I have been working with a big 4 right from the beginning. Unlike many of you, I have had an opportunity to work with all departments in all areas. Except for Audit and tax, Articleship training has not helped me prepare for any paper. Everybody at our firm is tech savy and we use the best technology in our official as well as personal lives. However, our IT syllabus is too theoretical, irrelevant and outdated for my articleship training to help me prepare for that subject. I have done hard core corporate finance work, worked with Private Equity guys, in debt, equity, PE, VC funding and honestly speaking I did not find any of the things in our FM syllabus relevant. We have been using the CFA and Damodaran's book always whenever we had to refer to books. Practically, there difference between FM taught to us and what goes practically is as big as the difference of plastic and gold...so no help for FM paper as well.
I do not have any exposure in Costing, so no comments for that.
I would also like to say, that the exposure which I have got in this reputed firm and luckily in all areas has given me a broad mindset and enriched my learning. The practical experience of articleship in various areas as discussed above, in a way has distracted me and made me loose my interest in studying subjects like IT, SM and FM. I feel its a sheer waste of time. These subjects are just for the sake of it. And innocent people are being misguided especially in FM theories and concepts. And many of you have also developed an ego that CAs are big time knowledgable people of FM, IT or SM....but I feel thats a false feeling of superiority and would surely lead to disappointments in near future in case any of you are put to work on corporate finance, or put to work on such assignments where you have to be tech savy.