How much time will you get to take off for CA your exams?
Part three in the series of "vacation question" posts. Click here for part two.
Another reader's question:
Is it common for juniors to take extra unpaid time off to study for CKE, SOA, and UFE? If so, on average how many unpaid days/weeks do people take for each of those tests?
Using paid time off (PTO) is both common, and essential.
Most companies will give you some paid time off to study, in addition to your vacation time. So you're looking at anywhere between 20 and 50 paid days off to study - most likely a number somewhere in the middle of that range. At the upper end, 50 days translates to 10 5-day weeks. Most juniors take a week or two off for the CKE - the Christmas holidays help you save some of that precious PTO.
I never knew the joy of travel during my UFE writing year. But then I didn't show up to work for an entire month the following spring - guess when I took this photo? - so I feel like things balanced out nicely.
The SOA is the next big 'sink'. It's about 3 or 4 weeks - your total use is now up to roughly 5 weeks of your PTO. Some people choose to take time off in May to prepare for the SOA. I didn't and was quite happy with my decision. Others worked on crazy-busy jobs and needed some time to unwind.
Fair enough.
After SOA some people go on vacation. I had just taken a long adventure to travel before starting my job the year before, so I took "going back to work" over "relaxing." So the month of July will either be another stretch of PTO - you're going to now exhaust it - or time to make some extra cash by showing up at the office.
In late July - for 2008 it's actually this Friday - you find out if you passed the SOA. After that larger firms run their in-house training courses to prepare you for the UFE. Smaller firms send you to a course run by a third party. This time is often treated as "work" and as such, you don't have to use your PTO.
But by early-mid August the work-sponsored training will wind down. You'll be on self-study time and you'll find that either you've cleverly saved another week or three of PTO, or it's all gone. If you're living on your own budget carefuly for August/September when your paycheque suddenly disappears.
So to answer your question, an unpaid leave of absence of at least a couple of weeks to as much as two months or more is possible and will occur. I did all I could to minimize the unpaid time off, others don't care about earning the cash as much and decide to rest instead.
Hope that helps answer your questions.
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