Financial Performance on Wednesday!!!!

aaron0121

Hi everyone,

I'm currently studying aat level 4 at college and I have my financial performance exam on the 4th
of July. What concerns me is the really low pass rates other colleges are experiencing for FP, some colleges in Birmingham are going to stop teaching aat level 4 completely because of the low pass rates for FNP and also FNST.
Currently, I'm going through the cbas and also the osborne book tutorial on FP. If anyone can help by offering some advice on if the cba questions are similar to the actual exam and if there was any topics or questions which came up in the actual FP exam which wasn't similar to the cba.

Any help or advice much appreciated

Thanks :001_smile:

WAD2001

Please read my previous post regardig the exam

Our class put 110% into our revision and learning but the exam failed to produce anything like the green light practice. the exam is much more extensive than the practice exams and the extended written tasks are full of information you need to extrapilate before eventually getting to the actual writing.

Good luck put everything you have got into it but you may find like our class that there just isn't enough time to get through everything and prove that you do actually know what your doing.

I don't want to frighten you in any way just manage your time well.

We are in the process of writing our concerns to the AAT regarding this exam. There are however students on this forum that though it was ok and had plenty of time to complete, so you may be one of the lucky ones

NicF

I don't think doing well on this exam has anything to do with being lucky. I studied this module in just three weeks but put a lot of time and effort into learning all the variances and ensuring I could do everything on the syllabus without any difficulty. I sat the exam just over a week ago so I have no results yet but I didn't think it was too bad. It took me just over two hours to complete all the questions which would have been enough time to go back and check my answers if I wasn't feeling really ill by the end.

The actual exam is very similar in format to the two practise exams on the AAT website. I also did a practise exam through the Kaplan study material that was very similar to the exam and got over 90% for it, although the written questions were select from a box rather than actual written questions. If you do the practise exams on the AAT website, including the written answers, this should give you a good idea of how long it takes you to get through the exam. I would also the suggest reading through the answers to the practise exams to see what kind if things you are expected to write in the written section.

If you have read the Osborne book and done all the questions in the book the you should be fairly well prepared. I studied distance learning with Kaplan so went through their material but also read the Osborne book. Do you have the workbook as well as the tutorial? I found the workbooks invaluable in level 2 when I studied at college but don't really have time to use them on my current learning schedule.

One final point, this exam is a level 4 exam which is supposed to be equivalent to the first year of a degree or something. It's not supposed to be easy and should require a lot of additional work outside the classroom. If the exams were easy then the qualification wouldn't be worth having.

aaron0121

Hi NicF,

I don't have the workbook as i find that the tutorial gives good practise questions at the end of each topic. I completely agree with you when you say that the aat level 4 exams aren't going to be easy as it's equivalent to a first year degree in accounting. This was the main reason why i choose to solely focus on doing aat at college, rather doing both a levels and aat. As i'm not going to university, i didn't see any reason to do a levels on top.

Jo Clark

WAD2001 wrote: »

Please read my previous post regardig the exam

Our class put 110% into our revision and learning but the exam failed to produce anything like the green light practice. the exam is much more extensive than the practice exams and the extended written tasks are full of information you need to extrapilate before eventually getting to the actual writing.

You should not question spot or expect the questions to be the same/similar as those on greenlight. If you have the 'knowledge' you should be able to apply it to the questions being asked.

The written element will give a scenario where you need to analyse the data, use ratios/variances etc. and then answer the question asked. I sat this exam a while ago so can't remember the exact format/questions I was asked.

I studied for 5 weeks and managed to pass this exam first time - maybe it was luck or maybe it was down to the hours and hours I spent with my study buddy in the evenings and at weekends.

It can be done, so have faith and confidence in yourself and go for it!