fbpx

Best CPA Review Course in 2022?

best cpa review course 2022

Share This...

What’s the best CPA review course in 2022? I get asked this question all the time, and in this video, I’ll explain why there’s 3 things much more important than what CPA review course you’re using.

Watch on Youtube…

Episode Timestamps

  • 00:00 Best Review Course
  • 01:24 3 Main Things Much More Important than Your Review Course
  • 01:33 1. Daily Routine
  • 03:35 2. Study Methods
  • 07:44 3. Re-review
  • 09:57 Recap

So what is the best overall CPA review course? Is there one CPA review course that is significantly more effective than all the others to help you pass your CPA exams? I’m Nate in SuperfastCPA, and I get asked this question all the time in two forms. First, obviously new CPA candidates that are wondering what review course they should pick.

They’re really confused. They’re not sure what the different features are. And a lot of people just kind of assume that there is one best review course. The second form of this question is people that are really struggling with the study process and they’ll email me and say something like I have X review course, and it is just not working for me.

I think I’m going to switch to Y review course, and I think that will solve all my problems. What do you think?

So I’m going to surprise you here and say there is not one review course that is significantly better than all the other review courses. Assuming you have, you know, sufficient access like you have a main review course. Any of the ones that you’ve heard of, Becker, Gleim, Wiley, Roger, Surgent. Any of the main review courses have the information that you need to pass.

The Best CPA Review Course in 2022? Actually…

So in this video, what we’re actually going to cover is the three main things that are much, much more important than what review course you’re using.

1. Daily Routine

So the first thing is of course your daily routine. All right. Your $3,000 review course, it doesn’t do any good. If you are not using it consistently and effectively which we’ll get to. If you’re not using it consistently on a daily basis.

Now, if you struggle with consistency, what is likely going on is you are setting too big of a goal for yourself. Now, most people you’re probably working full time. If you’re trying to study four to five hours every day and you’re working full-time, that is incredibly hard to do. And not only is it hard to do, it’s not really a matter of willpower, just behaviorally and the way that, I mean, everyone’s lives are busy, right?

It’s just almost impossible to find and effectively study for four to five hours every single day. So the first and main thing that you can do to make your study routine, to make it more likely that you will be consistent is, this is almost counterintuitive, it’s to make your main study sessions shorter.

In fact, what we teach our clients is how to have a two hour main study session and on workdays, that’s all the time that you need to spend with your review course, when you know how to study effectively. Now going into all those study strategies and you know how to use the MCQs most effectively, how to use your video lectures most effectively or should I say strategically,

that would take a lot longer than this video but that is why we have our free one-hour training webinars where we will walk you through our study framework, which is how to use your review course. Doesn’t matter what review course it is. How do you use your review course much, much more efficiently and much more effectively.

You can sign up for one of those at our website at superfastcpa.com or by clicking the button on this video, or there should be a link down in the description. Now, if you have that covered and you’re dedicated, you’re regimented, you figure out how to study each day consistently.

2. Study Methods

The second thing that is much, much more important than what review course you’re using is your study methods.

Is your studying effective? Do you have an actual strategic way that you move through and dissect each lesson you figure out what is most important from that lesson in the same context that you need to know how to apply it on tests day? Is your studying effective?

Because again, it is very possible and this happens all the time.

I just need to mention the pass rates or the fail rates for the CPA exams. Everyone out there for the most part has a main review course. You know, like I said, Becker, Wiley, Gleim, Roger, one of those and everyone out there more or less follows the same format of watch the video, read the chapter, do the practice questions, but the pass rates are right around 50% not great.

So it’s very possible to be dedicated, hardworking, to be putting in multiple hours every single day. And this process ends up taking years and sometimes, I mean close to 10 years, we’ve had a lot of customers, several on our own podcasts. We’re working on their exams for between five to 10 years, and they’re dedicated, hardworking.

They’re just missing a few of the right tweaks that would bridge the gap and make their studying effective. It is not just about hard work or the hours put in. When you learn how to use the resources in your review course strategically then it is much easier to be highly effective and highly efficient. So you can have two people that are both putting in, let’s say two hours a day studying. The first person, you know, because they don’t know any better.

They just turn on the video, try to watch the whole thing. If it’s a 20 minute video, they might have to pause it, rewatch it several times before they feel like they understand it. So that 20 minute video can easily take one to two hours just to get through the video. And then person over here, they jumped straight into the questions.

They strategically go through the questions to see, okay. What are the key things that keep being asked about? Or what are the key formulas that are mentioned? How do these calculations actually work in question format? And in the same two hours, these two people can get totally different results from the same two hours.

So that is just obviously the big difference in knowing how to study strategically. So again, we won’t go into all the specifics, the free study training webinars that I mentioned the link is on the description. Those we’ll walk you through the specifics of how we teach our clients how to study. All right.

So let’s say that you do manage to study every single day. You stick to your routine, you get through all the lessons and your studying is pretty effective. You know, when you do sit down to study, now, if you’re following the traditional study method, you go through lesson by lesson. You’re essentially trying to master each topic as you go through.

Now, let’s take FAR for example. There are over 200 topics tested on FAR. These are dense technical topics. So you spend all this time up front to learn 200 different topics, but you are now six to eight weeks removed from the stuff you covered in the beginning. Right? I mean, even, even two weeks is a long time because each day you’re refilling your short-term memory with all new information on the next new lesson.

So if you really think about that, that format does not make any sense. To go through lesson by lesson, cover 200 topics, difficult topics and not look at anything that you’ve previously covered. And then try to basically relearn everything in a one to two week final review. So it’s no wonder why so many candidates get into the exam and start seeing questions and realize I have I forgotten tons of what I studied.

3. Re-review

Like I know this topic, but I just can’t grab that one piece of information for my brain because you’re six to eight weeks removed from when you studied it the first time. So the solution to this, this is going to sound so obvious when I say it is to build re-review into your daily process.

So you spend a portion of your study time each day, going back and rehitting re-practicing all the topics that you’ve previously been through. Now, the next level of this is to actually jump around among all topics, spend a portion of your day, even going forward, going ahead of things that you’ve formally studied in your review course.

And this is how our study tools are set up, our review notes, our audio notes and our quizzes. This is what we teach our clients to do. This is called retrieval practice. And that’s not something that I came up with. But it’s proven to be, if you Google retrieval practice, that’s proven to be the most effective form of learning.

If you’re trying to learn and assimilate and retain new complex topics. The basic idea with retrieval practice is to spend a certain amount of time each day trying to pull previous information out of your own brain. And so you’re jumping back, covering topics re-practicing topics that you’ve already been through.

And then, because our study tools are simplified and easier to understand. They’re designed to be used on the go. That’s why you can jump ahead and you start chipping away at future topic. So when you use our study tools, you’re constantly jumping forwards and backwards and vice versa. It’s like a workout for your brain.

In these same topics that you’re trying to learn so that you can apply them on test day. There’s also a 30 minute exercise that you do with your review course to end your daily two hour study session. Again, we cover that in detail in our free study training webinar. So if you’ve never watched one of these study training webinars, it is one hour

that will literally save you months and months of time and frustration from trying to have to figure this stuff out on your own.

Recap

So to recap, the three things that are much more important than what specific review course you’re using is your daily routine and making sure it’s consistent. If you’re struggling to be consistent, make your daily routine easier, make it shorter.

And once you get consistent with a shorter main session, you will have a lot of momentum because you’re being consistent and you can start to add more time once you’re consistent with a two hour daily session, if you choose to. But a lot of our clients never add more than the two hours in the morning with their main review course.

The second thing is your study methods. When you sit down to study, how do you actually study? How do you use your review course? It’s very possible to spend 2, 3, 4 hours every day and not really accomplish that much, even though you’re, you know, you’re investing that time. So if you’re going to invest months of your life into this process, into these exams, you want to be sure that when you do sit down to study that it’s highly efficient and highly effective.

That is the main thing you will learn how to do on our free study training webinars. And number three is to build re-review into your daily process instead of spending eight weeks mastering topics one by one, but then slowly forgetting half of all this stuff you’ve spent so much time learning. Instead you make daily re-review part of your process so that you’re constantly improving on all topics as you get closer to exam day.

That obviously makes so much more sense. And again, you will learn our two main strategies on how to do that easily without having to find a bunch of extra study time just by going through your normal day on those free study training webinars. So you can click the button on this video or the link down in the description to sign up for one of those free trainings.

You will not regret the hour that you invest to attend one of those free webinars. So I hope you found that helpful. Thank you for watching and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Other Posts You'll Like...

Want to Pass as Fast as Possible?

(and avoid failing sections?)

Watch one of our free "Study Hacks" trainings for a free walkthrough of the SuperfastCPA study methods that have helped so many candidates pass their sections faster and avoid failing scores...