3 Ranks.....and the means

Wish I had some more time...

2012-07-10T05:37:00.001-07:00

Wish I had some more time…..

Ø The paper was very very lengthy. How can one complete so many questions in three hours time?

Ø I knew the answer, wish I had some more time.

Ø This question was short; I should have attempted this instead of that.

Ø The paper was easy but was lengthy.

Do any of the above statements fit your frame of mind when you are out of examination hall after a 3 hours of battle (as many students feel – CA exams are none less than a war) with the question paper, especially of a practical paper?

If your answer is yes, then it is time to rethink at your strategy of attempting the exams. Though attempting the entire one hundred marks of paper is not required to clear the exams or for that matter even to get a rank, being not able to answer a question which you know can be heartbreaking at times. For those who are at the edge, it becomes much more relevant to attempt all questions they know.

Here are some factors which I feel might be affecting student’s ability to attempt all questions on time (these are based on my own experience and experiences of my friends).

Ø Some students tend to write too long answers. As a rule of thumb, a 4/5/6 mark question should not exceed a page. Of course, there are exceptions. It may exceed a page in some case where there is a elaborate question. Some questions need only a half page answers. You have to write answers for what is asked by the question. There is no need to tell the examiner that you know everything. For e.g. in IPCC paper, a question was asked on rights of a retired partner in profits of the firm. You do not have to write the rights of a partner as regards to goodwill, capital etc. Similarly for a question asking on amount of depreciation to be charged, you do not have to prepare Fixed Asset Ledger Account. Writing extra does not fetch you extra marks. Similarly for a question asking P&L appropriation account, you do not have to prepare partners capital account.

Ø Another common factor is spending too much of time in first couple of questions and missing out the questions attempted at the last. You may attempt the first question with perfection by spending about 45 mins to 1 hour but always remember that only the opening batsman cannot win you the match. Remaining questions also needs to be attempted reasonably well. Rationalizing the time spent on each question can help you to attempt all questions. Otherwise, there may be some regrets of missing out on an easy question which you could have attempted if you had time.

Ø Choosing the wrong question – here I mean a question which you are not comfortable with. Spending too much of time and energy to crack a question which is not getting solved is another factor. Just skip the question and move on to another question. You can get back to the question anytime later. Many students feel that more marks would be given for questions which are fully attempted and completely correct. However, the institute marking system awards marks for each step and not just for the final answer. If a question has six steps, each step would be carrying proportionate marks.

Each of the above areas can be addressed for a better efficiency and management of the paper against the stipulated 3 hours time. No doubt there is an insurmountable pressure on the candidates, but this is how professional exams are. The paper is generally not lengthy but we tend to give lengthy answers and make it lengthy. Answers are to be given to the point and there is no point in beating around the bush as in a graduate examination. Always remember that it is not about managing time, it is about managing yourself in the limited time.

Good luck...

Being Responsible

2011-09-10T22:37:00.001-07:00

You are the way you are because you chose to be what you are. No one forced you to be in a particular way. It was after all a way of being chosen by you and no one else. You may argue that I am “this” because that – ‘thing happened to me’, ‘person said me to do so’, ‘person did such & such thing to me’, ’I was helpless’, ‘luck did not favour me’, ‘situation was like that’ and ‘what not’… But at the end of day you ultimately have to take responsibility for your actions and also your state of being.

At times the actions we take are ex tempore. We may not even have a fair enough idea of the results our actions will lead to. We act in a flash of second. But still the fact remains that those were our actions and we and only we are responsible for the result that follows. Similar is the case of inaction. If you did not act upon a situation for any reason what so ever, you owe the responsibility.

Casting the responsibility of your state of being upon ‘someone’ or ‘something’ out there won’t do any good to you. Whether you are happy, sad, joyous, upset…. You solely are responsible. You are happy because you chose to be happy and similar suit follows for everything else.
You are not upset because of someone somewhere did something to you. It’s you who expected X and when X did not occur you became upset. A cricket fan is upset when India loses a match because s/he expects India to win. Had the expectation of win not been there, the upset would not have been there. One may argue that there is nothing wrong in expectations. True, there is nothing wrong or right in expecting. But then this very Expectation leads to Upsets which no man would enjoy & you are responsible for expecting.

No one can make you happy, you have to be happy. It’s not easy right – to turn a blind eye to what is happening around you and still be happy. Agreed it’s not easy but then is there any other choice. It’s not about partying out when things around you are gloomy. It’s about choosing to be happy rather than being upset.
There are few things about which you can’t do anything. Your boss will be the way he is and so will be your wife. You can’t change people. Each being is different and they have right to be different. The choice is yours – “accept the way they are” or “make your own life miserable by thinking about changing them all the time”
Ultimately whether you are happy or otherwise depends entirely upon you and you solely are responsible for what happens to you.

________________
Thanks for reading. Please do not construe the above write up as any piece of advice in any manner whatsoever.

Tacts 4 Tax

2011-09-10T07:32:00.001-07:00

Tax - Be it direct or its counterpart, as a subject makes things for CA aspirants difficult more often than not. The sheer volume of the Text book one buys for Direct Tax itself is life threatening. You need strong hands to hold it. The plethora of Sections, sub-sections & clauses followed my equal number of amendments, some logical, some otherwise don’t make things easy. And finally there is a risk of redundancy once DTC goes live.

While I was preparing for PE II, everyone whom I spoke to emphasised quoting of sections in answer sheets along with a caveat that if a section is wrongly quoted, you lose all the marks. That was quite risky. I had huge troubles in remembering sections of Business Law, DT and IDT (in finals), forget the subsections. I somehow managed feed my mind with some section numbers which I thought were important and didn’t even make an effort to remember the others. I considered (at that time) the exercise of remembering sections a sheer waste of time.

I would have hardly quoted any section in Taxation paper of PE II. I quoted a couple of Section Numbers in DT of final and did not quote any in the IDT paper. Also there were 6 case laws asked in the examination and I did not quote a single Case Law name in my answer sheet. I wrote the concepts, logic, gave proper reasoning and conclusion. I did not fare that bad in all these papers. The scores were decently good.

This is not to discourage students from remembering sections. If someone can conveniently remember section numbers, please do. These will earn you brownie points and would be really relevant for your score. Everything you write counts.But if you just cant remember them, you need not break head on them.

Good Luck

Its Exam time folks!!!

2011-04-20T09:10:00.001-07:00

Almost all students must be in revision mode by this time. The last few days approaching the exams will play a very crucial role in your exams. It is important that you don’t let things go off your control. This is the time for finishing touches to your preparation.

Don’t try to start some new topic at this time. Remember its time to build up on what you have prepared till date. Make a revision schedule for each subject and stick to it. Identify the topics which need more attention during revision. Some topics may appear to be new again though it might be your third or fourth reading but that is completely fine. It happens with almost everyone given the vast syllabus.

It is always advisable to take up a mock exam for each subject to assess your exam preparedness. Those who are writing final exam for the first time must necessarily take up some of the model tests as about two years would have elapsed since you wrote your last exam. It is very important to be in exam mode and have some practice before you take up the exams.

This is not the time to prepare notes for exams. I have seen some students hurryingly prepare notes in the last week before the exams. I personally feel that the last minute notes would not be of much assist for preparation. You may not even have time to refer the notes again.

Quick reads of compilations, suggested answers, RTP and formulae (for MAFA, Costing etc) is important. This will tone your preparation with an examination approach. Even a couple of questions from these would assist you in readily scoring 10-15 marks.

Students must avoid talking about their preparation with others during the last couple of weeks before the exams. One may be threatened with the level of preparation done by others and lose confidence on their own preparation. Believe in your own preparation and focus on what you have done rather than focusing on what others have done. You need be cent percent perfect to crack a CA exam.

Keep your revision simple..

How to go about Accounts?

2010-09-13T09:32:00.001-07:00

Well begun is half done and it is quite important that we write the first paper of our exams extremely well. I have made an attempt to describe strategies which I adopted and which enabled me to score 95 (PE1), 98 (PE2) and 80 (Final).

1. Learning Concepts: Though branded as a practical subject, theoretical knowledge plays a significant role in determining how well do you perform in the subject. Students make an attempt to solve the maximum number of problems without giving much thought to understand the concept. This could be quite dangerous. Even one may solve hundreds of problem but there is always a chance that you get the 101st Problem and in case you have not understood the concepts, it would be a real difficult situation. The focus should be on the number of concepts you learn rather than the number of problems you solve. Once you have a thorough understanding of concepts, you can solve any problem from that specific area.

2. Where to prepare from?
Students tend to ignore study material but my own experience with this subject is that one cannot afford to ignore the Study Material. Some problems and explanation given in the Material are of very high standards which help us to have a broader understanding of the subject. Please do refer study material atleast once.

Apart from Study Material, do have a standard reference book at hand. I followed Shukla and Grewal for my PE II and MP Vijay Kumar for Finals. Both books were equally good and were designed for students of all stratums. If you have attended tuitions, you can follow your tuition notes as well.

These should be backed by Compilations and Previous year papers. Once you solve questions from previous year papers, you have a feeling of the standard of questions that appear in the examinations.

3. Accounting Standards:
Students at PE II (now PCC/IPCC) are expected to have a working knowledge of accounting standards and Students at Final level are expected to have advance knowledge of same. Start early and the best option is to read the accounting standards directly in their bare form with the supplementary text (generally provided in a Appendix form in the study material). You can also buy a good book on standards to solve practical problems. Again previous year questions from Accounting standards are excellent source to practice practical questions.

Make it a point to remember the Accounting Standards Number and some basic definitions. Being thorough in Accounting standards not only helps you in Accounts but also in auditing.

4. Key/Important Chapters:

These are the chapters which have carried the maximum weightage in the examinations. Make a study of the previous year papers to have a understanding of the same. During my PE II, partnership accounts, single entry system, insolvency, branch accounting carried a huge weightage. Similarly in finals consolidation and amalgamation carried about 35 marks. The trend may not be continued but having an understanding of critical areas helps you a lot to maximize your score in the subject.

5. Presentation
Presentation in the examination is the key at the end. You may have studied extremely well but if you are not able to present what you learned, it makes no sense at all.
a. Working notes are a must. I used to start the answer with a working note. There is no such rule that you start with working notes. All your assumptions and workings must be presented together at one place as working notes.
b. Avoid using abbreviation like P & L a/c; instead write Profit and Loss account.
c. If you feel that you are running short of time, there is not need of drawing lines and tables. You can simply fold the paper and mark you margins (I did the same in PE II costing and still managed 80 out of 92 attempted). So there is no correlation between drawing lines and scoring marks.
d. Answer to theory questions must be brief and to the point.
e. If the question has figures like Rs. 10,00,000/-, truncate the last three zeros and write on the top of the answer : “Amount in ‘000”. So if you have to pass 15 journal entries you save a lot of time.
f. Use effective use of Calculator functions like M+, M-, GT etc.
g. If you are passing journals, write complete narrations.
h. Prepare multi column ledgers in p’ship accounts etc to save time.

6. Always remember that you get marks for every step you do correctly even though your end answer may not be correct. So just don’t leave a problem because you can’t solve it completely.

Study Room

2010-08-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

The mobile keeps ringing and the TV keeps talking…. Relatives arrive frequently….and what not. All these take a toll on your preparation. Once your preparation gets off the track due to some disturbance, you need to spend some more time to get back to the same preparation flow. Remember, CA requires dedicated and focussed preparation.

It is quite important to have a separate study room for preparation. A room where no one disturbs you once you get in. Have everything you need in the room so that you don’t have to come out now and again. Keep your phone out of the room. (It might be uneasy for first few days but you will build a habit soon). Your family must be strictly informed not to disturb you unless when there is an emergency.

If possible, one can look for a single room around your house. I did it on my brother’s suggestion and it worked quite well for me. I got a small room in our locality, quite near to our apartments. A separate room ensured that I could prepare without any disturbance from family & friends (Only a few knew this place).

No TV, No Mobile, No Visitors… In short a peaceful preparation for CA PE I and CA PE II. The possibility of getting into useless gossips did not even exist there. When I was in the room, the only goal was to pass with flying colours. Preparation was focussed and intense. If I have to list down factors for my success, the separate room would be one of the most important factors.

Just look back and see how often you were disturbed while preparing and how much of time that you spent on unnecessary things could have been spent on preparation. I managed to get a separate room at a throw away price. If it is not possible for you to get a separate room at least have a separate study room in your house which is away from worldly disturbances.

Respect time and time will respect you...!

2010-07-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

Time and Tide wait for none..!

Many of us enjoy postponing things for tomorrow and sometimes even I do. Sooner or later it becomes our habit and we tend to postpone things even when we really do not want to do so. Visit any Income Tax office on 31st July and you can see how many really postponed filing of returns till the last date.

When it comes to studies an hour lost is an hour of preparation lost. One may argue that one hour of preparation lost can be made up by studying one hour more the next day. However, the fact remains that the additional one hour you intend to put the next day was always available to you and you actually lost one hour. I just wrote about one hour but we are unreasonable in postponing things – days or even months.

I had completed the syllabus of PE I in Jan 2006 (My attempt was in May 2006). Many had not even started their preparation till then. I had three months for revision which obviously gave me an edge over others. I followed the same strategy in PE II and Final – Kicking off preparation early and allowing myself sufficient time for preparation and revisions. The extra time allowed me to practice previous year’s papers as well.

Another reason to start early is to have buffers in case of unprecedented emergencies. You may fall sick, unannounced relatives drop in, a disturbing function nearby etc. You need to ensure that you do not have any regrets of not starting preparation early. I had to shift my house in the last week of July 2009. It took quite sometime to get adjusted in new environment. Since my preparation was almost done my mid July I did not face any problem. Another friend of mine has severe typhoid just one month before the exams. Since he had completed revision by the time he got ill, he did not face much problem in taking up exams.

Students must ensure that they do not waste a single hour of preparation. If you waste an hour a day, you lose 365 hours of preparation in a year. So a student preparing 8 hours a day has lost roughly 45 days of preparation. Students complain that their principal gave those four months of leave which is never sufficient for preparation. What they do not realize is that they can create one and a half month of preparation time on their own.

Remember, Early bird catches the worm.

How important is coaching?

2010-05-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

To attend tuitions or not is one of the biggest questions facing CA students. Infact the first question any CA student asks me is – where did you take tuitions from? I have seen students traveling to another city (Chennai or Pune) to attend tuitions just because they feel that they cant pass without taking tuitions from reputed institutions.

However there is no correlation between taking tuitions and passing CA exams. Had there been any correlation between these two the pass percentage would increase with the increase in students taking up tuitions. This is not the case. There is no guarantee that if you attend tuition in a good coaching centre, you will pass.

To attend tuitions or not wholly depends on each students aptitude. Students who come from science background do require coaching to become familiar with the stream. Still I have seen instances where even science students have cleared CA exams without attending tuitions. If one is an above average student then I feel there would not be much value addition by attending tuitions. One of my friend has secured 2nd, 18th and 2nd ranks without attending tuitions. I attended coaching in PE I and PE II just to obtain eligibility certificates. The centers where I attended covered hardly 20% of the syllabus, meaning I had to do all the preparation at home on my own. Some of my friends also have cleared CA exams without attending tuitions. One thing I can authoritatively conclude is that tuitions are not mandatory for passing CA exams.

Tuitions are basically meant for those who need an initial push to start preparation. Some students who really cant extract time out of there daily routine (either because they have hectic articles schedule or just because they are lazy) also need tuitions so that their preparation takes off smoothly. Students who have no resort to clear their doubts may also need tuitions. Tuitions or not is to be decided by the student himself after assessing his abilities and previous experiences. You are the right person to take a call.

Whether you take tuitions or not, you should realize that about 80-90% of preparation is to be done at home. One major reason why many students fail despite taking tuitions is they lack self preparation back home. They feel that once they attend tuitions at coaching centers, they have pass certificates in their hands. You should revise and re-revise the concepts taught to you at your coaching centers to get a good grip over each subject. If you don’t do this you will tend to forget whatever is taught over a period of time, given the voluminous syllabus. If you stay away from your books for a couple of months, then everything would appear Greek and Latin (as they say).

If you are in a dilemma, try self preparation at the first hand. Assess your progress after about two weeks and ask yourself if you can continue on your own. The answer to this question would decide whether you continue with self preparation or should you switch to tuition mode.

All the best.

Believe yourself!

2010-03-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

"Think twice before you take up Chartered Accountancy.. Its a five years commitment.. easy to get in but difficult to get out" these words were told to a student who had just topped the district.. I was just sixteen then.. just a kid.

The next two years in Bangalore just flew by. One of our seniors had got the prospectus of CA. I ran through the syllabus.. PE I syllabus was quite doable. PE II was a little scary with so many Acts and Final seemed impossible. The teachers at college used to tell us how difficult the course was and how low the pass percentage was.

I had made up my mind to become a Chartered Accountant and luckily didn’t change my decision..

“If you don’t get a rank, you will repent”. These words by my bhaiya still ring in my ears. Two years back someone advised my to think properly before taking up the course and now there was someone who believed that I could easily clear CA exams and wanted me to target a rank..

After this I always prepared with the “Rank” in my mind. A rank in CA became my dream which finally came true in all three examinations I appeared in. In fact I had already thought of writing "3 Ranks and the means" in August 2009 itself. Confidence really made a big difference.

I have found many students lacking self confidence. They just dont believe that they can pass CA exams. They start preparation well in advance, take up tuitions, study till late night and do everything possible under the sun to prepare for exams and yet do not clear their exams. One reason why they fail is lack of confidence. Their mind is packed with fears and doubt. They doubt their own ability.

“People say passing both groups is impossible”
“Exemption aagaya toh bas hain (I just need exemption in couple of subjects)”
“ I may have to write again in November (even before may exams start)”
“ The pass percentage is very low this time.. Don't know if I can pass”

These are few thoughts that keep oscillating in students mind. Its not that students don't want to pass. But somewhere in their subconscious mind the fear of failure persists. This seriously hampers preparation and the exam attempt which finally affects the results.

You can walk on a 20 feet plank on ground. If the same plank is kept at height of 100 ft connecting two towers you cant walk. The plank is same but the fear of falling dominates your ability to walk. And finally you won’t be able to walk. Similarly fear of failure dominates your ability to prepare and write well in the examination.

Have faith in yourself. Believe that you can pass the exams with flying colors.

Just knock the T off the CAN'T.

If you don’t believe yourself, nobody else will..

What I did and What I did not..

2010-03-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

In the blogs that follow I would be writing what I did and what I didn't do in all these five years of CA course. Securing a national level rank was never ever in the list of things which I believed I could do. I did not even feature in top ten in my 10+2 exams. Then what made me secure Rank 1 in CA PE1 and Rank 4 and 2 in PE 2 and Final respectively.