MAC June exams

2cool

Hi I am just writing to see how people went on with the MAC (June 2008) exam today. What did you all think of the exam? I think i made a mistake on section 1 task1.1 but am hopin that I will get some marks from it and have a chance at passing!!

Does anybody know what the pass mark is? If we fail one section do we fail it all? I panic more after the exams than i do before them haha

Send me a few posts please

Hope you all have done well - after all we can always resit in december

2Cool

*Sarah*

hey

i took mac today. I thought that the fact they changed the scenario to be a service industry was quite sneeky and threw me a bit. Hoping ive picked up enough points to pass it tho!

Yes you have to pass both sections to pass the whole paper. I could be wrong but I thought the pass mark was around 70-75%?

sharon

Oh my days!!!! there is no way i got 75% on section 1!!!! i was so confused on Task 1.1!!!!!!! i am well peed off today! on top of this i have dfs and ptc this week!!!
i need a miricle!!!!!

aatfree

Well nobody know's the pass mark not even AAT. My tutor advised that you aim for around 70 - 75% if you want to be really sure of passing. Apparently what happens in they mark the papers, see how many have "passed" then decide on a pass mark. It is usually around 70% but could be lower if a lot of people have low marks, or higher if a lot of people have high marks. I'm hoping everyone has low marks myself.:laugh:

2cool

I have to agree with you Sharon, that section 1 i struggled on. I have done alot of past papers and found them good to do but today was a huge disappointment. Oh well bring on a resit for december lol.

Did you attempt every question?

Barbara Knight

Hi all,
What I thought was interersting was the way they turned stuff on its head. I learned usig Osborne books and there was very little about the service sector. I merrily started on 1.1 as sales - o/stock plus c/stock and then realised in not stock its extra work brought forward so had to start the question again... Also the only amendments to budgets we studied was for wastage where say it was 10% so the use or production you calculated would be 90% so you did a divide by 90 and multiply by 100. This was different as it was 10% of the calculated claims were reviewed sio you divided by 100 and multiplied by 110. I know its not rocket science but it certainly made me stress for the first hour or so!

Lots of superfluous info in the question text too. I know this is more life it is in real life, but I usually underline all these bits and make sure I have used them all by the end as pat of my cheking I have done everything I am meant to so my system fell down yesterday.

AAT did say they would put in a service sector scenario soon - just wished it hadn't been quite so soon!!! Took me a good hour and a half to do section 1. But section 1 did make section2 seem easy!!!!

Barbara :thumbup1:

Sarah

Hi ,

I just took 10% of the total enquiries for the month to get the number of budgeted reviews....Don't know if this is right???

:thumbdown:

Sarah

sebastianforbes

it's right sarah :001_smile:

Sarah

Thanks, Sebastian.

I didn't do anything with the 3 days either - so just ignored it!

...another question - did you do any calculations for the life cycle costing bit?

I just rambled a bit about what life cycle costing was and forgot to put any calculations!

I thought the questions were open to interpretation so I am a bit worried about my answers!

Any help appreciated... :001_smile:

Sarah

sebastianforbes

lifecycle costing was a written question ?

i didn't use any figures. just gave an explanation which i hope was right :tongue_smilie:

2cool

Hey,

I did same as Sarah in regards to the 10% of the enquiries to get the budgeted reviews. I was panicing like mad it was untrue!!!

Am hoping that was right?!?

Sarah

Hi - I couldn't think of any other way to calculate the budgeted reviews so I hope we were on the right track...

Sounds like alot of people were very confused by the first section so I am glad it is not just me!

Does anyone know - if lots of people found section 1 difficult, will they drop the pass percentage?

Sarah

2cool

How did everyone find the DFS exam today?

sebastianforbes

go to the dfs thread to find out ?!?

2cool

There is no DFS thread...............?

*Sarah*

2cool wrote: »

There is no DFS thread...............?

There are quite a few now

I didn't take DFS I'm afraid, did it in December so I'm all done now :-)

sharon

i completely messed up!!! i used opening figures and closing one! Oh dear!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Sarah*

sharon wrote: »

i completely messed up!!! i used opening figures and closing one! Oh dear!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did exactly the same thing! was really crafty the way they changed the question and made it nothing like past papers. my tutor thinks that most student swould have done that part wrong tho so shouldnt loose too many marks. I hope anyway!!

2cool

*Sarah* wrote: »

I did exactly the same thing! was really crafty the way they changed the question and made it nothing like past papers. my tutor thinks that most student swould have done that part wrong tho so shouldnt loose too many marks. I hope anyway!!

What was tht for...MAC?

I was talkin to aload of people today about the MAC and most of them said they either didn't even do section 1 and some people just found extremely confusing and difficult. I should hope the examiners would take this all into account.

umerali2003

Mac June 2008

Well The Service Sector Instead Of The Production Really Hit Me Hard I Didint Multiplied The Forecast Sales With The Months Available Totally Messed Up In Task 1.1 (a) But I Carried On My Wrong Figures All The Way Down I Hope So I Get Penalized Once If That Is The Case I Had A Hope Of Passing It But Missed Task 1.4 Due To The Panic Created By 1st Question And Aint Got The Time To Come Back On That And 3rdly The Last Question Of Section 2 I Dont Know Wat I Did But I Threw Some Number Any Ways So Fingers Crossed

So Wat U Lots Think Do I Have Any Chance Of Passing That

Your Reply Will Be Highly Appreciated

2cool

umerali2003 wrote: »

Well The Service Sector Instead Of The Production Really Hit Me Hard I Didint Multiplied The Forecast Sales With The Months Available Totally Messed Up In Task 1.1 (a) But I Carried On My Wrong Figures All The Way Down I Hope So I Get Penalized Once If That Is The Case I Had A Hope Of Passing It But Missed Task 1.4 Due To The Panic Created By 1st Question And Aint Got The Time To Come Back On That And 3rdly The Last Question Of Section 2 I Dont Know Wat I Did But I Threw Some Number Any Ways So Fingers Crossed

So Wat U Lots Think Do I Have Any Chance Of Passing That

Your Reply Will Be Highly Appreciated

Your in the same boat as every one else bud. Section 1 was really hard and i think i say that on behalf of most people who took MAC on Monday. I cant say whether or not for sure that you have a chance of passing, but if most people have struggled then the pass mark will be lowered. All i can say is dont worry the proof will be in the pudding on 20th August. :001_smile:

*Sarah*

2cool wrote: »

What was tht for...MAC?

I was talkin to aload of people today about the MAC and most of them said they either didn't even do section 1 and some people just found extremely confusing and difficult. I should hope the examiners would take this all into account.

Yeah that was for section 1 of MAC. Apparently instead of doing sales, less o/s, plus c/s as usual we should have done, sales, PLUS o/s, LESS c/s. I did it the normal way we had learnt though. Hope it doesn't fail it for me!

umerali2003

well lets hope we all get penalized once for the task 1.1 (a) and should get some reward for carring out our wrong figures . task 1.4 i missed it due to the panic created by that dam 1st question and in the second section 2.3 was completely a **** out of no where

lets hope that aat will consider the panic which was created by the 1st question before marking those papers

2cool

*Sarah* wrote: »

Yeah that was for section 1 of MAC. Apparently instead of doing sales, less o/s, plus c/s as usual we should have done, sales, PLUS o/s, LESS c/s. I did it the normal way we had learnt though. Hope it doesn't fail it for me!

Oh my word. You are joking!! Its not fair we pay for these books that tell us one thing then in the exam they give ya summit totally different! I would never of thought of doing that. Take it i'll be definetly resitting

vix

Phew! I did it plus b/f calls and minus c/f as I thought about it in my head and it looked right. Then I started thinking about it too hard and got confused as to whether I had done it right

I also didn't multiply the number of calls by the days to begin with, got to the end of sec 1 and realised, so went back and changed it all! Wow I was stressed!

I think it was VERY unfair of the AAT to put this question in though. Obviously no-one was prepared for it. We use BPP books at college and none of the practice exams or examples had service industries, they were all units of production, so no one was prepared for this.

I'm kind of annoyed that I had to take time off work for revision, when no amount of revision actually prepared me for that paper. I hope that the low pass mark on this paper will show the AAT how little prepared everyone was. Fingers crossed for us all.

billyboy

I don't mean to sound harsh but if people actually understood what they were doing rather than just learning it all parrot fashion then it's not that difficult.

ie, production budget:

You knew that all enquiries had to be done within 3 days, so that means the enquiries which had been carried forward (opening balance) has to be added onto the enquiries for the month. You also know that some of these will be carried over to the next month so they will be taken off.


How easy do you want the exams to be? I know a lot of the papers are pretty much carbon copies from year to year but to me it makes a mockery of the qualification if people are passing when they obviously haven't grasped the basic fundamentals.

2cool

Thanks for making me feel better

I found it difficult based on the fact I didn't feel confident to do something that I haven't had practice at. By the way learning "parrot fashion" is what revision is all about

billyboy

Sorry, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad, it's just my opinion.

Everyone has their own methods of revision. Personally I find it's best if I try to understand what i'm doing and the reason why i'm doing it, as opposed to just trying to remember that it's x+y-z. Then if I do come a cropper or forget something I can always try and work out what I have to do.

2cool

billyboy wrote: »

Sorry, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad, it's just my opinion.

Everyone has their own methods of revision. Personally I find it's best if I try to understand what i'm doing and the reason why i'm doing it, as opposed to just trying to remember that it's x+y-z. Then if I do come a cropper or forget something I can always try and work out what I have to do.

Fair play

vix

In my opinion we don't have the time to fully understand what we are being taught. We need to learn how to do some things and the understanding comes later!

The exams are stressful enough without having strange things thrown at us. Even though I did understand the concept of calls b/f and c/f, many didn't. Most of us I'm sure don't work in service, we work in Production environments so have not had the experience of things like that.

I don't work in either, I work in management so can't apply most of MAC to my daily jobs

2cool

Hi I just had a thought. In the MAC exam section1 it said before the questions that it was a service sector which was treated "same way as production budget" (or something along those lines). If that is the case why would you end up adding o/s and taking away c/s as mentioned before. I could be wrong but if any one can put me right please do!