CAP2 Timetable & Travel

patrick13

Hi folks,

Im in a position were my ICAI training contract doesnt start for several months, yet I will be studying and attending the CAP2 lectures from oct with the intention of sitting them in summer 2010.

I have an opportunity to visit and meet up with a few friends abroad for a few weeks in Nov; I won't get this opportunity again for a long time. However as the timetable is not up yet, I don't know how feasible this is. Like I would be looking at being away for maybe 4-5weeks.

I'm just wondering how frequent lectures tend to be [weekly or fortnightly] and has the institute started to make attendence compulsory? I personally don't mind missing a few, as I know that I have months of fairly free time to study before work starts... I just want heads up on attendence rules and reprecussions!

I appreciate any comments. Thanks

PS: I will be attending a centre outside of Dublin

Onearmedbandit

patrick13 wrote: »

Hi folks,

I'm just wondering how frequent lectures tend to be [weekly or fortnightly] and has the institute started to make attendence compulsory?
PS: I will be attending a centre outside of Dublin

I attended CAP 2 lectures last year and I found the following:

They are on nearly every week but certainly every two weeks in Dublin.
Attendance is not compulsory from the ICAI point of view and last year they didnt really take attendance on any sort of concise level. Your firm may require you to attend 100% but thats another matter entirely.

I wouldnt recomend missing 4-5 weeks as the course is a tough one, that said I probably missed 4-5 over the year and I passed my exams.

Hope this helps.

patrick13

Looking at the calander, I would miss a total of 4 saturdays/weekends. I will not be working full time until the start of 2010, so will have lots of time to work hard on the CAP2's (relative to those who are working right through). What do people make of this? I know its not ideal, but is it do-able?

Pisco Sour

I found the lectures absolute muck to be honest (financial accounting was ok but the rest useless, especially the tax lecturer for CAP 2 last year!!). I barely made a lecture after january, but studied hard for 11 weeks over study leave and passed. But it really is each to their own with this. Some people get more from the lectures than others.

Dont base your life around the lectures though.

patrick13

Thanks for the reply. I do plan to make every lecture I can and am a very hard worker - I got nearly 70 in my AF degree with no core subject below 60.

How do you know if a firm requires/monitors attendence? I don't recall any mention of it in my contract.

Pisco Sour

patrick13 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I do plan to make every lecture I can and am a very hard worker - I got nearly 70 in my AF degree with no core subject below 60.

How do you know if a firm requires/monitors attendence? I don't recall any mention of it in my contract.

They dont

Onearmedbandit

04072511 wrote: »

They dont

Yeah it would be pretty much impossible for them to monitor it last year as I said the attendance taking at the lectures was very bad (which suits me) so no one could ever really say you were or weren't there. Unless this changes this won't be an issue for you.

I also found most of the lectures to be muck, especially tax as a previous poster said, the lecturer had the teaching ability of a brick. Audit and FR for me were very helpful though.

Hackysack

Honestly, the majority of you learning happens during study leave.

You prettymuch teach yourself the material. Just like college. I didn't find the lectures a great help tbh.

slicus ricus

04072511 wrote: »

I found the lectures absolute muck to be honest (financial accounting was ok but the rest useless, especially the tax lecturer for CAP 2 last year!!). I barely made a lecture after january, but studied hard for 11 weeks over study leave and passed. But it really is each to their own with this. Some people get more from the lectures than others.

Dont base your life around the lectures though.

That's all well and good if you can get 11 weeks of study leave! Unless you work in a Big 4 firm, it is highly unlikely that you will get this amount. In a lot of firms (including the one I work for), all you will be given is the minimum 6 weeks (a week and a half per exam) and if you want to take extra, you will be required to do so using your annual leave. In a lot of firms there will be a limit to the amount of annual leave you will be allowed to use in order to supplement study leave due to the scheduling needs of the firm. In most cases, it will not be practical to take more than a week extra if you want to go on a summer holiday - again, if you work in Big 4, you will probably be able to build up extra time off through overtime but in a lot of other firms, you will not be compensated in this way for overtime unless you're doing serious amounts of it for a particular job. Attendance at lectures may be quite useful/necessary if you're looking at 6-7 weeks of study leave as it is simply not possible to cram for 4 CAP2s this amount of time if you're starting from scratch (i know this from having done 5 CAP1s this year)!

On another note, does anyone know when the timetable for CAP2 will be made available by the institute? You would expect that it would be up now when there is a rumoured start date of late October!!

Pisco Sour

slicus ricus wrote: »

That's all well and good if you can get 11 weeks of study leave! Unless you work in a Big 4 firm, it is highly unlikely that you will get this amount. In a lot of firms (including the one I work for), all you will be given is the minimum 6 weeks (a week and a half per exam) and if you want to take extra, you will be required to do so using your annual leave. In a lot of firms there will be a limit to the amount of annual leave you will be allowed to use in order to supplement study leave due to the scheduling needs of the firm. In most cases, it will not be practical to take more than a week extra if you want to go on a summer holiday - again, if you work in Big 4, you will probably be able to build up extra time off through overtime but in a lot of other firms, you will not be compensated in this way for overtime unless you're doing serious amounts of it for a particular job. Attendance at lectures may be quite useful/necessary if you're looking at 6-7 weeks of study leave as it is simply not possible to cram for 4 CAP2s this amount of time if you're starting from scratch (i know this from having done 5 CAP1s this year)!

On another note, does anyone know when the timetable for CAP2 will be made available by the institute? You would expect that it would be up now when there is a rumoured start date of late October!!

You make some very true points, but that doesnt hide the fact that the lecturers are piss poor and you are probably better off not going to them and studying yourself for 3-4 hours on a saturday.

commercegrad07

Personally, i reckon lectures are an entire waste of time. i know everybody gets something different out of lectures, but from my experience, cap2 lectures are worthless.. lectures are okay in college because ultimately it will be your lecturer who sets the exam.. in the icai, your lecturer does not even get near the planning stage of an exam..
sit down with the book.. thats all you need. just get through the chapters and dont waste entire weekends in lecture halls doodling and wishing the time away. i reckon it´l also give ya a false sense of security come exam time. work hard for your assessments in sfma and auditing.. ultimately it was these assessments that got me over the line..
each to their own i guess, but i wouldnt waste a minute with them

cannns

slicus ricus wrote: »

That's all well and good if you can get 11 weeks of study leave! Unless you work in a Big 4 firm, it is highly unlikely that you will get this amount. In a lot of firms (including the one I work for), all you will be given is the minimum 6 weeks (a week and a half per exam) and if you want to take extra, you will be required to do so using your annual leave. In a lot of firms there will be a limit to the amount of annual leave you will be allowed to use in order to supplement study leave due to the scheduling needs of the firm. In most cases, it will not be practical to take more than a week extra if you want to go on a summer holiday - again, if you work in Big 4, you will probably be able to build up extra time off through overtime but in a lot of other firms, you will not be compensated in this way for overtime unless you're doing serious amounts of it for a particular job. Attendance at lectures may be quite useful/necessary if you're looking at 6-7 weeks of study leave as it is simply not possible to cram for 4 CAP2s this amount of time if you're starting from scratch (i know this from having done 5 CAP1s this year)!

On another note, does anyone know when the timetable for CAP2 will be made available by the institute? You would expect that it would be up now when there is a rumoured start date of late October!!

Timetable is up..

http://www.charteredaccountants.ie/Students/Student-Services/Courses/Courses-Timetables/

Carlitos

cannns wrote: »

Timetable is up..

http://www.charteredaccountants.ie/Students/Student-Services/Courses/Courses-Timetables/

it certainly is, if they had not sent that "70% attendance" letter i would probably treat them like any other college lectures. If you attend over 70% of them they are likely to totally dominate your life and make you quite miserable. i haven't started yet so ill stay positive until then.

i have a technical undergrad with business masters so I'm not sure about how well i could do by just studying at home without assistance, but if the lecturers are as bad as you say then maybe home study is the lesser of two evils. :cool:

prinz

Carlitos wrote: »

If you attend over 70% of them they are likely to totally dominate your life and make you quite miserable.

Spot on. I found CAP2 last year was a disaster, totally sapped any interest and motivation I had to study/pass the exams/etc.

Carlitos

prinz wrote: »

Spot on. I found CAP2 last year was a disaster, totally sapped any interest and motivation I had to study/pass the exams/etc.

What would you suggest from your experience?

I will be in the more advisory/consulting area so I don't think I will get as much practical experience of Audits and so on.

I hope to attend most of them but if my time is indeed better spent doing my own study then I'll head for the library. :rolleyes:

I'm worried I'll hate the lectures/material and struggle with revision as a result.

prinz

Carlitos wrote: »

What would you suggest from your experience?

A different line of work :pac:

Carlitos wrote: »

I will be in the more advisory/consulting area so I don't think I will get as much practical experience of Audits and so on.

Audit is easy enough IMO. It's just very logical straightforward stuff and once you get the hang of one area, you could quickly make a good stab at practices for another area.

Carlitos wrote: »

I hope to attend most of them but if my time is indeed better spent doing my own study then I'll head for the library. :rolleyes: .

Lectures are useful, if you are depending on the notes to get by. If you study the books on an ongoing basis then you should be ok. Some lecturers are good, and others are just terrible. I would suggest you go to the first couple and see which lecturers help you and which ones are counterproductive. The timetable looks a lot better this year than it was last year for Dublin anyway, at least there are less weekends this time. Last year it was almost all weekends, Saturday and Sunday, had a few weekends in a row too, so was doing 3 weeks or so without a day off. Even when I was in lectures I was half asleep. Plus trying to bus it to a lecture in UCD on a Sunday morning... equals less motivation to go.

Carlitos wrote: »

I'm worried I'll hate the lectures/material and struggle with revision as a result.

I had a problem with this for any lecture I wasn't at, when it comes to looking at the notes from the lecturers parts were just baffling. Some of them give the bare minimum in notes and fill in all the details in the lecture on the day.. which wasn't a help.