Why do I keep failing the scenario questions on accounting exams?
Students often nail the calculation-heavy problems like balance sheets and cash flow statements, but lose points on conceptual scenario questions they didn't know how to approach. Specifically, writing about topics like fraud risks forces students to guess or write vague answers because they aren't sure what standard procedures to include.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Practicing much more and focusing on understanding the reasoning behind the process rather than just memorizing steps
- 2writing generic filler text
- 3rushing through complex analysis sections
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I also don’t know if my procedures were good enough I had no idea what to write about fraud risks :/”source ↗
“Kinda bummed out got a 78/100 or a 39/50 on my test i got all the long ones right balance sheets statement of cash flows etc it was the specific scenarios that i got wrong anyone relate to this?”source ↗
“I also had no idea what to write about fraud risks and I had to write a bunch of bs for it”source ↗
“My quants were completely messed up, honestly :/”source ↗
“Anyone completely bomb FR/MA on day 2 and still get depth for level 2. Wrote the day 2 CFE today and trying to figure out if I still have a chance my MA was weak td not going to get depth and for FR I got maybe 1 C, 1 borderline C-RC.”source ↗
Where this came up
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