Materials to help you guys improve your pass rates.

Exp group has free materials for acca students

Acowtancy is also a new site for free resources for acca

Search the 2 in Google.

Good luck preparing for exams

Actually you are not allowed to do FIa in Malaysia since the Ministry prohibits it. Students that do take the FIa route after spm are not eligible to study in a college for Acca since they would fail the entrance requirements.

The ministry and acca has sent message to the colleges that students in malaysia must complete cat full before moving up the ladder.

If you bypass and do f4 right after FIA, it would mean that you have disqualified yourself from the MQA accredited course pathway. Colleges will then have a right to kick you out if they want.

Sunway also calls it cat and not fia.

Yes the examiner is different and the style is also different. Please use the new examiner questions when reviewing the question.

Go to the acca examiner interview channel to get an idea of the examiner feedback for this paper. This paper requires a good skills in using complex formula and extracting the right information from the case.

It also requires significant skills in terms of discussion of options and evaluation of financing strategies

I would start with dec 2010 exams onward for this paper as reliable indicator for the current examination team style.

MQA
ACCA
Colleges
Students

Just heard that Sunway is charging RM6,000 for OBU is this true?

Next sitting is 3 sittings - June; sept and Dec

If you are planning to sit for September sitting the class will be starting in June and ends in August @ j pro training.

Classes for F8 revision for those studying last minute for F8 is available for current sitting - evening class starts on 26 to 28 November 6.30 to 9.30 pm and there is a single full day class on the 2nd of Dec 2014.

Total 18 hours to cover what can come out for the paper.



This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Nov 3 2014, 12:14 AM

Cover the basics of the groups - SOFP / P&L / Cash flow - you never know which is coming out until the exam date.

Make sure you review all Q1c since DEc 2007 - aim to get that 6 marks no matter what.

Run through the examiner 3-4 adjustments for standards in group question - this tend to repeat; so get prepared for the adjustments.

Memorize the recognition and measurement for all the standards

Focus on IAS 17, IFRS 2, IFRS 9, IFRS 5, IAS 12, IAS 37, IAS 41

Go get the notes - http://acca-p2.blogspot.com/2014/11/p2-acc...t-material.html

Good luck preparing for the exams.

An ACCA Graduate is an ACCA Graduate, you have the competence that makes you strong.

The big difference is that parents are usually pushing to go there since it is branded. This will not guarantee you a job since you will still have to perform well in the interview and get good grades.

Difference is none but the cost is high, parents usually like bragging rights so, it may be worth while to pay RM8000 extra for that.

Those planning to start your OBU, drop by J pro training @ Kemuning Utama this Dec 21 or 23, 10am to 5pm to discuss what to do.

If you are planning to do your P1 and P3 on crash course basis - since it is sooo easy, you can study for those papers on 28 May 2015. Make sure you are not taking P2 if you plan to do this. This is aimed more for those in the audit field.

If you are studying part-time, it may be wise for you to take P1 and P3 first and then do P2 and P7 together.

This time P7 had a lot of P2 in it, it was the least P7 paper to date with about 50% marks from P2 knowledge driven procedures.

Paper P3 and P1, obviously it is easy but if you are a degree student, I would advise you to go for classes since you may have to shake off all the "degree writing skills" that you have acquired for the last 3 years

P2 appears to be doable paper but many did do Q1, Q2 and Q4. Not sure why they avoided Q3 which appears to be easier to manage.

Those planning to do Dip IFRS can consider dropping by this Dec 21 too, to find out about the course - that course is for those in industry with 2-3 years work experience in accounting + degree in hand.

All the lecturers mentioned for the papers are equally good at what they do, you will only know what you like once you visit the lecture room.

It is useful to get some feedback on the lecturer - whether they know their stuff (most of them do since they have been around for some time)

I have seen that some lecturers are called "god" and the "best" by some students and others students are extremely critical saying that the same lecturer was "really bad" and "boring".

I have heard one student focus on "prize winning" lecturer was the best and the student that won the prize saying that he never paid attention in the class and did most of the work themselves.

So if you had given too much focus on the negative parts and less on the positive parts, you may end missing out on an good experience.

Don't get too caught up on one or two feed back on lecturers since this may be anecdotal evidence.

Happy holidays and have a happy new year

Yeah best to check the availability of the variant papers. J Pro Training will be offering classes for September exams, starting off in June 2015.

Those planning to study for that exam, the classes on offer will be P1, P2, P3, P4, P5 and P7.

Most of the classes will be on weekends or crash course basis.

This will be ideal for those that are too busy during the Jan - June period peaks.

I had just reviewed Becker materials for ACCA P7. Here is my take on their materials.

Text book is acceptable and is between Kaplan and BPP.

Revision kit and another test pack is crap, cheaper to print the examiner answers direct since most of the answers are the same as the examiner answers (copy and paste).

At least BPP and Kaplan used to write their own answers.

Plus the terminology for P7 was not updated to reflect the change in standards.

This review is only for the ACCA P7 paper, not sure about the quality of the other papers, but judging on QC used, I bet it would not be much different.

So my advice on getting the books for studying - go for KAPLAN if you want simple and for BPP for comprehensive. BECKER is a gamble, but acceptable for text book only.

September exams registration will be on 10 July to 10 August 2015 the results for June 2015 exam is out on 1 Aug for those that will be planning to re-take.

P6 (M) and F6 (M) is available for 4 sitting since it is considered to be a heavy load paper.

Good luck on the exam results - hope for the best!

One more note, for those doing OBU this semester, you must ensure that you get a registered mentor (which you can find in OBU mentor database)

This is a new ruling by OBU, unlike previously where an ACCA member, Lecturer or your supervisor could sign off for you.

BE WARNED OF THIS CHANGE IN OBU REQUIREMENTS

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Feb 1 2015, 01:05 AM

Those planning to study P1 and P3 on crash course basis - can consider J Pro Training.

Evening classes for P2 is also available.

F8, P1, P2 and P3 full time classes is available and will be starting from Feb 8th onwards

P5 and P7 weekend classes is also available.

If you want to study by yourself - you can still get online support with J Pro Online Classes for F5, F7, F8, F9, P1, P2, P3, P4 and P7.

All the lecturer for P4 are equally good but each have their own style. I think it will be hard to rank them but here is my view of the lecturers based on the feedback I got.

For P4, there is Oviyan, Andrew, Ellango, Daniel Ho.

Of this 4, each has their own style of teaching and approach to the exam paper. All have equal amount of experience, indicating that they know their stuff.

After that it will be based on whether their style suits your needs or not.

On that note, for those that have tried a paper for 6 times or 7 times, please change the paper, that you are doing as an optional.

This is because you are likely to have all the answers in your head and cannot be objective in the exam, you will tend to write previous answers as a basis for reply no matter what.

I just came across someone who has been stuck with the same paper for the last 4 years.

So be wise, if an optional paper is messing you up - consider a change of paper.

On that note, if a lecturer was tried for the 2x and still does not get you through - consider a change of lecturer. It means that the style of the lecturer may not be suitable for you, you may need to try another style.

Another style of lecture may allow you to see things in the paper that was not revealed by previous styles.

On that note - try not to mix up styles of lectures with different lecturers. If you go to one lecturer - stick to that style. If you attend 2 lecturers for the same paper - there is a high chance of screwing up the approach because you may mix it up. Obviously this does not happen to all the students but there is a higher chance of this happening.


This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Feb 10 2015, 07:10 PM

Those planning to study ACCA P2, you can self study using MAPIT materials (with J Pro), you can get access to other materials.

If you are in Subang / Shah Alam / Klang area, you can do part-time classes from next week with J Pro.

P1 and P3 it is possible to self study, I have been teaching the paper within 3-4 full day of classes.

In fact, for P1 and P3, the time taken to finish the whole syllabus can be around 8-16 hours only.

After that you can focus on exam techniques.

If you go for a full time class with the college, there is a lot of stories used to help you relate to the materials being studied +++ with lots of jokes and stories of events that happen around you - that is why you take a long time.

I heard one student say that for P1 some lecturer actually give you the whole UK Code and then verbalize it throughout the class (since most ACCA students cannot read themselves )

This is why most of students take so much time studying something that takes a short time to study.

I have heard many students self study for P1 and P3 and pass the paper, indicating that this is not an impossible paper.

In colleges, most have to fulfill MQA requirement of certain credit hours for each subject, hence the time allocated cannot be reduced even it was possible - so students are spending time longer because the system is such

In Vietnam colleges, P2 is done in 64 hour, in Brunai it is done in 56 hours, in UK 45-72 hours, so how come it takes Malaysians so much longer to study - 80 - 130 hours? Anyone can explain this?

It just does not make sense that 3rd world country can take much less to get students to pass their ACCA compared to Malaysia, which has a higher threshold of education infrastructure.

So, self study if possible, get a tutor to help you if you need. If you need to go to a college to study - do it.

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Feb 21 2015, 03:02 PM

You cannot attend Sunway graduation if you did not study there adequately; but you can study say 3 papers there after your degree and try your luck. There is no real scroll there for you since ACCA Graduate does not get a piece of paper from the COLLEGE that you graduated there.

As an ACCA; you actually only graduate when you get your membership. This is the firm that you qualify with; hopefully under the mentorship of a good partner/controller/investor.

So graduation is only for those parents that require a photo to show off to their relatives that their child has made it!

You can study with others and go for the ACCA Combined graduation organised by them.

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Mar 18 2015, 08:11 PM

College counseling is done by people who are paid commissions on the course that they get the student to sign up with. Never listen to a counselor who has a hidden agenda (ALL the counselors are the same) BONUS is paid by reference to total fee of the course signed up

That is why none will recommend you to do CAT since it has a much lower fee than Diploma and usually has flexibility in location of doing the course

In a diploma course - you have a significant switching cost in moving to another college, but with CAT and ACCA, moving is easy.

The only reason for doing Diploma is that you feel that you cannot cope with external papers pressure and want to take life easy a bit.

Most of the Diploma courses in Malaysia are at best 40% of the CAT quality and rigor when it comes to preparing students for ACCA.

Most of those that complete Diploma and go on to ACCA usually have a hard time adjusting to the culture of 100% exams without any tips (except for P6 paper)

ACCA is getting easier to do with all papers going to CBE, which means that you can speed up the process of getting qualified compared to Degree or Diploma.

Doing the Diploma is RM40~RM50k

Doing CAT should now cost you about RM10 - RM15k. Take the difference an invest it into blue chip shares or just buy a piece of small investment property.

At the end of the day the Diploma was designed to match ACCA 6 paper exemption after studying for 2 years

CAT should be completed in 9 months and you can do the ACCA slow and steady - since pass rates have improved ever since they introduce MCQ into the exams.

In 2016 by the time you reach Diploma final stage, all papers in Level 2 will be MCQ based and can be taken any time. Such flexibility is priceless. Compared to Diploma and Degree, I have come across students being delayed for 6 months just because the course was not available or some admin error that delays the student passing.

Degree is only seen easy to get because the lecturers out there are not trying to teach you but just get you through by allowing you to get tips and help.

I was talking to a student that day who completed a degree in engineering - the lecturer told him that 95% of what was studied will not be used.

He was demotivated to find that out and when he went to work - true enough 95% was useless.

In ACCA at least what is studied is related to work due to competence framework - at least 80% of what you study will be used sooner or later.


Seriously CAT is extremely easy for most students with reasonable command of language and mathematics

I talked to a few Diploma grads, most of them regretted doing the Diploma since it did not really add value.

The perception of lecturers is that Diploma students are weak since you could not even get 5 credits in SPM

Diploma is for 3 credits in SPM.

If you have 5 credits it means that you have qualified for faster route but decided to take slower route.

Thats like you asking someone to put you in a last class in form 5 just because you feel it might be hard in the first class in form 5, even if you are qualified from your form 4 results.

Do remember CAT profit margin is much lower than Diploma, all private colleges have a strong motive to push you to study Diploma vs CAT.

Same goes for Degree vs ACCA, the profit motive is the main reason for pushing you for Degree.

For a long time in UK, there was no Bachelors in Accounting because it is done professionally and not through the academic route.

All the changes in the Malaysia market is caused by profit orientated education system within the private industry and weird education policy of the govt focused on affirmative action that led to many graduates without a job.

I had to seriously motivate a local accounting degree holder who was working as a clerk in a college to go out there and do what they had studied for - ACCOUNTING and not some irrelevant clerical work. This degree holder had no confidence on their ability after completing 3 years of degree studies in the local uni. Sad to say this is due to manner in which degree were being printed out and just given to some people on the assumption that a qualification was all that is needed to get a good job.

The truth of the matter is that you need to have passion in what you are studying and a strong desire to enter the profession before starting down the accounting pathway.

One of my neighbour sent their daughter to do Medicine with 2a in SPM - after spending the fee for 1st year they found out that she could not cope with the medical degree, finally switched to a simpler course.

Go for Diploma if you have 3 credit - that is the place for 3 credit since it means that you have limited learning ability due to lack of motivation or poor training
Go for CAT if you have 5 credit
Go for Degree if you want to take life easy a bit
Go for ACCA if you want to take life easy and enjoy yourself (since the speed you do the papers is your choice)

I surely did enjoy myself when I was studying for ACCA

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Mar 28 2015, 01:59 AM

Actually the mentor will always be able to escape the issue since all OBU students should read the WHOLE BSC Pack before submission.

The problem here is that the mentor can turn around and say that you are responsible for the full project and not the mentor.

Remember - when you do OBU project; all guidance has been given to you by OBU. So advice to all students doing OBU - please read the BSC pack.

Like this semester, there is guidance that mentor used should be registered mentor and not any one. If students failed to check whether the mentor is registered or not, it their mistake and not the mentors.

On that note, ACCA is a professional body and like all professional bodies they have systems in place to handle many issues.

This is an issue that will not fall within ACCA but rather OBU.

Hopefully there is room for argument with OBU to give a pass.

In terms of system - 100% agreed that no system is perfect. All systems have weakness that will always emerge. This is why any control can only provide reasonable assurance and not absolute assurance.

I belief that ACCA is still the cheapest way to get a professional qualification that is relevant due to the following
1. Volume of tuition provider and materials available
2. Cost of tuition provider - ACCA Charges about pound 700 per year, CPA Australia RM10,000 per year and there is no students signing up for classes
3. High penetration of ACCA members within the industry (just review the annual reports and you will see that ACCA seems to hold most of the big post)
4. Innovative - CPA needs a degree before going in - this will already set you back RM90,000 + Foundation RM 12,000 in cost vs ACCA Fee to get a degree from SPM Level : RM102,000 (not including the text book course and any tuition that you may top up to study hard papers)

9 cat papers at average cost of RM1,500 13,500
6 level 2 papers at average cost of RM2,000 12,000 (Get Advance Diploma - same as TAR College)
1 obu submission cost of RM 4,500 4,500 (Get a UK(Hons) Degree)
Contingent failure provisioning 10,000
Miscellaneous fee for 3 years 10,000 (other text, acca fees, going for extra revision classes)
Total cost 50,000
This already has provisioning for failure (40%) and it is still cheaper than doing a degree + a levels or foundation by 50,000.

Plus you get to complete it faster if you are smarter - top speed is 2 years after SPM.

If you do foundation - it is 1 year + 3 year degree = 4 years.

If it was me, sell your parents the difference and say that if you can get it done in 2 years, you want the difference to be put into a holiday fund which you can use to go around the world.

After that - go work and holiday in US, Australia, Europe for practical life exposure.

Now if you think there are students that get stuck in ACCA - I have personally seen student get stuck with degree and get kicked out after failing a paper 4 times (to movement ability to any location)

The problems is that most of the students that get kicked out of degree never talk about it -malu but in ACCA some how the students are proud to say - you know it is hard - I took the paper 8 times before passing.

CPA cost is RM3,000 per paper without tuition and cost a total of RM18,000 without failure
ACCA Level 3 cost on average RM2,000 per paper and cost a total of RM10,000 without failure.

Granted CPA is a bit easier - open book but they don't tell you that pass rate for CPA is not published. Internal information puts the pass rates worse than ACCA.

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Mar 29 2015, 08:20 PM

Actually the thing about doing F7 catch up for degree students is kind of redundant since a degree student is suppose to be able to research up the materials.

Anyway most of the topics in P2 repeats what is in F7. Paying RM700 - RM900 just to catch up the F7 materials imply the degree has not really prepared you for the paper.

As far as I know the degree students can pass P2 without re-doing F7 again. The sad part is that there is a kiasu perception of the paper created by some over zealous college (that what ever you studied in a degree is not enough)

In this sense, I belief that P2 knowledge for P7 is critical and this is usually missed by most of the colleges.

Same as F5 knowledge in P3.

Does this mean that students must also take a catch up class for those subjects? More money for the colleges????

In P2 the most important thing to study is the following for each standard is the recognition conditions; measurement and re-measurement and finally de-recognition. If you want to get a world prize study the disclosure.

The rest is understanding the question - which is extremely hard if you don't expose yourself to practical review of financial statements.

When I met the P2 examiner some time back, he clarified the importance of class teaching to review actual annual reports.

This is helpful to gain insight into the standard and situations that present in the exam.

It is call dissecting the annual reports for the area that you have studied. Just like medical students (they dissect the bodies to gain understanding of what they study and law students dissect the real cases to gain understanding of what is happening)

It is just that accounting seems to be taught differently - dissection only occurs when you go to work and never at the classroom.

Sad state of accountancy training that we have in Malaysia for accountancy. No wonder so many get shocked when they go to work - they see

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Mar 31 2015, 01:58 AM

Actually I have heard from Audit managers before that CPA Australia was really poor in their core knowledge - limited skills in console. Just wanted to be politically correct.

CPA Australia is usually easier to pass since it has open book approach.

MSc is an alternative pathway and may suit those that plan to enter into a career of research. Market analyst would probably benefit from the course or academic jobs

From my knowledge the 2 papers of ACCA is included in the 3 papers, that means you get ACCA professional membership once the 3 + 3 papers are completed.

ACCA is equal to a Masters in Ireland since it is banded at Masters level.

The UOL move already tells you that you are doing a masters level paper. OBU exit point is the degree level. UK University has already rated ACCA Level 2 as equal to a degree. ACCA Level 3 is at Masters level.

Obviously for an accountant, it is not where you took the degree but where you qualified as an accountant - which firm.

Getting qualified from a firm that has reputation would be more helpful compared to a MSc from UOL, but having both would be excellent.

If you are planning to work - go for it. UOL can be very hard, I knew a MD of a company that used to only just pass at about 37 - 42 marks even if he was brilliant guy.

So think wisely before you take the jump.

This post has been edited by frodo baggin: Apr 7 2015, 06:06 PM

Can you define the word good?

It depends on your learning style - if you are an audio learner the lecturer talking in different tones may be a good thing but if you are visual learner this will not be relevant. If you are visual - mind maps are excellent idea if used by the lecturer but if you are audio, this will kill you.

Sunway PJ Lecturers only lecture in Sunway - they do not move around.

If you want to study under Menon, go to Sunway and pay RM2,500 for the subject.