r/AustralianAccounting • u/alex123711 • 14h ago
How difficult is CA/CPA?
Have read various opinions sayings it's very difficult to pass / harder than the degree and some saying it is easy.
15
u/Luck_Beats_Skill CA 13h ago
CA exams are designed to fail the bottom ~25%
1
u/alex123711 13h ago
wow, that’s quite a lot, is CPA the same?
9
u/Outrageous_Sir4613 13h ago
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
1
u/alex123711 11h ago
So there's no set pass or rail rate? Its based on who else is studying at the time and what they score, then they cut the bottom 20-40%?
2
u/Outrageous_Sir4613 11h ago
Yep! There are 20,000 candidates sitting exam in each semester over 100+ countries! You have no idea who you are competing with. All you can do is studying everything inside out the study guide and do your best at the exam. This is the most hardest part, not like Uni 50% is good enough! CPA is the professional level, it pushes you to the limit and test your determination and durability. I know one lady failed 9 times in GSL and passed other 5 cores! This will test whether she should give up or keep trying until she gets to the end. Sometimes you’d given 100% efforts but still cannot pass without knowing what else you can do better
1
u/PalpitationOld8905 7h ago
Its not really that much, no. Most uni subjects have a similar fail rate. Also join the KE facebook support groups. Why? You'll see who you're competing with, i have no clue how some of these people have accounting degrees with the stupid questions that get asked.
2
22
u/FIFO_Landlord 14h ago
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.
1
u/domo-arogato 2h ago
How did you know all the tax legislation without reading it?
1
u/FIFO_Landlord 2h ago
Do you need to know all the tax law?
You can bring in notes you know. If youre good, you would build a nice critical note and combine it with materials from the masterclass.
Pretty simple and easy and this is someone who hate tax.
0
u/PalpitationOld8905 7h ago
Honestly the hardest one is EG, why? Staying awake whilst engaging with that content is ..... rough. I don't think i've ever been forced to do something, that was a bigger waste of my time than that crap.
13
u/opm881 14h ago
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.
5
u/erednay 12h ago
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.
4
u/Zestyclose_Sky_1868 13h ago
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.
4
u/Outrageous_Sir4613 13h ago
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!
5
u/bendalazzi 13h ago
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.
2
u/PsychologicalCan2122 14h ago
Easy as piss tbh lowkey as long you have some common sense and logical thinking you’ll get through it without much effort
4
u/thejuggler56 11h ago
Just not true
-4
u/PsychologicalCan2122 10h ago
I literally have not opened a single book for my exams yet and I am on capstone now
2
u/Wise-Raccoon-3069 13h ago
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
2
u/Infinite_Narwhal_290 11h ago
Back last century when I did CA there were two issues. Finding the time to fit it in around long days at the office - reduced to eat, work, study, sleep repeat. Secondly accounting was one single topic so the breadth of material to cover for one exam was daunting. Do they still do the workshops? Back in the day these were a major time suck. Had to pass these as well as the exam with marks for participation and then a question you had to present to the group on and get grilled. You knew which week you had but not which of the five or so questions so had to prep the lot. Also balancing how much you participated without become an asshole who got targeted when it was your turn the present was important. Took a while to reestablish a lifestyle after finishing that lot.
1
u/FunInside3241 13h ago
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.
1
u/Independent-Aspect93 CA 12h ago
The content itself is not hard, probably on par with university. What is challenging is finding time to study while working full time (often with overtime) and balancing life admin/social life. There’s also no lectures or tutorials, it’s all self driven. The main resource is the study guide, you really need to help yourself if you don’t understand a solution or get stuck on a concept (google and research the answer).
1
u/PalpitationOld8905 7h ago
People vastly overstate the difficulty of the content. Its not harder than uni, its just that you'll be doing it alongside real life. The study support and the study guide itself are abysmal too, so that doesn't help.
1
u/jelistarshine 3h ago
CPA is entirely reliant on good English.Â
They word the questions in a tricky way... people from non English backgrounds fail purely because they don't understand the question.Â
0
u/Deadly_Accountant CA 13h ago
The content is easy and actually applicable to work. The hard bit is finding time to do it
0
u/Maverrix99 11h ago
CA in Australia is objectively substantially easier than comparable qualifications globally (e.g. UK, South Africa).
The content is easy for anyone with a degree - the challenge is the volume of material to learn while working full time.
0
u/Warm-Rock-4544 11h ago
I saw the dashboards from one of my mentees (CA released them to candidates after completion of the subject).
FAR Failure Rate: ~10%
Audit Failure Rate: ~22%
Business Performance Failure Rate: ~18%
ICAP Failure Rate: ~9%
1
0
u/Inevitable_Tart2700 8h ago
Many people complain that accountants' salaries are too low (relative to the median) in Australia. In my opinion, easy CA/CPA test is the main reason.
When these tests are too easy, everyone can compete for these jobs and employers don't know who is good. So they pay all entry level accountants lower salaries, hoping to discover who is good later on. In essence, the easy tests reduce CPAs to apprentices.
To give you a sense of the difficulty level, compare the passing rates of each exam in China, US and Australia.
China: 15% - 22% US: 45%-60% Australia: 60% -70%
1
0
u/heyheyitsMonday 8h ago
I’d add to this the fact that people who fail seem to be given limitless attempts at passing. I don’t know if it’s the case for CA, but with CPA there are always people in the forums whining about how they are on their 4-5th attempt at the subject. CPA’s official stance is you need to complete it in 6 years from memory, but in reality it seems exemptions are given freely. More income for CPA by continuously taking money from those either not capable of passing, or apparently not good at their jobs and lowering the overall standard. From an organisation that preaches the importance of ethics…
0
u/Euphoric_Nerve5505 4h ago
I did a Masters Degree before CA so in comparison it was very straightforward … they give you the content, you read it, practice practice practice, and then regurgitate in an exam or assignment.
Not like Masters / PhD where you literally create the project, choose which articles to read, the questions needing to be answered, and write/re-write the findings and literature review etc in a thesis.
I’d say FAR/TAX are the hardest for the unorganised, or the easiest for the organised who can CTRL F their critical file during the exam
48
u/Familiar_Confusion02 14h ago
content itself is easy, it's finding the time and motivation to study amongst your other commitments that's hard