“Am I Ready for the CPA Exam?”
Kyle Ashcraft, CPA · 2019 CPA Exam Scores · 95 FAR · 98 BEC · 91 REG · 90 AUD
Every CPA candidate hits the same question before exam day: am I actually ready? There are two concrete ways to answer it — your practice-question scores, and how well you've covered the official blueprint.
What percentage should you be scoring on practice questions?
Aim for an average of 80% across your practice MCQs and simulations. At that level, the questions you're still missing are usually edge-case advanced topics that aren't worth chasing down further — 80% is a strong score to walk into the exam with.
Have you covered everything in the AICPA blueprint?
The AICPA, one of the makers of the CPA exam, publishes six official blueprints — one for each of the three core sections (AUD, FAR, REG) and each of the three discipline sections (BAR, ISC, TCP). You'll only need four of them: the three core blueprints plus whichever one discipline you're taking.
Download the AICPA exam blueprints for your four sections, read through each one, and highlight whatever you still need to study. That's the official guide to exactly what can appear on exam day.
How is the blueprint structured?
Each blueprint breaks its section into major areas — AUD, for example, has 4 — and shows the percentage of the exam each area can cover (for instance, one AUD area might be weighted 20–30%). Areas are further divided into topics, like "Nature and Scope" under "Ethics, Professional Responsibilities, and General Principles."
Every topic is also tagged with one of four skill levels:
- Remembering and Understanding — knowing a fact, like a definition
- Application — applying what you learned to a scenario
- Analysis — combining information from multiple sources to reach a conclusion
- Evaluation — the most advanced level, judging or assessing that combined information
Remembering and Understanding and Application typically show up as multiple-choice questions. Analysis and Evaluation typically show up as task-based simulations.
80% on practice questions, plus a blueprint with no unhighlighted gaps, means you're ready. One tells you how well you're executing; the other tells you whether there's still untested territory in your studying.
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More on planning your CPA journey
Kyle Ashcraft, CPA scored 90 or above on every section of the CPA exam in 2019. He is the founder and sole instructor of Maxwell CPA Review, a complete CPA review course covering all six sections, where he creates every lecture, textbook and study outline himself.