Upcoming CPA Exam Changes

Long, long ago, men discovered the need to account for their goods, services and currency. They needed a trustworthy person who could crunch numbers, count beans, and develop spreadsheets. Thus, the accountant was born.
Flash forward several thousand years...
The first CPA was a New Yorker named Frank Broaker. After losing a lawsuit to a client who refused to pay his rate of $3.00 per hour for bookkeping services, Mr. Broaker used his political savvy to shepherd a bill through the NY senate, officially recognizing accountants as professionals worthy of their own designation and licensure. Finally, the world had its first Certified Public Accountant.
In the years since Mr. Broaker helped create the first CPA Exam, it has undergone many changes. But none so signficant as the advent of Computer Based Testing (CBT), which began in November of 2004.
CBT allowed the exam to be administered throughout the year, with only 4 CPA Exam blackout months. Exam updates were applied more frequently, allowing the content to stay fresh and relevant. Finally, the computerized format allowed score reporting to happen much more rapidly.

In 2008, the Board of Education approved radical improvements to the CPA Exam, to be known as Computer Based Testing Evolution, or CBTe. This is a multi-stage project designed to be implemented over the next several years.
According to Craig Mills, Executive Director of the CPA Examination, the CBTe will "improve the candidate experience and enhance the operational and psychometric quality of the CPA Examination."
The first of the CBTe improvements to show up has been the new research task format.
The old research question response process has been trimmed down, and streamlined. No longer do candidates need to copy text from the authoritative literature. Instead, you'll only need to identify the correct response. This multiple choice style functionality eliminates the need to split the screen by keeping all the necessary resources available on one tab.
Sounds pretty cool, eh?
This improvement is already in place, and has been working well since July of 2008. For some example screenshots, visit the tutorial and sample tests on cpaexam.org.

Sources: CPA Exam Alert, Fall 2008
http://www.cpa-exam.org/alerts/download/cpaalertfall08.pdf

Some of the changes you can expect to see as the CBTe project revs up into second gear are the development of new task based simulations. Currently, each testlet has 2 large simulations for candidates to complete. The new sims, or simlets will be shorter, and, consequently, there will be more of them. Expect as many as 5 individual and unconnected simlets to appear for each part, except BEC.
If everything goes as planned, candidates will enjoy the new capability to switch back and forth between simlets-- a feature lacking from the current exam. You'll even be able to see all of the simulations in a given section at the same time.
Another goal of this change is to shorten the timeline of score reporting. Currently, simulations are too large to be "pre-tested." In other words, the stats needed to score the simulation can't be obtained until after that sim has already appeared on the exam. With the smaller simlets, however, this would cease to be a problem.

Sources: CPA Exam Alert, Fall 2008, Spring 2009
http://www.cpa-exam.org/alerts/download/cpaalertfall08.pdf
http://www.cpa-exam.org/alerts/download/cpaalertspring09.pdf

The Most Updated Information
With all of the upcoming CBTe developments, it can be hard to keep up. That's why the Roger CPA Review course is committed to providing students and candidates with the most updated CPA Exam review information, including content updates from the AICPA, news from NASBA, and other relevant CPA Exam facts.

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To match the constantly evolving state of the CPA Exam, the Roger CPA Review course is updated at least twice per year. This focus on fresh materials ensures that students are studying from relevant texts, while practicing applicable simulations and multiple choice questions. No other CPA Exam review course offers such current materials.

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