Advice please :)

philreddy1985

Hello everyone

Some advice please......

I have completed Level 2 and will hopefully have completed Level 3 in a few weeks, I have studied both Level 2 & 3 via distance learning at home in my own time with no help or support from a tutor, I literally just paid for the course materials and proceeded at my own pace.

I am now looking at progressing on to Level 4 but I am unsure whether to carry on via distance learning or to switch to a college/learning provider to attend evening classes. My question is, is Level 4 much of a step up from Level 3 in terms of workload and course content or would I be able to manage on my own?

Any replies at all will be useful.

Many Thanks

Phil

cmcd

Hi Phil

You're probably best hearing off someone who is distance learning L4 but I'll share my experience anyway. I go to evening college two nights a week and have currently sat the four mandatory units (awaiting results for two of them).

I'd say L4 is more of a step up from L3, than L3 was from L2. There are a lot more written questions and learning of accounting standards. Personally, I find the written questions harder so I don't think I would have felt comfortable with learning all the standards through distance learning, I feel better absorbing things when I've heard them rather than read them, but that may just be me.

Again, this is my personal opinion, but I think the numbers follow on from L3 about what you'd expect. If you can find your own techniques (I picked up some great ones for Financial Statements through my tutor) then I think the number parts follow a natural progression of difficulty from L3.

On distance learning though, I started learning Budgeting with the rest of my class last September but missed the last 6 weeks of tuition due to personal reasons and so didn't sit the exam with the my classmates. I had to teach it myself afterwards as the class had moved on to D&C. I sat the D&C exam with the rest of the class and then immediately started learning & revising for budgeting by myself (I felt like I was starting again because it'd been about 6 months since I'd done the initial Budgeting learning). I gave myself 4 weeks before the exam and was also still going to college in the evening to do Synoptic work with the class. It felt manageable to be fair. I felt like the Budgeting exam went well (I'll hopefully receive my result today *fingers crossed*). I think it helped that we'd just sat D&C though because the modules do seem to cross over slightly. I don't know how it would have compared to starting each module completely from scratch by distance learning.

I've done all three levels at college so can't really compare it to distance learning, but just wanted to share some of my experience of level 4.

Best of luck with what you choose

Craig

philreddy1985

Hello Craig,

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I found your post very informative.

I have been looking at enrolling with Kaplan doing evening classes, they have a course that starts at the end of September. Even though you have attended college how much studying do you do in your own time?

The 2017/18 timetable for Kaplan is slightly confusing, are you able to sit one of the optional units before you have completed all of the mandatory units?

Good luck with your results.

Regards,

Phil

AbbyCarr

The units can be sat in any order, although most colleges will have a set timetable of how the units will be delivered. The three mandatory units for Level 4:
-Budgeting
-Decision & Control
-Financial Statement
Must be sat before sitting the Synoptic exam, but I don't believe you have to have passed them.

cmcd

To be completely honest, I don't spend a huge amount of my own time studying, probably only averaging an hour or two a week whilst we are gong through the content. I then ramp it up about 4 weeks before the exam with revision and spend more like 10 hours a week of my own time studying. I've certainly felt like I've had to spend more time on L4 exam preparation than L3, possibly even about twice as much time.

With regards to the optional units, as far as I'm aware, you can sit these at any times (Although I'm not 100% on that). The only requirement our college said is that we have to sit the three mandatory units before we attempt the Synoptic. The college that I attend felt that the new AQ2016 standards had more material than AQ2013 and they would struggle to fit it all into one academic year, so from September to July we've done the four mandatory modules and then we'll go back this September and sit our two optionals (finishing by Christmas hopefully).

Craig

philreddy1985

Thanks very much for all of your replies, ii found them most useful

Hopefully I will be starting AAT Level 4 with Kaplan on 25th September.