AICPA FAR exam 8 weeks out — is 62% on Becker practice tests enough of a baseline?
I'm sitting for FAR in 8 weeks and my Becker practice scores are hovering around 62%. Need a 75 to pass. I'm putting in about 3.5 hours on weekdays and 6-7 hours on weekends, which feels like a lot but the material is dense enough that I don't feel like I'm retaining at the rate I need to.
The governmental accounting section is where I'm bleeding points — fund accounting clicks for me conceptually but the specific GASB standards questions trip me up every time. I've watched Roger's lectures twice on that subsection and I'm still hovering around 55% on those MCQs specifically.
My study group says I'm overthinking the multiple choice and should be shifting more time to task-based simulations since FAR weights them heavily. Is that the right call at this stage or should I lock down the MCQ foundation first? I don't want to add Wiley on top of Becker and fragment my prep this close to test day.
Also wondering if the governmental section is actually harder than people make it sound or if I just have a specific gap I haven't identified yet.
Your study group is right about TBS. FAR weights them at 50% of the score and a lot of people leave easy points there because they practiced MCQ exclusively. Shift the balance after week 5.
FAR governmental took me from 58% to 78% on that subsection after I made a one-page cheat sheet of every GASB standard number and what it covers. Sounds basic but drilling the standard numbers cold made the MCQs click way faster under time pressure.
Passed FAR on second attempt at 77 after 9 weeks of prep at about 4 hours a day. The last 10 days I only did full-length timed practice exams and that jump in score was bigger than anything else I tried.
8 weeks at 62% is tight but doable. Don't add Wiley — you'll just confuse your muscle memory with different question phrasing. Double down on TBS in the last 3 weeks and make sure you're fast with the spreadsheet tool in the actual exam interface.
I failed FAR at 73 first attempt because I ran out of time on the simulations. Content wasn't the problem, pacing was.
62% at 8 weeks out is honestly fine, I was at 58% with 6 weeks to go and still passed with a 79. The thing that actually moved the needle for me wasn't doing more MCQs, it was stopping to write out WHY I got something wrong instead of just clicking "next." I'd spend 10 minutes on one wrong answer understanding the concept, and that one question would unlock like a whole section. It felt slow but my scores jumped from 58 to 71 in about three weeks just from that shift.
Also FAR's government stuff trips everyone up. I didn't really get it until I stopped treating it like regular accounting and started thinking of it as its own weird language with its own rules. Once it clicked it was actually pretty testable. You've got the hours, just make sure you're reviewing with intention and not just grinding volume.
Just wanted to share a quick update since I'm in a similar boat. I sat a full Becker mock last night and pulled a 68%, so I'm definitely moving in the right direction from where I started. I've been focusing almost entirely on governmental accounting and lease accounting because those were dragging my score down hard. If you haven't done a full aicpa test simulation yet I'd say do one soon just to get comfortable with the pacing.
I'm planning to sit in about 6 weeks. My goal is to hit 75% consistently on Becker before I schedule. It's slow progress but it's progress. FAR is just brutal and I think anyone scoring in the low 60s right now and still grinding is going to be fine by exam day.