Cap 2 2017

ACAguy wrote: »

Hi everyone. I know most of you have passed and don't use this thread anymore but I was wondering would anyone have any good advice for SFMA. I felt very prepared going into the exam but I just got completely thrown by the casestudy and that started my downfall. I found some of the questions very vague and had difficulty with several questions being asked within one question. Also what did everyone bring into the exam and I think I probably spent too much time flickign through what I had brought it. Any advice would be appreciated as I just need to pass this exam in october or i am screwed.

I agree with Pixie 11123 do the past exams at least the last 4 focus on the Autumn ones. Download the revision materials from the website they are very good. I got the revision notes printed out the pages for theory only and went through them making notes of things I wanted to expand or wanted things organised in a different way. I organised all the MA slides in one document and created notes for formulas or templates to answer questions (basically steps to follow when you are doing specific questions and variances). Finally I labelled everything by areas so that I spent as little as possible flicking through notes. The folder was prepared for study purposes and at exam time I pretty much had and idea of where in the folder it was whatever I needed to check but I did need to occasionally check the labels on the corners of the pages to know where things were. I can pass you the notes I did myself by hand but people find my handwriting "difficult" to read (hieroglyphs are easier to read than my handwriting basically)

I could recommend you to go to the revision courses organised by either Chartered Grind School or ACA Revisions. I heard the guy in Chartered is a "rock star" for SFMA (very good teacher basically) and people that went to any of his classes were very happy. I went to the summer ones organised by ACA Revisions. It was one day in Dublin half SF and half MA it was very good to be honest and my only complain is that I didn't get any proper notes and the notes I took were very crappy because I had damaged ligaments in the right thumb and I could barely write. But the selection of questions they did to review and prepare you for the exam was really good and some things they either explained them better than in the class or I managed to understand it better than in class. From the practice point of view I found the revision very, very helpful. They have a revision day 23rd of September in Dublin. If you go to any of these study in advance and go with a list of trouble areas so that they can help you. both teachers in ACA Revisions were very nice and answered during and after the lecture questions. I would recommend you to contact Chartered and a teacher for SFMA but if you don't have the teacher's direct email, Chartered right now are very slow answering anything :rolleyes:

Is anyone still having trouble enrolling for FAE?

Is anyone repeating FR and SFMA and if so how are you getting on?
Also Tanit thank you for your advice it was very helpful. I think at the moment one of my issues is having too much notes and im not the best at tabbing i literally just put tabs in one for each topic. Any assitance on this would be most helpful. Getting very nervous for both of them to be honest. 
If anyone had any specific templates they would be most helpful or just recommending what topics to do templates for as i spent too much time in the exam going through my folder

Thank you that is a lot of help so far.

I have steps to each type of consolidation and nearly every exam q done for each single standard.

Have all the formulas in the chartered grind school book and the notes that someone posted on here according to topic.

What cap 1 notes should i be focusing on as I didnt do cap 1 and before this year had not done mgt acc or finance in 2/3 years which i found was a disadvantage.

tanit wrote: »

Another thing that I forgot to add. I did attempt between 80 and 85 marks in the exam I chose to go for quality over quantity but a classmate and friend of mine that was also running out of time what she did at the end is for the ones she couldn't attempt proper she wrote down like steps or directions of how she would answer the questions if given enough time. That shows that you know your stuff but you are not doing the calculations because you are running out of time and in her case it seems to have work out (she passed everything as well) and I heard more people that got good results doing that.

If you are running out of time in the exam dedicate the last few minutes to do something like so that they know that you know the material and you are simply running out of time. You will get some marks for it.

PM sent

ACAguy wrote: »

Backtothebooks I never got a PM I assumed you meant to send one to me

The PM was for me and I saw this right now and without any coffee on me yet I thought it was bactothebooks.

You need to relax. Drink some chamomile tea to help with the nerves. Try in the health shop if they have something stronger that does not make you sleepy and just practice with the revision materials from Chartered. The notes they have for revision is what I used for SFMA. More notes right now will only confuse you more

You are stressing too much and that's what is dragging you down. Practice don't think about getting more notes. Do lists of things that you find difficult in the questions you do, or that you did wrong and go through that list

ACAguy wrote: »

Tanit thank you very much for your helpful calming advice. Would anyone have a folder that splits the exam papers by topic so for each topic have the exam question and solution tabbed and then sub divided for what part of the topic has been asked. this has been highly recommended to bring to the exam so if someone has such I would be willing to pay as it would probably take me a couple of hours to make it myself as at the moment I just have all the exam papers together double sided

Honestly I have to ask where you're even going to get the time to check these things in the exam. Have your books, and have a "cheat sheet" for each topic on the desk. The rest of what you need is in your head. It's already there.

Sure, have more detailed notes with you and solutions to past questions in case your head goes completely blank for a minute, but if you find yourself constantly going through those you'll run out of time.

SFMA is a very specific subject. You have to make sure your answer is very specific to the exact scenario in the question. Referencing past papers for how to answer will just make you be more generic where you could be specific.

Clear templates of how to do each type of calculative question, an outline structure for the different types of narrative question, and a quick reference of things you consistently make a mistake on and need to be careful with are what you need to focus on.

Taxuser1 wrote: »

would anyone have the timetable of lectures from this past year 2017/2018? looking to see what days SFMA and FR were on and the weekends involved, might be similiar next year

https://www.charteredaccountants.ie/docs/default-source/Students/201718/Timetables-2017-18/cap2-dew-group-b6ac06a4908b3649fa7d8ff000079c5aa.pdf?sfvrsn=0

best of luck