MyCIMA

Study help

Posted: Wednesday 29 June 2011 by H
Replies : 5
Keywords: E1, kaplan, studying

Hi,

Is anyone studying using Kaplan.  I have recently compeleted AAT at evening class and decided to study CIMA with Kaplan and there were no courses near me.

However, I am unsure how to tackle this course I planned to sit exams for E1 & P1 in November, but the way i am going I think I will just sit for E1. 

Does anyone have any advice or tips on how to study the course.  At the moment I seem to be reading the Kaplan book, making notes (which seems to be more like copying the book onto paper) and then I am making head notes on index cards for a quick glance, but should i be doing more, and how much time should studying should I plan to do each week.

So many questions and time seems to be running away from me - do you think it is possible to do E1 & P1 in November??????

Hope someone can give me some guidance.

H

 

Guidance

Posted by GlennD on Thursday 30 June 2011 17:27

Hi H,

E1 tends to be somewhat of a common-sense paper so it should be possible to do that with P1 (in my mind the worst of the lot!). E1 has a LOT of theory but a large amount of it you'll read going "Duh, why are you telling me this, it's so obvious" (apart from time value of money calculations which generally aren't that bad anyway).

Best advice if you can't do classes would be to try get some old exam papers, see what the "popular" exam areas are and focus more on those areas (or even better a break-down of the core areas in the last fer exam papers).

You say they don't offer classes in your area, are there no places within public transport like on the train or something? You could possibly go to weekend instead of evening classes (I'm going to have to do soemthing similar, I've recently moved and neither Kaplan nor CIMA offer courses here so I'll have to get the train over the weekend).

Agree

Posted by MAK on Friday 01 July 2011 09:27

Hi,

I completely agree with Glenn!!!!

P1 is definitely a 'horrid' paper & I found E1 fine. Like Glenn says a lot of it is common sense. Just be sure to learn as many theories/diagrams as you can & put as many as you can on the paper.

You should have no problems with E1 & I didn't study all that much on it to be completely honest. In contrast I have put THOUSANDS of hours into P1 & sat it for the 4th time May11 & I know I have failed it again so I will be sitting it again in Nov11.

What do you mean when you say there are no courses near you?? Do you mean that they are literally hundreds of miles away or just not in your home town?

Did you know BPP are currently offering free courses?? I have got on P1 for free but I have to take an hours train journy to get there. They also supply the books & passcards free too I am told. If you are interested see my discussion that I posted last week. The courses they are offering for free exclude weekends & evenings though, they are just offering Mon-Fri 9am-4pm so if like me you work then you would need to get time off work.

Good Luck!! ;o)

My experience

Posted by James Wilkey on Wednesday 13 July 2011 16:47
If you do not have a tuition centre nearby, why don't you try online study ? CIMA Study may not be for you as it also gives you some similar stuff ... reading and automated explanations :( Either you may try an online course supported by tutor helpline. Note, both these cases, you have to taught yourself and they offer just an online/virtual support. If you do need a tutor for teaching and cant locate what you need nearby, go for live online study with INSAF (Kaplan Live online is also fine; but, it's costly and it's group lectures). I studied with INSAF when I was doing and it was perfect for me, because it is live tuition provided over the internet on a "one-on-one" basis :) :) Personal tuition - so I could arrange lessons at my own convinence and I had a tutor who teaches exclusively for me over the internet at my time. After all - I had 24 hours tuition per paper for management and startegy level papers as advised by the relevant tutors there and it cost me only £14 per hour. Seems this may be suitable for you. Ask for a demo at www.insafglobal.co.uk Cheers mate !

I self studied E1

Posted by Jordan Littlewood on Thursday 14 July 2011 10:58

Hi H,

As Melita said the most important part of E1 is to know and memorise all of the theories and diagrams, the rest is common sense.

 I self studied E1 and didn't quite relise how important the theories/diagrams where until the last coupe of weeks so crammed them and scraped a 53%, compared with 61% in P1 and 72% in F1, I think this shows the importance of the theories.

If I could do it again the theories would be the main area of my study.  I studied around 7 hours a week....

If you are going to home study the best thing to do is buy the exam questions books and do nothing but questions for the last 2/3 weeks minimum, this will show you how to structure your answers - If you get the structure wrong in the E pillar it really eats up your exam time.

Hope this helps and all goes well.

Jordan.

 

  • Reported

Moving on from AAT to CIMA

Posted by Marie Punter on Tuesday 19 July 2011 17:25

Hi H,

I moved from AAT to CIMA last year, taking my first exams; E1 and F1 in Nov 10.  One of the main things I noticed was the huge difference in volume of work CIMA is in comparison to AAT.  Unfortunately I failed both in Nov, and sat my retakes in May 11 and passed both, thankfully with strong passes; however I had to push myself hard.

It's definitely a big step up!  For me also, it was things like, having moved from AAT where there were things you take for granted, knowing exactly where all my resources were, exam papers, which books were needed for which stage, and other, smaller considerations like that, that were just *another* thing to get used to.  Just be as organised as possible, plenty of homework, and try to keep ahead of the game.  It will pay off when you get closer to your exams.

I studied with BPP, and found their online lectures a great resource for learning, really enjoyed doing that, and can be used in addition to the taught courses, I'm sure Kaplan must offer something similar, but you have to be disciplined and push yourself to regularly study / revise.

Good luck,

Marie