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Do Older Students Automatically Do Better on the CPA Exam?

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

A tipster would like an answer to the following:

Why are the students at Thomas Edison State College are scoring better on the CPA exam than the average bears? According to Susan P. Gilbert, Ph.D., (Dean of the School of Business and Management at TESC): they are self directed, more discriminating due to age, and have life experience. WHAT SAY YOU, OH WISE ONES?

Well I went and checked out this Thomas Edison State College claim and here's why they say their students are so successful:

1. Thomas Edison State College offers online degree programs for self-directed adult students. They claim to have caring faculty and staff, online tutoring and hours that respect their students' busy lives, achieving a supportive environment minus the micromanaging and babysitting. Sounds good so far.

2. Students at Thomas Edison State College are older on average than at traditional residential colleges at an average age of 36. The school feels they are more discriminating when it comes to their use of time and money. In other words, these students are less likely to throw away money on review programs that don't work or waste time with courses they've invested in. With jobs and families to worry about, the concept here is that they are somehow better equipped to manage their time and more likely to take advantage of the tools given to them than younger students. That sounds a little ageist, doesn't it? I could point you to some 36-year-old little boys in San Francisco who show a similar level of maturity to 10-year-olds playing Call of Duty on XBox. Being older may make you more likely to focus but it doesn't make you a superior CPA exam candidate by default.

3. Many students in Thomas Edison State College's undergraduate accounting programs are already working as accountants. This work experience is supposed to prepare them better for the items they are tested on when taking the CPA exam. The school claims working professionals are more invested in achieving a professional certification goal than someone younger or someone who is studying at an earlier stage in their accounting career.

Now. Where to start with these points? First, on the surface, they're mostly right. In the years I worked with CPA exam candidates, the older ones – generally speaking – seemed to perform better on the CPA exam. Was it because they had been around the block a few times and already knew this stuff? Was it because they were more mature? Was it because old folks are somehow better at buckling down and being disciplined enough to get through it?

It's probably some combination of the above. Sometimes it was that they screwed around when they tried to take the exam fresh out of school, blew it off, gave up and now returned to it a decade later ready to focus. That experience alone might motivate you to get through it once and for all. For others, they were coming into accounting from other industries around the time the economy imploded and therefore felt they had something to prove so they tried harder than someone forced into accounting by his or her parents who wasn't really feeling it at 23 years old.

What bothers me most about this claim is that there is no mention of the school's superior curriculum that better prepares its students. So, you get the family folks looking to advance their careers? So does Keller Graduate School, so why do they have a 31.1% pass rate (2011) and Thomas Edison State College has a 54.6% (2011)? Doesn't Keller get a bunch of olds? Based on the statements above alone, you'd think those numbers would be closer. 

For the record, Thomas Edison State College slipped into second place in New Jersey last year, with the College of New Jersey placing first in CPA exam performance at a 59.3% pass rate. Wonder what they credit that awesome number to. I bet it has nothing to do with the fact that College of New Jersey just so happened to also have the youngest average age (25) of all schools in New Jersey last year.

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CBT-e Strategies: What To Do When You’re Still Sitting for the CPA Exam in 2011

Those of you who graduated in May should already be buried in your review books and planning to sit for some parts – if you haven’t already – but for some of you, the long wait to get your applications processed is anything but over OR you managed to procrastinate up until this point and haven’t even begun the process. I’ll resist the urge to smack you if you promise to submit those as soon as you’re done reading this post. Regardless of where you’re at in the process, chances are you’re tripping about 2011 changes. Not to worry, my big fat brain packed with CPA exam goodness is here to help.


Accounting Is Still Accounting – Even if they are testing IFRS in 2011, debits still go on the left (at least I’m pretty sure they still do under IFRS) and pension accounting is still really annoying. Keep in mind, IFRS isn’t the norm in the wild – at least in the U.S. at this point – and will not be for several years so it would be irresponsible of the AICPA Board of Examiners to heavily test rules that aren’t even widely accepted in practice. So relax, the changes are coming but they aren’t nearly as scary as you think.

FAR – If you are able to, get FAR done this year so you don’t have to worry about it next year. The first two windows of 2011 will say a lot about the AICPA’s strategy but knowing them, I wouldn’t expect 2010’s exam to be completely different from 2011’s. Those questions cost a lot of time and energy to make and the BoE isn’t about to trash all of them just so they can start testing rules that we don’t even use. With me on this one? Calm down.

CPA Review Materials – If you haven’t yet committed to a CPA review course, be sure to ask about 2011 materials and how changes affect the course you choose THIS year. A good review course will offer updates to the material but be on the lookout for additional product purchase charges or fees to update your materials. For BEC, REG and AUD the changes are minimal: international audit standards will appear here and there and a few things are moved around but for the most part the largest change in these areas will be the cosmetic change in BEC as written communications are moved out of the other three sections and stuck there. This does not change the content, only how you prepare and the point percentages for this section.

You can find the new 2011 CSOs via the AICPA here if you’d like a better look at what you’re in for next year but as I said, it doesn’t take long to figure out that next year’s exam really doesn’t look all that different from this year’s.

Should You Request a Rescore if a Simulation Snafu Cost You a Passing Grade on the CPA Exam?

For this, my first CPA exam advice column since 2010 testing finally closed, we have a pretty interesting question from a candidate in Georgia who wants to know if it her 74 is worth a rescore. Normally my advice is to forget about disputing your score as the AICPA has not actually changed a single failing score to passing in the last three years (remember, their formula is bulletproof and they are not about to admit their precious psychometric testing sucks) but this is a special case.

Hello, I have a question related to my score on Auditing and would appreciate any advice you could provide. I took the exam on 10/28/2010 and received my score of 74. I am wondering what my options are for appeal or review. The reason for this is because on the last simulation one of the tabs was not the same when I tried to review as when I first saw it. I am 100% sure that I had the choice of 6 options when taken the exam. But once I went back to review the test, there were only 4 choices available. I did report this to the coordinator that was present and she told me that she would write a report. I also reported in the section where they ask if there were any problems during testing.

Firstly, remember that Prometric test center staff are not hired by the AICPA to administer your test. They administer hundreds of different professional examinations, not just the CPA, so they don’t really get how important a single screwed up simulation can be to your overall score. Don’t be surprised if they merely wrote down your complaint and tossed it into the examination abyss.

That being said, the AICPA’s appeal process isn’t really going to help you. As I said above, the chances of a rescore turning out favorably for you are slim to none.

But you may have another option, available through your state board, that would allow you to meet with one of their representatives and see the questions you did not answer correctly. Whether or not this actually ends up in your 74 turning into a 75 is up for debate and in my three years of working in CPA review, I never met anyone who did this, let alone did it successfully.

Contact your state board and ask about the score appeal option. If available, you will likely have to pay a fee and there are no guarantees that anything positive will come of it but if you sincerely believe that the simulation changed, that’s a glitch and throwing out that simulation could just bring you beyond a 75.

Good luck!