The AICPA Needs Some Help From CPAs to Determine the Passing Score For the 2024 CPA Exam
While we’re on the topic of the CPA exam, this is your eleventy billionth reminder to sit for BEC before the CPA Evolution disciplines replace it in 2024. If you have passing credit for BEC before 2024 hits then you don’t have to worry about choosing one of the new disciplines assuming you pass the […]
Forget GoT, This Upcoming Webcast Is the Hottest Streaming Event of the Year (for CPA Exam Candidates Anyway)
Inb4 someone starts screeching about clickbait and how we sold out because we used to be cool but now we’re shilling for webcasts, shut the fuck up. No one paid for us to mention this, rather we’re posting about it just in case you’ve missed the numerous tweets and announcements and other shilling already done […]
AICPA Says the CPA Exam is Intentionally Simple Because CPA Candidates Are Like Dogs Distracted by Shiny Things
Have you ever wondered why CPA exam questions are so plain? I mean, you’d think they could take it easy on CPA exam candidates held captive in Prometric for hours at a time by peppering the questions with just a little humor. It doesn’t have to be memes or anything, just, you know, why can’t […]
Are 19 Year-Old Girls Writing CPA Exam Questions?
Pardon the headline but that’s an actual (and not at all unreasonable) question posed to us from a Floridian CPA exam candidate who shall remain nameless, lest I be accused of trolling again.
While we love the idea of barely legal chicks holed up in an AICPA bunker sweating out CPA exam questions, unfortunately we’ve got to piss in this particular candidate’s Cheerios and point out that questions are created using a complicated process that relies on volunteer contributions from the industry:
The content of the Uniform CPA Examination is developed in an extensive and integrated process. At each step in the process expertise in various disciplines is applied to ensure that the test materials are accurate and appropriate for use on the CPA Exam.
The process incorporates expertise in a number of key areas.
The first key area of expertise is in accounting. Individuals who draft, review, and finalize test materials are experienced CPAs.
A second area of expertise is in the science of testing, called psychometrics. At each stage in the test development process, psychometricians are involved in the design, development, and implementation of test materials. These include test specifications, test questions, and data analysis.
A third area of expertise is in test development. Experts in the design and development of test questions are involved in the process.
Well, we’ve met some inexperienced 19-year-old CPA candidates but can’t say we know any that are experienced enough to draft complicated CPA exam questions per the AICPA’s outline above so, sorry, but this question is debunked.
We also feel compelled to point out, by way of the New York Times, that the word sketch actually appeared as an adjective in 1975, which would be right around the time most of the OG’s of the industry were passing the CPA exam, earning their PhDs in accounting and getting their second or third promotion.
A list of slang compiled from students at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, published in the journal American Speech in 1975, included sketch as an adjective meaning “dangerous, risky” (“I think we’re in a sketch situation”). By 1996, one of [Professor Connie] Eble’s U.N.C. students offered sketch as a noun meaning “someone who is hard to figure out.” The variations sketchball, sketcher and sketchmaster followed thereafter, all sharing an air of suspicion and possible danger or at least discomfort.
We’re dying to know the context of this CPA exam question. Obviously discussing it is not allowed but based on the word itself, we’re guessing this was in AUD, no? As in “The client is totally sketchy, how do you verify his equally sketchy bank recs?”