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Is It Possible To Get a Harder Set of CPA Exam Questions In Different States?

Oh, the things CPA exam candidates come up with when they should be studying.

This winner of a question comes courtesy the CPAnet forums:

It may sound stupid but I wanna ask….. Is there any particular State where you get relatively easier exam and score good marks?

I’m asking this question because somebody told me that you get most difficult exam in California so I was thinking the other way round!

The asker recognizes the ridiculousness of this question immediately so I’ll resist making any comments on that and slide right into the point of this post. Is it at all possible that candidates in certain states get more difficult exams?

I’m going to have to say highly doubtful. There’s no reason that would make sense, as the “Uniform CPA Examination” implies exactly that, uniformity. While we all know different states have different requirements for licensure based on the determinations of the individual state boards of accountancy, the AICPA administers the exam across the jurisdictions. It is presumed that candidates are assigned questions at random from a single database and I have never read, heard or seen anything that tells me otherwise. Logically, I can’t see a reason for this, and we should safely assume that the AICPA will not do anything that might be an unnecessary burden on the already precarious process of administering the exam.

And even if this were true, wouldn’t California be the easiest? They have some of the most lenient requirements to sit for the exam of all the jurisdictions and boast a longer NTS than other states (because who wants to get off the beach and go to Prometric?), surely they would also have easier questions.

What is the takeaway from this, kids? Don’t listen to what your friends told you about the exam.

Here’s Your Study Plan for the Audit Section of the CPA Exam

Friendly reminder: >75 is here to answer your CPA Exam questions so send them over.

A reader sends us the following dilemma:

“I took the audit section only and failed, most of it was due to not committing enough time to it. If you have any tips to develop plans I would like any suggestions to creating a plan.”

First of all, no offense but I think you have already identified where you went wrong, are you sure you need our help? Oh well.


Let’s talk about Audit, shall we? The average CPA exam candidate will spend 60 – 90 hours studying for the Audit section – that assumes watching your CPA Review lectures 1 time and spending 2 – 3 hours on MCQ/sim practice problems for each hour of lecture. If you are taking the self-study route, you will obviously need to spend more time on MCQ/sims (about about 2 or 3 hours on top of the 2 – 3 you would be doing if you had videos to review) and create a structured study plan based on the most current CSOs (Content Specification Outlines), which you can always find on cpa-exam.org.

Those of you taking exams in early 2011 will want to be on top of exam changes planned to kick in in the first quarter, though the AICPA has been helpful and already released the CSOs for that period.

If you’ve taken the exam and failed, you already have an incredibly useful tool at your disposal – your score report. The report provided after you fail will compare you to other candidates: IGNORE THOSE NUMBERS. Who cares how you did relative to other candidates? All you need to glean from that information is an idea of where your stronger areas are in comparison to your weaker sections. The score report is broken down by different components of the CSOs for that section so obviously you will want to focus harder on areas that you performed poorly in.

About a week or two before your new exam date, give the entire section a once over just to be sure you are also sharp in areas you did well in the first time.

Schedule your new Audit exam AS SOON AS POSSIBLE as the information is still fresh in your mind. If you have a new exam scheduled in the meantime, reschedule it if you can. Unless you REALLY bombed Audit (68 or below), you will want to jump right back in while it is still floating around in your brain.

As for exam preparation and planning, we’ve covered that plenty of times on Going Concern so check out this, this, and this.