One semester of my Masters has passed. However, the studying is not yet over. I repeat, the studying is not yet over. 

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I start working in the fall in audit as staff and the general advice seems to be to pass the CPA exam before you start working. That advice sounded like a wonderful idea to me especially because who likes to study after long hours of working hard? Terrible, right? 

So, I decided to take 2 exams during my spring semester and 2 exams during the summer to provide me as much time as possible to study and also, so that I can enjoy as much of my last “free” summer before work starts. 

After talking to a bunch of associates and staff, the general consensus seemed to agree that the regulation (REG) and financial accounting reporting (FAR) exams were by far the most difficult. Guess which exam I decided to take first? 

Ding, ding, ding. That’s far, I’ll be taking FAR first, probably in February and then lightening my load by taking audit, and then zipping through the summer with REG and business environment & concepts. 

On the bright side, once you accept an offer with an accounting firm, they actually want you to take and pass the exam ASAP, so they pay for your test prep (Becker, in my case) and pay for you to take the exam (but only the first time you take the exam aka you better pass the exam on your first try or it’s money out of YOUR pocket, yikes!) 

Time to get crackalacking on the studying. Fun times await!