science

Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination

Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination rather than just read about it. In short: The Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination (CPA Exam) is the examination administered to people who wish to become Certified Public Accountants in the United States. The CPA Exam is used by the regulatory bodies of all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S.

Key takeaways

Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination (CPA Exam) is the examination administered to people who wish to become Certified Public Accountants in the United States. The CPA Exam is used by the regulatory bodies of all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. The CPA Exam is developed, maintained, and scored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and administered at Prometric test centers in partnership with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA).

Exam content The CPA Exam is a sixteen-hour exam tested in four separate sections. All candidates are required to take the same three core sections and a discipline section of their choice. As many as two sections can be taken in a given day or each section can be taken on separate days. A detailed overview of each exam is as follows:

Core sections

Discipline sections

Scoring With the exception of ISC, each section's score is weighted evenly between multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and tasked-based simulations (TBSs). ISC is instead weighted 60% on MCQs and 40% on TBSs. The exam is scored between 0 and 99 with a minimum of 75 being required to pass each section. Score calculation is based on if a question was answered correctly and the relative difficulty of the question.

Testing method Candidates have a total of four hours to complete an exam, regardless of the number of questions or perceived difficulty. Each exam is broken out into 5 testlets. Candidates are permitted to take a break between testlets. However, with the exception of a standardized 15-minute break between testlets three and four, the exam timer is not paused. Each testlet is broken out in the table below:

Exam disclosure Due to the nature of the exam, the AICPA prohibits any exam candidate, former or current, from engaging in "irregular behavior" which the AICPA defines as disclosing exam content through means such as photography, writing, or memorization.

Eligibility to sit for the exam In order to sit for the Uniform CPA Exam, a person must be declared eligible to do so by one of the 55 state boards of accountancy in the United States. Requirements of state boards vary, but almost always include a U.S. bachelor's degree and a certain amount of accounting course credits. Additionally, some states require that candidates have completed an additional year of study (which can be either at an undergraduate or graduate level) before sitting for the exam and almost every state requires that the additional year of study be completed before awarding certification. The educational requirement equivalent to five years of full-time study is known as the "150-hour rule" (150 college semester units or the equivalent).

Fingerprint collection The AICPA and NASBA mandate that exam candidates submit to a fingerprinting prior to each exam for identification purposes. According to published AICPA and NASBA reports, all fingerprints collected are immediately transmitted over the Internet to ChoicePoint/Reed Elsevier (Identico Systems) for storage.

Fees Fees to sit for the Uniform CPA Exam vary by state.

Testing windows As of July 1, 2020, Continuous Testing for the CPA Exam has been implemented, which means there are no longer any blackout periods where testing is not available. As of January 1st, 2024, this remains true only for core sections of the CPA Exam. Discipline sections are only available for roughly the first month of each quarter.

Failed sections Where a candidate fails a section, it may be re-taken without any penalty other than a re-examination fee and the risk of credits for other sections expiring under the "30-month rule". Re-sitting for a failed section in the same testing window is not permitted. As of July 1, 2020, the AICPA has changed the rules and is now allowing for continuous testing, candidates can now re-test for the same section within the same quarter after receiving their failed score. The 30-month clock starts on the date the first examination section passed was taken. If the remaining sections are not passed within the next 30 months (in states that have implemented the new 30-month expiration), you lose the credit for the first section and the next section passed becomes the target date.

Confidentiality Since 1996, the Uniform CPA Exam has been a confidential examination. All persons involved with the Uniform CPA Exam, including candidates, must sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose the contents of specific questions asked.

International Qualification Examination (IQEX) Certain overseas qualified accountants may sit for the International Qualification Examination (IQEX). This is an alternative to the Uniform CPA Exam. As of 2018 this eligibility extends to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA), Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada), Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), Instituto Mexicano de Contadores Publicos (IMCP), Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA), New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA), and CPA Australia.

Non-U.S. candidates There is no specific bar to non-U.S. candidates sitting for the Uniform CPA Examination, however:

It is possible to sit for the CPA Exam outside the USA but only in select country locations, which currently include Bahrain, Brazil, England, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Scotland, and the United Arab Emirates. Most states will accept non-U.S. education credentials, however they must normally be evaluated by a member of the National Association of Credential Evaluators. Some states prefer specific evaluators, such as Foreign Academic Credential Services or World Education Services, while the Illinois State Board of Accountancy prefers to conduct credential evaluations itself. Approximately one-third of the state boards require a candidate for the Uniform CPA Exam to be living or working in that state. However, the majority have no residence requirement. A few U.S. states (such as the Alabama State Board of Public Accountancy) require the candidate to be a U.S. citizen or Permanent resident (Green card holder), and at least 19 years of age. As of October 1, 2018, testing sites in select cities of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany began offering the CPA Exam to eligible candidates.

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination

In research: Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Accounting in the United States, Examinations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination in simple terms?

Why does Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination.