The reason behind the failure for the CMA students can be foreseen with insufficient management of study time, inadequate management of study effort, and lack of conceptual understanding. There are three types of memory such as auditory memory, visual, and learning by doing things. Think about your way of understanding things and go with that. See video classes, take notes, and create flashcards from the syllabus to understand the subject with in-depth knowledge. The tasks related to the application of financial accounting and management accounting are auditing, company investment decision, budgeting, reporting, monthly, costing, forecasting, financial planning, manage the ledger and balance sheet, risk evaluation, and record details of financial statements.
CMA exam structure
The multiple-choice questions are for 100 questions with three hours and the essay type question is with 4 to 8 questions with one hour. There is no exact question for the question that how to pass CMA? Let me see some ideas to handle MCQ’s and essays.
How many hours to study for the CMA exam
As per the previous suggestions from experts 150 hours of study is required. The educational background, learning capacity, and practical experience play a big role in study time. Organize the time to different tasks like true or false, multiple-choice questions with quiz models, video lectures, and textbook reading. Do practice with two types of systemized timings such as minimum hours and safe hours. Try to bring the exam hall environment while practicing. Do computerized testing, and practice without seeing the textbook. This type of self-testing makes digital learning easy. CMA review apps are beneficial for practicing the subject knowledge when revising. The traditional method of taking notes is helpful for new subjects.
Study tips for CMA MCQ questions
- Reading and self-testing will provide amazing results in the case of MCQ questions. Reading and re-reading will help to memorize the important points. Similarly, doing self-testing with practice quiz in new study material helps for scoring high marks with application knowledge.
- Do time allotment with the practice test. Divide the schedule as total time, time per MCQ question, and review time. For instance, if the total time taken is 165 minutes then the review time can be 30 minutes and the time for the single question can be 1.5 minutes.
- Stick to the schedule as planned which helps for improving the speed.
- Find out the reason for the wrong answers. This helps for a conceptual understanding of the MCQ type of question.
- Apart from lack of understanding, there are other mistakes like misunderstanding the requirements, apply the wrong law or concept, doing a mathematical error, get confusion from different types of answers, do proper guessing and avoid bad intuition.
- Memorizing the questions will guide to misunderstanding if asked differently. So, try to understand the fundamentals of a better understanding.
- Take risk with the MCQ questions according to the level of confidence. For instance, if three options are wrong and two options are a little confusing then take the risk as there is confidence in selecting the right answer. If four answers are confusing then don’t take the risk to try to find out the right answer with deep thinking.
- The examiner plays the game with similar words of different types of answers. Among the four answers, the right answer and the wrong answer look like similar words and similar values. So, think about the similarities and fundamental principles then decide the answer.
- Do not waste time in thinking and circle the difficult question. Attend these questions at last. If there is negative marking then be conscious of attending. Avoid the questions with confusion and attend the questions with full confidence to be aware of the negative marking.
Study tips for CMA essay type questions
- When attending essay-type questions use bullet points. Make the points brief and clear to interpret the concept.
- Read slowly and understand the question with proper understanding.
- If you do not understand the question then try to write relevant points and main points related to the questions.
- Understand the language used in the question. For example, if the verb compare is given in the question then it should not be summarized. Bring out the real comparison which is demanded.
- Use standard language to get more marks.
- Write the answers with the given box format to process the answers technically.
Final words
The three levels of test for evaluating the CMA students are comprehension, application of knowledge, and synthesis. After completing CMA level-one it is easy to get a job. After completing the complete course the student gets a job in top companies. From a global perspective, each country has a different GAAP. So, it is essential to check the value of CMA based on location. Companies like Bank of America, 3M, Alcoa, Boeing, Caterpillar, Cargill, Hewlett-Packard, Conagra, Microsoft, Johnson and johnson, Verizon, Whirlpool, Saudi Aramco, and Xerox employ CMA in the key positions of the company.
