Early last month, 2024 CPA exam pass rates started getting quite a bit of attention for being terrible. FAR, specifically. As we observed in “What TF Is Going on With CPA Exam Pass Rates?,” published on February 10, FAR boasted the lowest pass rate it has ever had in the 21 years since they started calling it FAR. FAR’s pass rate slipped from 41.92% in the first quarter of 2024 down to 36.80% by the last quarter. Pass rates tend to slip in Q4 because candidates are trying to jam in a final section or two before the end of the year and may not be as well prepared as earlier in the year but this appeared to be something different.
As you can imagine, the benevolent overlords of the CPA exam have been receiving some heat about these pass rates. Some people have concluded that something may be broken with CPA Evolution, the new exam format that debuted at the beginning of 2024. FAR shouldn’t have been too deeply affected, however, due to its status as a Core exam section. Presumably many if not most of the FAR questions candidates got were already in the pool before the new format dropped because it’s not like GAAP got a major overhaul at the same time.
Now, we’re not saying NASBA is passive-aggressively telling CPA exam candidates to stop cursing them out on social media for FAR being too difficult for nearly 65% of test takers to pass. But we are saying the timing of them posting this chart is a little suspicious given the drama surrounding FAR right now.
On February 26, NASBA tweeted this. I’d embed it in this post but embeds are broken at the moment due to whatever the hell is going on over at X.com. Take this screenshot instead:
As this chart demonstrates, the following items fall under NASBA’s purview, in full or in part along with another CPA exam partner like the AICPA or Prometric:
- Fees
- Notice to Schedule (NTS)
- Advisory Score Reports
- Summary Data
- Candidate Authorizations
So you see, the content and grading portions of the CPA exam — you know, the part candidates have the biggest beef with at the moment — is the responsibility of the AICPA. To quote directly from This Way to CPA, a project owned by the AICPA, the AICPA Board of Examiners (BOE) is responsible for all the technical content included in the exam and the AICPA scores the exam.
Meanwhile, NASBA is getting comments like these:
Look, Mr. Fadeesnuts, we get you’re frustrated but you’re @ing the wrong entity. You too, Salsa.
If NASBA did post the chart passive-aggressively — again, we’re not saying they did — we can’t really blame them.
r/CPA seems to know who to yell at. So maybe this is just a Twitter thing.
To be fair to the group of current test takers… given the qualify of our nation’s high schools and colleges, the CPA exam might be the first “difficult test” they have ever taken, and they don’t know how to act, since Mommy Karen can’t save them.