"Making the Right Choice: Which CPA Exam Section Should You Take First?"

One of the first questions candidates ask me about getting started with the CPA exam is "Which order should I take the exams in?"

I realize that there’s so many of you who don’t know where to start and have so many questions about the CPA exam. You may not have course materials, trying to figure out which review course is best, how to get an NTS, all of it can be overwhelming.

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This blog post is for the accounting students who are thinking about the CPA exam, the new accounting graduates who want to sit for the exam, and the seasoned accounting professionals who have, for whatever reason, have not completed the CPA exam process but want to do it this time.

CPA Exam Changes

Starting with CPA Evolution. CPA Evolution has changed the format of what we've known as the CPA exam for nearly 2 decades. This is the biggest change to the CPA exam since it went from a paper to computerized exam. I covered all these changes in the CPA Evolution Overview. Catch the replay on the CPA exam page on NikkWinstonCPA.

The CPA exam has evolved (pun intended) to focus less on finding information and more on what do with it. That's the value we add as practitioners. Anybody can find something by doing a search or using RPA technology. The key is knowing what the information means and advising clients or employers on what it means for decision making.

Another key change to the CPA exam is introduction of discipline sections. There are so many career options as a CPA. The core + discipline approach to CPA Evolution helps candidates narrow down the areas of accounting that interest them - and weed out those that don’t. The beauty of all of this is even if you choose a discipline now like audit, then years later you want a change, you can pivot and do something else like tax or analysis. You can switch up your career path without passing the CPA exam again.

A CPA license with the BAR discipline holds the same weight as a CPA license with a TCP or ISC discipline.

What hasn't changed on the CPA exam

What hasn't changed about the CPA exam is the fact that you need to know accounting. You must commit the time, energy, and effort to learning accounting in real life beyond a textbook.

Best practices for getting started with the CPA exam

Which CPA exam section should you take first? It depends on what do you want to do. CPA Evolution will require candidates to think more critically about desired career plans.

• If you want to focus on tax or run your own firm doing tax prep & planning, I'd recommend the TCP (Tax Compliance and Planning) discipline.

• If you're into technology and automations and how that plays alongside accounting, I'd recommend ISC (Information Systems & Controls).

• If you like the numbers and analytics of accounting, BAR (Business Analysis & Reporting) would be a good option.

Which CPA exam section to take first? Here's my recommendation...

At a high level, my recommendation is to take FAR followed by audit whenever possible. The only time I'd deviate from this is if you choose the BAR (Business Analytics & Reporting) discipline. In that case I'd do FAR, BAR, audit, then REG.

As I've said before, there's some correlation between FAR and BAR content. When I was studying for the CPA exam, I had to know financial ratios for both FAR and BEC. The BAR section includes a lot of BEC's content so you can find yourself learning BAR content because of what you learned in FAR.

Secondly, I recommend starting with FAR first. It's the foundation of accounting; FAR being the hardest section is subjective so even if you've heard people talk about how hard FAR is, that's based on their experiences so don't adopt someone else's experience as your own. Once you pass FAR, the other sections will make sense.

Comment below with your questions or thoughts on getting started with the CPA exam.