To: AC, CFA, ISAC Majors and MSA & MST students
From: Department of Accountancy
Re: CPA Exam Changes
The next version of the CPA Exam will be launched April 1, 2017. Please familiarize yourself with the changes.
If you plan to be taking the exam during that time you may want to accelerate your schedule to finish all parts before the changes become effective. As a result of the many candidates who will wish to do this testing windows will be extended by 10 days to provide additional testing time starting in June of 2016. This 10-day extension will continue through the end of 2017, with the exception of the second quarter of 2017 when the new Exam launches.
If you will be taking the exam after the changes become effective here are the highlights of the forthcoming changes
• All sections will be an equal four hours in length
• There will be an increased emphasis and focus on testing higher order skills such as analysis and evaluation including recognizing issues, identifying errors, challenging assumptions and applying both professional judgment and skepticism
• There will be an increase in task based simulations and they will now include some cross disciplinary basic knowledge of general accounting, auditing, tax, and business concepts in all sections
• Excel will be used as the spreadsheet tool
• THE AICPA has released a very detailed document of the exam blueprint (a description of skills and content required in each section). It can be found here:
http://www.aicpa.org/BecomeACPA/CPAExam/nextexam/DownloadableDocuments/2017-CPA-Exam-Blueprints.pdf