May be when you travel alone, 3hours pass too long. But when you start writing a costing paper 3hrs always run so fast. Many of the students find it difficult with the Costing Paper even when they are able to crack the other papers quite easily. One of the main reasons is ‘not being able to finish the paper fully’ within the given time. How often we would have heard students saying ‘had I written that extra ten marks, I would have cleared/ cracked an exemption’
This article is meant for the benefit of the students who sincerely knew all the concepts and are aware of all the topics to be studied for the exam but just struggling to finish the full paper in 3hrs. This article is just a catalyst.
Speed and Legibility:
For finishing the paper fully, you need a lot of practice on solving problems and going through model tests. The reason why I stress on model tests is that, if you lack in practice, there are two possible outcomes. At the exam,
i) You will try to write fast and start to scribble, or
ii) You try to write neatly and slow down in pace.
Both are not going to help. You need to write up to the speed and also legibly. This can be attained only by undergoing a number of practice/ model tests.
And coming to writing model tests, I can suggest undergoing one test from any institute where you write test with typical exam conditions. And next 4model tests with any 4 past questions. You can do the latter privately. But at the minimum try to write atleast 5model tests before the exams.
Focus on theory questions:
It is always advisable to have priority over theory questions in the exam than to solve problems at first. As per the current pattern, 2 sets of theory questions are asked with 4 questions in each set. And also, these questions being straight, writing four theory questions of 4marks each is always better and less risky than solving two problems of 8marks each. Exams are always high pressure situations and hence we should always prefer to attend questions in which we are so sure about that we could not go wrong with those questions. Theory questions fully ensure that.
By attending a theory question you get the following benefits.
You are easing off the pressure. And you are saving the time spent on reading a problem question, picking the data, doing arithmetic and reducing the risk of getting the numbers wrong.
So always try to go for that 32marks.
Never Hang around:
The thumb rule of any CA exam is that never hang around on a particular question if you don’t get it right in one go. Skip the question at that stage and get into other questions. Once the targeted time for a question is ending up, you should leave a page or two and should skip that right there and move on to next question. Always remember these problem papers are always a one way journey and you can never afford to look back the track you have cruised through.
Smart Usage of Calculator:
The usage of calculator has been one another important aspect when it comes to time consumption. The students must learn smart ways to use the calc. E.g. those problems on apportionment of overheads i.e. primary and secondary distribution are hugely arithmetical and the usage of calc has been the maximum. Therefore shortcuts should be learnt when it comes to doing repeated calculations on multiplications, finding percentages etc. By smart usage of calc, students will be able to save atleast 10-12 overall minutes in the exam. Students who badly want to finish the full paper will know how precious any extra 10 minutes is.
Final lines:
These are a few selected ideas which go in the way to increase the speed in writing costing exam. Nevertheless beyond all these measures, students are advised to stay cool and never panic at any given point of time and not let any additional unnecessary pressure crop in. Because we all know the fact that only when we are cool and steady, we deliver our best!!
Hope it was a useful read and thanks for letting me share this.
May be when you travel alone, 3hours pass too long. But when you start writing a costing paper 3hrs always run so fast. Many of the students find it difficult with the Costing Paper even when they are able to crack the other papers quite easily. One of the main reasons is ‘not being able to finish the paper fully’ within the given time. How often we would have heard students saying ‘had I written that extra ten marks, I would have cleared/ cracked an exemption’
This article is meant for the benefit of the students who sincerely knew all the concepts and are aware of all the topics to be studied for the exam but just struggling to finish the full paper in 3hrs. This article is just a catalyst.
Speed and Legibility:
For finishing the paper fully, you need a lot of practice on solving problems and going through model tests. The reason why I stress on model tests is that, if you lack in practice, there are two possible outcomes. At the exam,
i) You will try to write fast and start to scribble, or
ii) You try to write neatly and slow down in pace.
Both are not going to help. You need to write up to the speed and also legibly. This can be attained only by undergoing a number of practice/ model tests.
And coming to writing model tests, I can suggest undergoing one test from any institute where you write test with typical exam conditions. And next 4model tests with any 4 past questions. You can do the latter privately. But at the minimum try to write atleast 5model tests before the exams.
Focus on theory questions:
It is always advisable to have priority over theory questions in the exam than to solve problems at first. As per the current pattern, 2 sets of theory questions are asked with 4 questions in each set. And also, these questions being straight, writing four theory questions of 4marks each is always better and less risky than solving two problems of 8marks each. Exams are always high pressure situations and hence we should always prefer to attend questions in which we are so sure about that we could not go wrong with those questions. Theory questions fully ensure that.
By attending a theory question you get the following benefits.
You are easing off the pressure. And you are saving the time spent on reading a problem question, picking the data, doing arithmetic and reducing the risk of getting the numbers wrong.
So always try to go for that 32marks.
Never Hang around:
The thumb rule of any CA exam is that never hang around on a particular question if you don’t get it right in one go. Skip the question at that stage and get into other questions. Once the targeted time for a question is ending up, you should leave a page or two and should skip that right there and move on to next question. Always remember these problem papers are always a one way journey and you can never afford to look back the track you have cruised through.
Smart Usage of Calculator:
The usage of calculator has been one another important aspect when it comes to time consumption. The students must learn smart ways to use the calc. E.g. those problems on apportionment of overheads i.e. primary and secondary distribution are hugely arithmetical and the usage of calc has been the maximum. Therefore shortcuts should be learnt when it comes to doing repeated calculations on multiplications, finding percentages etc. By smart usage of calc, students will be able to save atleast 10-12 overall minutes in the exam. Students who badly want to finish the full paper will know how precious any extra 10 minutes is.
Final lines:
These are a few selected ideas which go in the way to increase the speed in writing costing exam. Nevertheless beyond all these measures, students are advised to stay cool and never panic at any given point of time and not let any additional unnecessary pressure crop in. Because we all know the fact that only when we are cool and steady, we deliver our best!!
Hope it was a useful read and thanks for letting me share this.
Regards
Hareesh Iyer
CAclubindia
