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The Day of My First CPA Exam

Joan’s sister, Debby, and her family live in Virginia, right outside DC, and when Joan drives to visit her sister she stops and spends the night with me. Joan had a vacation and was going to drive on February 22 and meet me at my place right after my exam. She ended up postponing her trip because the weather forecast didn’t look very optimistic.

My exam was scheduled for 9:00am and I had set up my alarm clock for 7:30 am. Strangely, my phone rang at 7:10am; it was Joan calling from the Cape asking if I was going to my exam because of the weather. I thought it odd but nonetheless stuck my fingers in the shades, opened a slid to peek out, and was flabbergasted to find out the entire neighborhood laying under 3-5 inches of snow. According to the forecast it wasn’t supposed to start snowing till late afternoon.

Not expecting that the testing center will be opened and very upset because I was ready to get this over with I called them. To my surprise, there was a person at 7:30am and said that testing will proceed in regular manner. Encouraged I got in my car and encountered the next obstacle on the way to this exam – the usual road that I take to White Plains, to go to work, was closed and I had to take an alternative way.

Of course in the heavy snow I got lost and made it to the parking garage at the time that my exam was supposed to start. I’ll never forget, for the rest of my life, the story of driving in the snow storm, getting lost and running form the parking garage to the Promertic center, cheeks reddened by the cold and running, but full of excitement of making it on time. I’m not going to go into great details about the exam itself, the only 2 things I’ll mention are that they asked to take my fingerprints for authentication and that thanks to Becker CPA Review course I was able to timely answer all 90 question in 2,5 hours which makes for a little over 1,5 minutes per question. It was an intense experience and if it wasn’t for taking the preview course with Becker I would have never succeeded.

My CPA Saga

In a way, I started the process of becoming licensed as a CPA backwards. The best way is to first make sure that your education qualifies, then to submit application to the state for the licensure and to NASBA for the exam, and only after that to sign up for a preview course.

I started a review course with Becker CPA Review in Oct ’07 and filed my paperwork with New York State and the CPA examination services, a division of the National Association of State Boards of accountancy (NASBA) in November ’07. I took about 3 weeks to get a Notice to Schedule (NTS) form CPA Examination Services with which I scheduled my first exam, Business Environment and Concepts (BEC), for February 22, 2008.

Now you can sit for all 4 parts separately and the exam is facilitated by Promertic which has test centers in pretty much every major city in the US. Unfortunately, 2 weeks before my BEC exam I got a letter from the NY State Department of Education stating that in order to qualify and be allowed to sit for the exam I needed 3 more college courses; a devastating news. I immediately called the department of education and emailed CPA Examination Services. It was really stressful because the last 2 weeks prior the exam are the most important part of the preparation period – the time for cementing everything you know - and I wasn’t sure whether I’d be allowed to sit or not.

There was definitely a mistake; NASBA is not supposed to send a NTS unless the education is approved by the State Department of Education. After a few emails and the same answer – we are waiting for a response form the Department of Education - I decided to sit on my behind, study hard the last week, show up for the exam on my schedule date, and deal with the recognition of the results afterwards.

Mood

A gloomy day at the Pan hotel.

Chestita Baba Marta

Happy Baba Marta everyone.

Shame on me! Baba Marta is such a big event for me and my family. Beccam didn’t forget to mentioned the Bulgarian holiday. I didn’t forget I just have so many things to blog about and I can’t seem to find 5 minutes to write a couple of lines.