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ACA results

What do people think about the latest ACA results for financial accounting and audit and assurance? Assurance especially seems disappointing from what I have heard. I was just wondering if this is the case elsewhere.

Reply 1

comic_book_guy

The assurance paper everyone in my office found pretty straightforward, so the pass rate being 76-ish was a surprise.

The FA paper was a supreme pain in the back side, and I think the only reason I passed is lucky guessing on any one multiple choice question (yes it was that close) and I think that was the general consensus amongst people I spoke to so the pass rate being 77 was a bit of a surprise. It wouldnt surprise me if they moderated the marking a bit.

I was one of those 120 people that sat the tax exam as well. It was a tough exam and Im relieved with the mark I got, although from what I have seen it seems to have been one of those were people either do exceedingly well or exceedingly badly. Thankfully alot more of the former.

Reply 2

Tednol

Personally, I was delighted with FA and AA. I got a rather stonking 57 in each of them which felt fantastic.

Looking at the office as a whole, a couple of people failed one or both but overall about 80/85% of exams taken were passed.

Reply 3

Cortez

Did the results come out today?

Reply 4

fitt_guy

Isn't 70% the pass rate though? I don't understand...

Reply 5

Cortez

The pass rate is 55% I think? I don't do ACA but someone at work does and that's what she said.

Reply 6

Dajoruna

5 people in my regional office for a big 4 firm got the sack today. shocking exam results, believe a similar situation occurred at cambridge office

Reply 7

Dr. Robotnik

Dajoruna

5 people in my regional office for a big 4 firm got the sack today. shocking exam results, believe a similar situation occurred at cambridge office

Do they actually sack you if you fail once? And what firm is this?

Reply 8

Dajoruna

If you get below 45 then yes. I'm not going to name a firm or go into lengthy detail beyond saying that the results for the A&A exam were a huge surprise to everyone within my regional office and several people who would be considered at the top end of the year group have been dismissed pending serving their notice...

Deloitte.

Do they actually tell you all of this before you actually accept the offer for a training contract? Cos if not it would be pretty harsh of them to sack you without giving you a second chance at the very least. Especially as everyone knows the exams are hard.

Reply 11

Tednol

Dr. Robotnik

Yes it's all in the contract. Everyone knows what they are signing themselves up for.

Reply 12

comic_book_guy

Just to clarify from my post in case there was any confusion...the pass mark, what you need to pass, is 55. The pass rate, the % of people that got 55+ was in the 70s.

Yeah theres been 1 casualty at my office as well and 1 person resitting 1.

Reply 13

theis

I got 62 and 61, not quite as good as Tednol's 57 though :biggrin:

But yeah, I've heard that overall the audit pass mark was surprisingly low. I personally thought it was a reasonably straight forward paper whereas the FA was a disaster with no cash flow in existence.

Reply 14

Dajoruna

FA was hardly a disaster if you got 61/62. I think the problem with the audit exam would seem to be specific to certain areas - whether that means problems with college or markers im not quite sure

Reply 15

djdurham

Hi all,
People in my office on the whole came out feeling the FA exam was disappointing - I think the lack of a cash flow certainly had alot to answer for. That said, most felt that in comparison the assurance paper was passable. This could not be further from the truth with nearly 2/3 failing this, and half who failed being fired as a result :frown:

. Of those who did pass it they did so by a couple of marks at best.
At college however, virtually everybody passed all the audit mock tests, most with marks to spare. People who failed were generally getting in the mid 60's at least regularly with many reaching towards 70 and even 80%!!!

In my mind there is definitely something up here. Whether college have been leading us up the garden path and marking really easily or external markers have been particularly harsh I don't know.

Has anybody else's offices experienced anomolous results like this? Or are your results generally reasonably consistent with college marks? Also do you feel college prepared you well for either exam?

Cheers.

Reply 16

comic_book_guy

^^ About the FA exam, I agree completely. I felt somewhat distraught. It wasnt the lack of cash flow as such for me. It was the fact that there were 2 questions on financial statement extracts, whereas at college we were definitely prepared on the basis of 1 extract question and 3 on full financial statements. I did pass, but it was so close it came down to lucky guesses on the MCQs I think.

As for audit, I was the only person in my class in college who failed every single audit mock. When it came to the real deal I ended up getting in the mid 70s. So it is an anomalous result as well, although in the opposite way.

As for the college preparing me for the exam well, speaking personally, for the tax paper yes, but for audit and for financial accounting, NO. For tax we had a terrific tutor and she made it all very easy. We had her for the tax e-assessment as well and no one in my class got below 75 on that. And as far as I know there were no failures from my class for the written one either.

For FA...as I said, we were prepared very clearly on the basis of only 1 extract question. In fact we only covered them for like a couple of hours on the last day. I spent alot more time working on them on my own because I tend to be over-cautious when it comes to exams and I knew it was a big area which we didnt cover enough of in class.

For AA....I screwed up every mock exam and thoroughly used the question bank after that. Most people who did well in the mocks didnt give it as much importance. And looking at it, I did find the college marking was inconsistent with the question bank, mainly the mark allocations for different types of questions.

Another observation about AA was a single question was worth 32%, practically a third of the paper. If someone went in a slightly wrong direction in that, it would have significantly handicapped their ability to score highly in the paper.