Just finished the ACA on the Deloitte Brightstart Apprenticeship Scheme, AMA :)

Well done! When does your TC finish? What are your plans now?

Hi, I'm starting the same course at Deliotte in a couple weeks and I had a couple questions:

Does anyone get kicked out of the programme if they don't pass any exams for the ACA?
Maths wise, is there a lot of difficult maths in the exams?
Per week, how many hours would you say its necessary to revise outside of office hours?
And also, generally how did you find your experience?

Any advice you could give me is appreciated!

Welcome to the firm! Are you starting in audit?

-there’s a structure in place for fails and hard fails. Brightstarts get 3 attempts and grads get 2
-some of the exams are “mathsy”, but not complex mathematics, all formula driven so once you learn those you’ll be fine
-it depends how close you are to exams, a month out maybe a couple hours a day for 5 days a week? Then closer to the exam you’ll be in college so you’ll be revising for 8ish hours a day
-Rewarding but challenging. If I knew what I do now, I’d still do what I’ve done, as sometimes it gets really rough but there really is no better base for you than Big 4 ACA qualified (speaking in terms of the finance world)

I start my Audit School Leaver Apprenticeship at Grant Thornton this September! I had some questions:
- do you regret the ACA?
- how hard were the exams?
- is the maths basic gcse level?
- when is the best time to study for the exams?
- do you have any resources to help for the exams?
- how difficult was the ACA on a scale from 1-10?
- what are you working as now?

I hope to do an MBA and go into consulting or explore my options further.

I’m not really worried about studying for the exam alongside full time work, I chose Grant Thornton for this very reason as opposed to the Big 4 as the work life balance is wayyy better.

Hey, ive recently applied to GT's School leaver apprenticeship. Do you have any way i can contact you to ask some questions? xx