I got informed of my T4 pass today which was nice!

I was really only sitting the exams for personal interest (I'm not an accountant) and my employer wasn't paying (I'm self employed and my boss is a tight fisted git).

The goal:

Because of the lack of funds I had two important goals to meet when picking a study method:

- Spend as little money as possible.

- Spend no money at all on resits by first time passing everything.

Obviously on my budget a tier 1 tuition provider was out of the question... and so was a tier 2, tier 3, or tier 4 provider. I couldn't even afford one of the dodgy 'university college school of oxbridge westminster' places that fill the drafty second floor tenements of Brick lane.

Therefore self studying was my only choice...

In the end I spent about £1,100 for the whole thing (14 exams, I was given one certificate level exemption). I'm not particularly smart so I think this method could work for most people.

The strategy:

- Buy the BPP book and skim read it. (No idea if others are as good, I stumbled onto BPP by accident and they worked for me so I never tried any others.)

- Do all the questions from two chapters per day, referring to the book as much as you like. Do your answers in note form only - this takes about 15 minutes per chapter.

- Read one post exam guide.

- Do the first past paper a week before the exam, taking as long as you like to answer every question in writing. I typically was getting 80-90% of the questions wrong at this point. Go through any mistakes carefully and make sure you really understand the principle involved. Don't bother writing up a corrected answer as long as you are sure you understand how it should have been solved.

- Do the second past paper two days before the exam. (Down to ~50% incorrect.) This time do write out a new answer to any question that you got wrong, and keep on doing it until you get it right.

- Make up a sheet of key points and methods that you need to know for the exam by looking over the past papers and seeing which things would have been useful to know. Then flick through the book again and add anything to the list that seems important.

- The day before the exam read the post exam guides for the two papers you just completed. You may want to update your key point sheet if there was anything you don't have that the examiners highlighted.

- On exam day, make sure you can remember everything on the key point sheet.

- Sit and pass the exam.

I'd say that reading the past exam guides is certainly worth the time (and they are free). Not only are they interesting but the industrial grade examiner sarcasm is pretty entertaining.

The same process worked for T4, although I did five or six past papers instead of two. (Two full answers, two as notes, two by thinking about what answers I would have given.)

Difficulties:

Other than the questions and papers in the book it can be hard to mark your work, so there's little feedback. I ignored this and hoped for the best and it seemed to work out OK but it was a little unnerving at times.

Making time to sit down and study occasionally required midnight trips to the 24 hour Costa at St Pancras station. I also did some studying in the pub on a Sunday afternoon. ('I need to go and revise' is a great reason not to do the washing up/clean the bathroom/hoover the flat.)

My mistakes:

The only money I wasted was £50 for a T4 'industry background' seminar. I wanted to be sure I hadn't missed anything obvious when I should have just trusted that the guidance from the forums was fine. 

My only other mistake was not having an employer with a healthy training budget. I'm going to have to pay for my own post-results celebration tonight! Totally unacceptable... this could end up doubling the cost of passing! :D

I hope this helps someone who is considering going down the self-study route. It's totally doable as long as you have a modicum of self-motivation. Good luck!