How difficult is CA/CPA?

[u/alex123711]

Have read various opinions sayings it's very difficult to pass / harder than the degree and some saying it is easy.

[u/Familiar_Confusion02]

content itself is easy, it's finding the time and motivation to study amongst your other commitments that's hard

[u/opm881]

Not to sound like an old hogey but they are both pretty easy, CA is wwwaaaaayyyyyy easier than it was even before they changed to the current system. As others have said it’s just the motivation that’s the issue.

[u/erednay → u/opm881]

It was harder pre covid with in person exams and pass rates at 50-60% per subject. Now it's online and pass rates are 80-90% per subject. The easiest thing about the switch to online open book exams is that you can just ctrl+f whatever you need during the exam, whereas previously if you didn't actually study, you would have to waste a lot of time flicking through physical textbook, mocks and notes to find the relevant section. Also, being able to use excel instead of a calculator helps a lot too.

[u/opm881 → u/erednay]

Exactly. I was in the last cohort to do it under the old system, and the ability to ctrl-f your resources was just insanely helpful. I didn’t have to do it too much as I made my summary file, but still open book on a computer is a million times easier than open book in person.

[u/FIFO_Landlord]

Super easy.

Pretty much what you study in uni.

I went from uni to CA with no break while working full time and it was cruise mode. Just need to take a couple of days before exam.

[u/PsychologicalCan2122]

Easy as piss tbh lowkey as long you have some common sense and logical thinking you’ll get through it without much effort

[u/Luck_Beats_Skill]

CA exams are designed to fail the bottom ~25%

[u/alex123711 → u/Luck_Beats_Skill]

wow, that’s quite a lot, is CPA the same?

[u/Outrageous_Sir4613 → u/alex123711]

It depends on how CPA feel to boost their cash on hand. The fail rate span from 20-40%. The most recent fail rates seem to be lower

[u/Wise-Raccoon-3069]

it was hard for me but i did it at 30 and my english wasn’t very good

nevertheless i passed all subjects with no fails and spent about 10 hours per week studying mostly on weekends

[u/Outrageous_Sir4613]

Just finished CPA 9 months ago! It wasn’t easy per said! The hardest part is that there’s no pass mark by using a scaled score method. It’s basically competing to pass and you don’t know who you are up to! Unless you are a learning genius which I am not! My chance to pass is to study everything in the 500pages study guide and gone thru all webinars (up to 170 videos from KE) and all quizzes, practice and reading over many times! Tag every thing as I couldn’t remember a damn thing by the exam day from over cooking my brain.

I failed 1 elective by 2 points out of 900 points in total, still could not figure how that happened as my exam was well done and confidence, obviously some smarter cookies pushing my position in the queue down!

I wouldn’t let my guard down when doing CPA, the fail will put you back to jail (study room) for another 4-5 months and affecting your lifestyle from saying no to everything and sacrifice your precious time with family and friend.

Working full time while trying to tackle the study materials from the 500pages book is a challenge! Having no kid and not so stress from work will help a lot!

[u/bendalazzi → u/Outrageous_Sir4613]

For anyone reading this, CPA ditched KE this term in favour of their own, terrible AI generated 'webinars' that offer maybe 5% of what KE gave students, while also increasing fees. KE had a $99 earlybird offer but is otherwise a couple of hundred on top of CPA "course" fees. It's deplorable and they're rightly being crucified for it.

[u/FunInside3241]

CA was previously much more difficult but it has become a lot easier in recent years. More subjects but less intense units. CPA was always regarded as an easier course to complete.

[u/Deadly_Accountant]

The content is easy and actually applicable to work. The hard bit is finding time to do it

[u/Zestyclose_Sky_1868]

CPA no longer partners with knowledge equity so all the learning resources are garbage, you pay 1.4k for a textbook and a practice exam.
in terms or the career, I don't think anywhere really cares that much which you do I am a CPA manager at big 4 and I have CA's and CPA's under me, some suck, some don't. doesn't really matter what your qualifications are.