Cost Measurement

Two weeks of studying down and four to go until the big day. I don’t know how I feel about that. Before yesterday, I felt pretty good about the discovery of my new study method (see my last post), but yesterday I felt discouraged. I could not focus on anything. I got home from work, ate dinner and cracked open the review questions (per my normal routine) to discover that they were going in one ear and out the other. Today will be a lost cause as I have dinner plans directly after work (hey, a girl’s got to eat, right?). However, I have high hopes for Saturday morning. Saturday morning is probably my favorite time of the week. I am an early riser, you see. I tend to get a lot done while the rest of the world is still sleeping or brewing their morning cup of coffee. This includes studying for BEC. Here’s hoping.

The good news of the week is that I think I’ve found my problem area with this part of the exam. According to Wiley, it’s called “cost measurement”. After taking each 30 question quiz, Wiley gives me a report on my overall score and then my score by section. There are about 5 or 6 sections in each quiz (thanks to my method of mixing all of the chapters up), all of which I score decent on except for cost measurement. Must find a way to defeat this…will get back to you on that one.

I really think my new study method is going to work. Before this method, I would take a quiz on one chapter at a time. I think this is kind of a skewed method because you can cleverly get one answer correct because your last question was on the exact same topic. By mixing up the questions, this doesn’t happen. Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I keep scoring in the 70% range on my mixed chapter quizzes, which is exactly what I’ve been scoring on my exams. It’s that pesky cost measurement section that’s costing me the extra 5%!!

My game plan from here is to keep doing what I’m doing. I will probably devote a whole week solely to cost measurement. I may even take a few quizzes without including the cost measurement topic to gauge if that's really the hang up. If I score high on the quizzes with cost measurement removed, I can be sure it’s the problem. I will let you know how this goes once I get around to doing it.

In the meantime, if anyone has comments or tips on cost measurement equations, please share!

 

Lauryn

Comments

[Chris H]

Hi Lauryn,
Try these links:
http://cpacfa.squarespace.com/bec-study-notes/

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B56N75zGwCj0NTQ4MDM2MjEtOWJjZC00MzUzLTkwOWMtOWNiYWUyYzFiZTI5/edit?pli=1