Accounting Practice Mid-Year Exams

[sheepz]

is it possible for any of u guys to maybe upload the neap exam for me? i don't think my teacher is going to give them to us...

[costargh]

I dont have it. I had it given to me @ school.

[jamesdrv]

*waits for someone to give exam advice*

The best advice you can take heed of is also the simplest: use your time effectively. My general plan during reading time was to briefly read through the entire exam once (perhaps taking 3-5 minutes) while identifying any difficult questions, and then to return to those difficult questions in the remaining 10 minutes to work out how I was going to approach them. You should have done enough study to be able to do most of the exam easily, so wasting time reading the entire exam slowly is pointless. As soon as you read a question you should quickly think of how you will answer it, and if you know you can answer it easily then there is no point returning to that question in the remaining reading time. I always answered the questions in sequential order, but if it suits you to answer some questions first then you should do that.

Secondly (this is also related to time, but quite VCE specific), use all of the time available! The examiners always asked us to write our student numbers at the beginning, but I always left it to after they said “pens down”. They might give you a look that could murder a small child, but that extra minute is worth it. Having said that, if you’ve heard horror stories from your school regarding examiners not allowing people to write their numbers when time is up, don’t risk it.

My accounting advice is not to worry if your balance sheet doesn’t balance (should you be required to prepare one). It’s only 1 mark lost if it doesn’t balance, and you will likely lose more than that by wasting time trying to fix it. Just move on. If you have time at the end, return to it and trying and find the error. The easiest way to find the error is to calculate the difference and then, hopefully, that difference will correspond to a specific item somewhere else.

With theory questions, remember the “IDL” response. If it is asking for a response in terms of a principle or characteristic, you should identify the principle/characteristic, define it, and then explain how this relates to the specific question. Someone at a revision lecture last year said a lot of students gave “damage” as a reason for a stock loss relating to fuel. This was marked incorrect as it is not likely that fuel would be damaged.

On a separate point, I just read that other accounting thread where someone said the examiners wouldn’t set a question that could potentially have multiple answers. There have been questions in the past where multiple answers will be accepted. Relevance and reliability could both be justified (my intuition was towards reliability though).

Anyway, I’m sure you will be fine. Judging by the responses in the question thread you’re all going to do really well. Good luck!

[costargh]

Thanks man!

[Fyrefly]

I did Neap 08 today at school under exam conditions. I was really sad because I didn't finish and chose to skip closing Profit and Loss Summary account and working out capital to post to ledgers so I lost something like 6-8 marks.

And then I got angry at myself and was like... WHO THE FUCK LOSES 6-8 MARKS BECAUSE THEY DONT FINISH!!! GRR

So anyway I think Im gonna work out an exam strategy, because it seems that the thing that takes the longest for me is doing the BDA's especially when they are a bit tricky... so in reading time I think Ill focus on that and then head straight into the section where BDA's are. Everything else was easy as. It was just I was too slow. And also I might consider reverting to dot point answers for theory questions. But I dont feel comfortable writing dot points. I feel like Ill get marks taken off or something...

*waits for someone to give exam advice*

Stress less costargh, getting angry at yourself won't help. I know it's easier said than done, but it was only a practice exam - and look at how much you learned from it.

An exam strategy is a good idea, but must be tailored to the individual. Timing is everything in an exam. I had a really nice thing going with accounting where I answered questions quickly, had a good exam strategy, and ended up with about 5 - 10 mins to spare at the end of each exam to check my answers. Specialists was a different story and I didn't stick to a strategy at all, which totally screwed my study score for that subject (and ended up being my worst subject EVEN after massive scaling, when it probably shouldn't have been). I stuffed up English too, but we won't go into that >.> Anywayz, you did that stupid legal exam last year as well; you'll know as well as anybody that sometimes it just comes down to how fast you can write or how mentally organised you are, rather than how much of a subject you actually know.

My exam strategy was to work through it in order, but I skipped the 'harder' theory questions and did them last. Why? Because I wrote long-ish theory answers and they took me more time to answer than the practical questions. I felt more comfortable with knowing near the end that 'okay, I have 15 minutes to answer 3 theory questions and check my answers' rather than rushing through them because I wasn't sure if I'd have enough time to do the whole exam. Also, I stuck relatively close to the minute per mark thing. I answered the question as best as I could and if I wasn't sure I'd done it right I'd scribble a star next to it, so when I went back through and checked my answers I'd check the ones with stars first, because there were probably more marks to be gained by checking/re-doing these questions rather than others I was relatively sure were right.

You seem to want to do the opposite and tackle the hard questions first. If this is how you want to approach the exam then go for it; your exam strategy must suit your needs. However, I strongly recommend you use your reading time to thoroughly read the entire exam and mentally highlight (or use a fingernail...) to remember bits of crucial information (such as a 6 month time frame instead of a year for depreciation, meaning you'll have to divide, etc...). It is noticing these little tidbits of information that make the difference between an A and an A+. If you're a fast reader and can do this AND start answering the BDAs in your head so that when you start writing you can get straight into it, then you've got a great exam strategy and you'll be off to an A+ standard start come June 11.

About the dot points... actually drawing dot points is probably not a good idea, but if you prefer to write in dot point form then do so if you are pressed for time. However, a better structure for answering theory is IDL, as james said. Even if it's only a 2 mark question it would still be wise to include that little Link component, otherwise a marker may have a hissy fit and take a mark off for a 'generic' answer. Also (as james said), you may realise the stupidity in saying fuel was damaged (like... did someone explode it or something? 0.0) rather than better answers such as stolen or spoiled (as in... got contaminated or went stale) before it's too late.

I was also going to make a point of not worrying about an unbalanced balance sheet coz it seriously costs more marks than it's worth, but james has already mentioned that too (someone should make this guy an accounting mod!). I don't think there was a question that required us to complete a whole balance sheet in either of last year's exams, so watch out for that one this year.


Edit: Exam advice looks like it needs a thread of it's own, lol.

[unknown id]

I found it easier to do all the practical questions first and then go back to the theory questions, as these are the areas where the examiners can get really nit-picky.

[Fyrefly]

I think most of his mid-year ones were out of books, which he's now undoubtedly scribbled answers all over now.
He'll be in the same boat as me, plenty of resources to share for end of year exam but almost nothing for mid-years.

Erm... for anyone that doesn't use the cambridge textbook, these may come in handy as additional references:

http://rapidshare.com/files/121321006/cambridge_units_3_4_textbook.pdf.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/121320341/Templates.zip.html

The first link is the textbook, and the second is a zipped folder containing the templates for the chapter reviews for chapters 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
I think the chapter reviews for this textbook emulate exam-style questions quite well (which may help to explain why I did so few practice exams).
While I don't have the answer pdfs any more, there are answers to a lot of the numerical questions on the last page of the textbook (and you can always ask ppl on this forum).
Unfortunately I've lost the templates for 1, 2, 5, and 10 - 12, so please don't ask me for them. I've hunted through all my back-up discs and everything to try to find them for you guys, but they've remained ever-elusive.

I'll post this in that other thread as well...

I know the exam is tomorrow, but if anyone's still pottering around looking for some practice exam material, then this may come in handy.