe on my next exam request, I can act like an actual learned CPA candidate instead of a ‘bumbling eeejit’ as my European husband describes me.