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I found another CA blog out there - the first French Canadian one I've come across . If you have trouble reading Julien's French, run it through Google Translate. The translation's not perfect, but it'll do. The newest posting caught my eye ; in the spirit of hyper-critical UFE prep, here's some analysis. His writing's pretty good - the post about travel is a good read , and it's amusing to note that he looks forward to the chance to perfect his English in his travels, whereas I could say the same about improving my French when I'm sent on the road to the francophone parts of the world. Going back to his newest post about the UFE process, however, Julien talks about two factors that he claims make his program unique compared to those experienced at other firms - any message like that delivered on an official blog deserves closer scrutiny since new recruits are going to put some weight into what they're being told. Special Educators The first claim is...
A quick piece of math to share with you all. Math? I know, for a blog run by a CA, there's really very little math, eh? Don't act so shocked - in my day job I'm really more of an auditor than an accountant, despite what the "A" stands for in CA. Yes, this photo's only tenuous connection to math is the presence of the "30". Nothing says " I hope I'm going to carry the one correctly" like a speed limit sign. ... What? You try and find a better accounting related photo in my vacation photo collection! Anyway, a reader wrote in to ask how much time I spent studying for the UFE and the related preparatory exams. I've written on this subject several times, but after a quick search of my archives , I don't think I bothered to try and figure out the total. So here we go. We'll estimate the number of weeks first, then convert that to hours at the rate of 40 per week. This is a bit of a 'cheat', since sometimes you're doing...
A week after they sent me the e-mail making it official, my certificate finally showed up at the office, proudly proclaiming to the world that I'm a CA. Whee! The other 1157 pieces of 'mail' where spams that hit me - roughly as much as last month . Although the ICAO should probably be ashamed of itself for actually INCLUDING some old fashioned junk mail with the certificate - an offer for insurance with TD Meloche Monex. How. Incredibly. Tacky. Whoever thought of that idea should be stripped of their CA, if they have one, for bringing disrepute upon the profession. We have a bylaw along those lines which mandates for an expulsion or a flogging of some sort. I say we enforce the rules, even if the offender does work for the Institute. Scratch that. Especially. I exaggerate a bit - they're quite nice and friendly people at the ICAO. Their procedures could use some efficiency improvements, though. You see, I noticed that although my e-mail arrived last Friday, but it was the...
They, meaning the board of evaluators, assign a range of 10 to 20% for four topics you're tested on in the UFE. And the range is 20- to 30% for the two big ones (assurance and performance management - hardcore auditing and accounting basically). Well, in 2006 the "heavies" only got 21% weighting each, while IT was up to 16%, as was Finance. Two areas I seemed to do rather well in last year for some odd reason - what an excellent coincidence. Of course, I must've still done okay across the board - the exam is structured so that if you don't essentially 'pass' each of the six topics, you fail the entire exam and have to do it all over. I don't think the stats are generally available, but I'm guessing it's probably more common to see people dropping due to several unsuccessful topics. I can only imagine how troubling it has to be for someone who almost made it, but tripped up on one of the smallest areas.
The overall pass rate on the 2006 UFE was 79.3%. The Board of Evaluators kills me as usual, though, by noting that they concluded that the 2006 exam was *harder* than the 2005 paper, but more people passed. In 2005, only 74% survived. What kills me, you see, is the fact that they decide *how good* your answer has to be to pass. I think it's easy to get wildly confused here: they decide what "sort of" answer is "good enough" to count for a pass. And they base this on how well everyone answered the questions. So what they seem to be implying here, is that the questions were harder to answer in 2006, but we did a better job of answering those questions than the group which wrote in 2005. It seems to make perfect sense as long as you don't question their role in setting the standard of "what is 'good enough,' exactly?" There were also regional statistics released - and Ontario once again dragged down the average - only 73.4% passed. Then again...
I think I stumbled upon the answer earlier tonight. It's at least 10 kilograms. I also found that half that is roughly enough paper to fill up a small blue box. I vowed to myself to clean up the insane jumble of papers in my room once I got the UFE out of the way - after all, if I want a larger monitor , I need room for it! So I realized that before I disposed of my now obsolete notes and practice papers, I should weigh my paper basket before taking its contents to the curb. The bathroom scale read 5 kg, and I can tell that I only disposed of no more than half my papers today. If you were to count the copies of your UFE that get printed at the exam marking centre in Montreal (double spaced, and in duplicate), the total might even approach 15 kg. Assuming 2500 writers going through an average of 15 kg of paper, that means the UFE consumes roughly 37.5 tons of paper every year. I hope the other writers and offices are as conscientious about recycling as I am - I used the single-sided paper...