Talk:Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination/Archives/2013

CPA exam history: calculators?

I sat for the Nov. 1985 exam and have a vague recollection of either being allowed to use calculators, or being furnished with them. Could be wrong. Billbrock 05:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Billbrock,

Assuming you indeed took (and presumably passed?) the CPA Exam in 1985, you should not have been furnished a calculator. [If you were, you may be protected under a Whistlebower Law, though I'm sure the statute of limitations has passed....  ;-) ]

I worked on the Uniform CPA Examination at the AICPA from 1985-2005. It was seven years after I arrived that calculators were allowed to be used by candidates (1992). Until then, the assumption was that calculations were simple enough so that they could be done manually, and scratch paper was provided to candidates for that purpose. However, in 1989, a major practice study of the CPA profession determined that manual calculation skills had become relatively less important for licensing purposes (since most CPAs were expected to document significant calculations with computer printouts or with calculator tapes). This finding, combined with other factors, resulted in the inclusion of calculators for those portions of the exam requiring extensive calculations.

For security purposes, the AICPA provided each candidate with a color-coded calculator. The color was changed for each administration for security purposes. Each board of accountancy had the option of collecting the calculators or allowing candidates to take them home. Calculators became obsolete in 2004 when the computer-based CPA Exam was introduced.

So feel free to tell your grandchildren that "back in the day," you had to do all your calculations on the CPA Exam using paper and pencil!

Drbb01 (talk) 14:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The law tested on the exam

I made a correction on the law tested on the exam. The exam most certainly does test STATE law, not just Federal law. Contract law and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) are state laws. What I think may have been confusing the issue is that the exam does not test the laws of a specific state, such as Georgia or Nebraska or California.

If you're testing contract law, you're testing mostly state law. If you're testing UCC (which is also heavily contract law), you're virtually exclusively testing state law. There's no such thing as a "federal" UCC. The UCC is enacted by each state legislature, on a state by state basis, and there are some variations from state to state. Yours, Famspear 21:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

PS: The law of agency is still tested as well. That's primarily state law. Famspear 21:59, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that contract law, including UCC, are not federal statutes. With respect to the CPA Exam, because it has been adopted by 54 jurisdictions, every effort is made to limit exam content to those aspects of commercial law that have been adopted by all jurisdictions. In instances where it is recognized there are exceptions, items are worded to acknowledge that fact. These instances are relatively rare, and the focus of the items is either that it is sufficiently important to know the general rule, or to know there are exceptions to the rule. This policy is consistent with the recent incorporation of content on international accounting standards into the exam: even CPAs who physically work entirely within the boundaries of a jurisdiction, some level of understanding of national and international rules, regulations, and standards--and some critical exceptions--is necessary to do a competent audit, thus protecting the public welfare. --Drbb01 (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Results?

Does anyone know of any statistics regarding results, preferably as specific as possible, by window? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Myndaen (talk • contribs) 23:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Fingerprinting on the CPA Exam: Edit War? [Moved from "Results?"]

Warning to CPA Candidates: A controversial new NASBA/AICPA fingerprinting mandate called "BIMS" was quietly implemented on January 1 2008. According to the AICPA, all candidates who sit for any part of the CPA exam now are fingerprinted prior to each exam section, and the fingerprints are stored in a new global fingerprint database which is shared with the foreign data-broker Choicepoint. Industry insiders (Accounting Today, WebCPA) report this has sparked significant opposition from concerned CPAs and from within the State Boards due to the risk to candidates' privacy and possible identity theft ("CPA Exam Fingerprinting Provokes Controversy" [1].

ChoicePoint/ReedElsevier (Wikipedia: [2]) has had significant privacy and legal issues in the recent past, including being hit with the largest fine in the history of the US Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations [3]

I think the points raised in this section are both notable and well sourced. It's noteable because it's relatively uncommon to be finger-printed and there are well documented privacy concerns with a company involved in the data collection. The sources also appear to be reputable. As long as it meets these two criteria, then I think it deserves to stay. That said, I think the original text was less than neutral and needed to be toned down. I've attempted to tone it down and 'NPOV' it, but this may need further refinement. What should not be occuring is an edit war on the page itself. Rather than 'responding' to this text or just removing it, please edit it to remove any POV and try to keep it to the facts. Seth ze (talk) 01:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Without disagreeing that "the points raised in this section are both notable and well sourced," I believe this section is out of context where it is. While it would be correct to state that fingerprinting is part of the examination process, the discussion about ChoicePoint and the controversy surrounding it goes beyond a description of the "Examination Process." The CPA Examination is not unique in requiring fingerprints; for example, the national Multistate Bar Exam and the LSAT preceded the CPA Exam on the national level by requiring fingerprinting, and many state licensing exam programs (e.g. Texas Insurance Examinations) also require fingerprinting. Clearly, a controversy about fingerprinting on the CPA Exam exists (or at least did when it was introduced--I'd like to see evidence it still does); the detailed discussion of said controversy in a descriptive section of the CPA Exam process is what is inappropriate. If there were a section of this article that discussed "Criticisms of the Uniform CPA Examination," "Uniform CPA Examination Controversies," or "Significant Events in the History of the Uniform CPA Examination," that would be the place for the exposition of controversial CPA Exam topics--not in this descriptive "Examination Process" section. The very inclusion of this material in this section suggests a non-neutral POV. From an historical perspective, it is but one controversy involving the Uniform CPA Examination (testing writing skills, inclusion of a separate section on Business Environment, methods of setting passing scores on the exam, to name just a few), and an article (or at least a separate section) on such controversies would be a much more appropriate place to discuss the issue of fingerprinting on the exam, particularly if the historical context for the decision to fingerprint CPA candidates is included. Drbb01 (talk) 02:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

[Material in bold updated by Drbb01 (talk) 07:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC) ]

Revising the CPA Exam Article to Reflect Timing of Changes

The Uniform CPA Exam has undergone many changes in a relatively short period of time, and these changes--included planned changes--are incorporated into it. Unfortunately, those who are quick to write about "upcoming changes" are slow to revise those pages after the fact. For example, the section "Changes to the Exam as of January 1, 2011," was written in the future tense; yet over a year later, it has not been revised into the past tense, nor has the content been incorporated into the descriptive section of the article. This issue is not unique to this article, but it is no less a problem.--Drbb01 (talk) 08:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Passing rate ?

any stats on how the average passing rate for this exam? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.185.151.193 (talk) 21:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Every year the AICPA releases passing rates for that year and publishes them on their website.http://www.aicpa.org/BECOMEACPA/CPAEXAM/PSYCHOMETRICSANDSCORING/PASSINGRATES/Pages/default.aspx Gwright36 (talk) 18:31, 26 December 2012 (UTC)