Day before CA CPT Exam: Don’t forget to do these things

With only few days left for the CPT December exam, conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, it’s time for aspirants to brace up their first steps towards becoming a CA. The Common Proficiency Test Exam is due on December 17, 2017 to be held in a pencil paper mode.

CA-CPT exam is an entry-level examination which Chartered Accountancy aspirants need to crack in order to get a green signal for appearing in the intermediate exam, the IPCC, and the final CA exam. Cracking the CPT (Common Proficiency Test) requires candidates to study with the 3Ds of Dedication, Determination, and Devotion.

A week before your exam is the most stressful period. This is the time to identify your Exam Challenge. The most important aspect of an Exam is to set a Goal for oneself. Write down a percentage that you want, in bold on a chart paper and place it in front of your Study desk. This will remind you of your challenge daily. Identify your Strengths (subjects that you are good at) and your weaknesses (subjects that are difficult to handle).

Accordingly plan and schedule your last week as per your needs. Map your current position and plan to achieve your target. Deep breathing will definitely help you to handle the stress during an exam.

There might be a situation before or during the exam when you might get stressed mentally or physically. Practice the breathing exercises that you know and calm yourself. Then, begin afresh and continue to do your work. Tough and challenging situations definitely bring out the best in you.

Hence, daily, before you start your studies, tell yourself that “Day by Day you are getting Better and Better.” This will definitely make you be more positive about yourself and increase your confidence in overcoming this challenging situation in a better way.

Also, don’t shy away from asking for help from experts or your family or your friends. Share your inner feelings with them and they will definitely guide you to take right step towards your success. Just be relaxed during your exam time and plan your one week to Perfection. Plan perfect and Perform Well.

Conceptual understanding is of paramount importance while studying for the CPT. ICAI study material is sufficient to prepare you for this exam. Additionally, you can take help from reference books written by renowned authors and produced by reliable publishing houses. Craft a careful strategy that will help you study more efficiently.

Give equal importance to all subjects and don’t neglect the ones that you dislike. Decide how much time you are going to devote to your preparation and also at what point of the day you will study and then try your best to stick with this. This is one of the most important CA-CPT preparation tips.

A positive attitude is the key to passing the CPT. With an optimistic mindset, the otherwise tough preparation will become much easier and cracking the exam will be a cakewalk for you. Don’t focus on how tough the CA exams are supposed to be. Instead, concentrate your energies on reminding yourself that you can and will crack the CPT in one go!

Keep a properly chalked out schedule in front of you and approach your preparation accordingly. If you miss out on your scheduled plan on any one day, compensate for it by working twice as hard for the next day. This way, you’ll never be off track for too long. However, self-assessment is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

You can employ e-learning portals, the test series and CA CPT online practice tests available on these platforms to constantly check and monitor your performance at your convenience.

A large chunk of the CA-CPT syllabus consists of accounting problems. In order to be good at solving the problems, consistent practice is required. ‘Accounts’ also consists of theory so give equal importance to that. Students usually find Mercantile Law a terrible subject to study.

Therefore, it’s imperative to give proper attention to it and note down different laws in points for future reference. While appearing for the CA-CPT exam, attempting the Law paper first is considered a good strategy as it consumes the most time.

Pay careful attention to all the questions and go for the easy ones first. As there is negative marking, solve only those questions which you are entirely sure of. Utilize the available time judiciously and leave some time in the end to check the answers.

Now, let’s check what are the things you should do on day before CA CPT exam.

Practice and Relaxing

• Practice as many mock tests, full exam question papers, etc as you can. You can try CPT Mock Test Papers by ICAI which are free for CPT students and provides high-quality practice questions and full exam.
• Revise concepts from the notes prepared earlier and avoid revising concepts from textbooks as that will waste time.
• Stay away from all possible distractions – friends, emails, chatting, family gatherings, etc. Keep your phone away while studying and try not to indulge in chatting with friends as normally students who are ill-prepared feel nervous during this time and that may rub on you.
• Relaxing is very important. To get proper sleep and keep your mind calm is very important to do well in the exam. Have faith in the hard work you have put in and be confident.

Don’t forget to check these type of MCQ’s day before CA CPT exam.

Be careful with these type of MCQ’s in CA CPT exam.

Here, we are providing where you should be careful while attempting some type of MCQ’s in CA CPT exam. Let’s check it subject wise.

Accounts

• Which of the following Statements are True / Not True / False / Not False.
• Items to be Debited / Not to be Debited, Credited / Not to be Credited.
• Which is not a Personal / Real / Nominal Account.
• Which is not an Asset (or) not a Liability?
• Which is not an income (or) not an Expenditure.
• Which shows / does not show debit / credit balance
• Which comes / does not comes in Trading a/c / Profit and Loss account / Balance sheet.
• Which is shown / not shown in which subsidiary journal?

Mercantile Law

• Which of the following is correct/incorrect?
• True or False statements.
• MCQs based on case studies
• MCQs based on Practical Questions.
• Many of the questions are asked negatively, rather than directly. Be more careful with such questions.
• For example, “One of the followings is not a characteristic of partnership firm”. To answer such a question, the student must not only know what are the characteristics of a partnership firm but also have knowledge of other forms of organization, such as, Sole Proprietary, Joint Stock Company, Hindu Undivided Family, etc.
• In some questions, one of the options may be either “None of these”. In 90% cases, this option will not be the answer. Don’t be hurry in choosing this option, if given in any question.

Economics

• Which of the following is correct/incorrect?
• True or False statements.
• MCQs based on case studies & Practical Questions

Quantitative Aptitude

Mathematics:

• Be careful with the options which are equal in value (For example ½ and 2/4)
• In the chapters of Derivatives & Integrations you may get some MCQs which are linked with the knowledge of Economics (like Marginal Cost, etc.). Pay more attention on such questions. We may need to face a new question in the exam from that area and that question will be rank deciding question.

Statistics:

• Calculation of Variance
• True / False statements
• In the options like Both (a) &(b) / Either (a) or (b)
• Inequality conditions like AM ≥ GM ≥ HM etc.,
• In regression bxy , byx and r
• In the probability chapter, conditional probability MCQs.
• In the chapter of sampling, choose appropriate formulae based on given information i.e., sample variance, population variance, large population, etc.,
• In the chapter of Theoretical distributions sign of Z value.

Exam Day Tips

• There are 200 questions in totality and each question carries 1 mark.
• The wrong question carries negative marking and one-fourth of marks is deducted for every wrong answer. Hence, students need to be careful with guess work and only attempt questions you know the answer of.
• Reach exam centre at least 1 hour in advance so that you avoid any last minute contingency and is well-settled both mentally and physically before the start of the exam.
• Don’t forget to carry admit card.
• Read all the instructions carefully.
• Start with Mercantile Law first in section 1 because accounting may consume time.
• Read all the questions and given multiple options carefully even if you are confident of the answer. There is good chance of getting 10-20 trick questions that may appear straightforward but are actually not.
• Skip questions that require calculation or thinking and attempt easy questions first.
• Be careful of ‘All of the above’ and ‘None of the above’ option in any question. These are normally the questions which are answered incorrectly by most of the student.
• If you are not sure of the answer to any particular question but still wants to attempt it, then follow the elimination approach. Eliminate incorrect options first before choosing the right answer.
• And lastly, always give yourself at least 10 minutes to quickly revise your answers before submitting.

I hope this article will help you to check what are things you should do on the day before CA CPT exam.

All the best !!