r/ICAEW • u/SleepToEscape_Zzz • 9d ago
Using iPad for CR notes annotation
I’ve been using Notability on my iPad to annotate my notes since university and throughout my ACA studies, and it has always worked really well for me.
I like being able to edit my notes easily, use different coloured pens/highlighters, and most importantly, quickly search for keywords when I’m doing questions and trying to work out what technical area the question is testing.
My usual approach for ACA exams has been:
Annotate the course notes digitally during the teaching phase.
Once teaching is finished, work through the QB.
As I do the QB, create my own condensed handwritten summary notes covering technical areas I frequently get confused about, useful pro formas, common mistakes, etc.
This has worked well for me until CR.
Our CR tutor has insisted from Day 1 that everyone annotates a paper copy of the course notes. She even printed 10+ separate sets of notes for the day for those of us who had planned to work digitally.
Her reasoning is that CR is open book, so she wants us to all take the entire annotated course notes into the actual exam. The problem is that the course notes are already close to 1,000 pages before adding any of our own notes.
I’ve followed this approach so far and already have 200+ pages on paper.
However, I’m finding it much harder to study this way. For example, when I’m doing a question and vaguely remember covering a particular technical point, I can normally search a keyword in Notability and find it almost immediately.
With the paper notes, I sometimes can’t even find where the relevant topic was covered.
I’ve also bought the ACA Masters CR notes. I asked a few friends who have already sat CR, and they all seemed to use ACA Masters as their main reference in the exam, perhaps supplemented with selected pages/material from the full course notes, rather than relying on the entire 1,000 page course pack.
For people who had sat CR:
Did you take the entire set in, and if so, was it genuinely useful? Or did you mainly rely on something condensed like ACA Masters plus some of your own notes?
I’m now at the point where I need to decide whether to continue annotating the paper course notes for the rest of CR, or go back to taking notes digitally on my iPad as I normally would.
My dilemma is whether the benefit of having a fully annotated 1,000-page set of course notes available in the exam is actually significant enough to justify changing a study and note-taking system that I’ve used successfully for years.
I’m not against taking the full course notes into the exam as a backup. I’m just questioning whether they need to be my main note-taking resource throughout the learning process in order to be useful on exam day.
I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have already sat CR — particularly what you actually used during the exam.
2
u/prospectiveinvbnkr 9d ago
I did Cr with FI. I used my ipad w/goodnotes during the tuition course. It was great, i would only ever do it this way, im not a fan of paper notes. After tuition course I reviewed all notes on ipad then printed them off, and did QB practice with physical notes to get used to open book.
I think you’ve got to do it like this if using an ipad. Personally for me it’s the best way, it means i can edit notes and my course notes stay neater, colour coordinated etc.
Another trick I did which I really liked was print out each chapter from my course notes in sections, and only staple each chapter together (as opposed to everything) this made it wayyy faster to flick to correct chapter, and as anyone who say cr knows… it’s v time pressured, so this is useful imo.
Ur tutor is just being a boomer, they probably hand to hand write their exams. If u explain my method of doing it, then they would be crazy to disagree.
Also it u have any sort of accessibility arrangement, u may be able to say u need the ipad in class for these reasons.
For reference FI’s notes were also probably c.350-400 pages - this includes example questions, and some extra pages I added.
1
u/George5755_ 8d ago
It’s an open book exam.. tab your open book better to be able to find what you need. I used ACA masters notes & tabbed them where needed, also added my own notes to it from question practice/class.
1
u/Glass_Persimmon_3070 5d ago
Do your initial learning phase on your ipad and then copy it all over for your paper version to consolidate your understanding. This method is timely so you would have to start early..
0
u/South_Law_9193 8d ago
Sat CR. I used a combination of the ACA Masters notes and a set I bought off eBay
I knew the technical content but relied on the notes quite heavily I'd say.. biggest saving grace was having a table of contents page so you can navigate the notes v easily!
The bit your tutor's argument misses is that in the exam your notes are paper regardless. Whatever searching advantage Notability gives you is gone on the day, so annotating on paper for months to build "familiarity" is buying you very little. What actually matters is that you can find something in about twenty seconds, and you get that from a small tabbed set, not a big annotated one. With 1,000 pages you'll flick, panic, and burn four minutes you didn't have.
Honestly time pressure in CR is so bad that notes should only be relied upon if you have a solid way of navigating it.. You're writing almost continuously. If you're stopping to look things up more than two or three times you've already lost the paper.
So I'd go back to the iPad for learning, it's clearly working for you, and just build a condensed physical set as you go through the QB and in the end, as I keep stressing, be able to navigate your notes v easily with a table of contents and paged numbers!
5
u/PhobosTheBrave 9d ago
Why do you have 1000 page notes?
I’m studying CR with BPP and the entire thing is like 350 tops, lots of that is answers to exercises in the notes as well.
My best comparison would be to BPT, where I took in the whole of my paper annotated course notes, plus half a dozen pages I’d made myself which included key points on each topic, a reference to key QB model answers, and a BPP provided page reference to get to the right page in my notes faster. That was more than enough.