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March 29, 2024, 04:16:53 pm

Author Topic: How to Do well in Accounting  (Read 4645 times)  Share 

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Seamus Wong

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How to Do well in Accounting
« on: December 24, 2019, 12:16:13 am »
+9
Okay, so I did Accounting this year, and although my score was pretty mediocre, I learnt a lot about how you can do well in the subject and I feel as if some of the lessons I learned might be useful to anyone undertaking Accounting 3/4.

CONTENT

The content/concepts you learn in Accounting are very easy.

'Doubtful/Bad Debts' are probably the only thing that's tricky to wrap ur head around (I re-read the chapter twice and clarified stuff that I wasn't 100% on with my teacher), but when you get it it's very simple.

Another topic that you learn is 'Balance Day Adjustments', which aren't necessarily difficult, but they are something that requires you to actually think carefully when doing questions relating to them.

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But for Accounting, you literally just have to read through the textbook, learn the relevant content, and do the questions. A lot of the theory questions in the textbooks are shit imo. If you want good theory questions look at past exams (even from old study designs, just check with ur teacher which questions are relevant and if they can adjust some of them for you).

My teacher said that you can't memorise theory answers for accounting, but I disagree, and I think that a lot of similar questions pop up in the exams that are just reworded, but require the same key points for the answer. You'll find this to be true when completing past exams during the end of the year. 

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RESOURCES

I also highly suggest purchasing the Accounting Checkpoints book (for the new study design), and complete each chapter's questions as you progress through the textbook chapters. This is something that I didn't do, but something I really really really wish I did, because the Checkpoints book contains 'tricky' questions that the actual textbook won't teach you how to do. The textbook questions are just for engraining the concepts into your head.
Just doing textbook questions won't actually prepare you for the exam and you will likely get pretty bad scores on practice exams during exam revision time at the end of the year (which is what happened with me). But by doing past exam questions throughout the year (from checkpoints book or directly from past exams) you'll learn all of the tricks that VCAA play on you in the exam, and your exam revision time will be spent just on improving your efficiency and accuracy in answering exam questions.

SACs + EXAM

For sacs, just make sure you have done all the textbook questions, some of the checkpoint questions, and FOCUS during the SAC to ensure you don't miss any important info or make stupid mistakes.

The way that you lose marks in Accounting (and what separates someone who gets <40 from someone who gets 40+) is by missing little details in the questions. The exams are filled with a shit ton of info, so make sure you don't skim over the details of the questions - You have to be paying FULL attention to EVERYTHING when you are doing sacs and the exam.

And when exam period comes, you can redo the checkpoints book questions if you want. You also should do around 10-20 practice exams. Make sure you do the past exams from VCAA. They will all be from a different study design (except for 2019's exam), some of the questions will not be relevant, and the format of the ledgers will be different (you can still use them though), but over 80% of questions in those exams are relevant to the current study design and can be done.

Do them timed as well. If you aren't slow, you should be easily able to complete them within the 2 hours.
Make sure you don't rush though, cos that can easily lead to you accidentally skimming over and forgetting important info, leading to the unnecessary loss of marks.

other

Also, try to be rank 1 in ur cohort. I was rank 2 because I made some stupid mistakes in some sacs at the start of the year, and because the sacs were insanely easy (legit like one 2-3 mark theory question per sac), some students who were below average (who ended up getting <35 SS) still got A's and A+'s. This kinda screwed up everything because the distribution of scores didn't accurately reflect how good everyone actually was.
But anyway, our rank 1 (and everyone else) did 'bad' on the exam and 'only' got an A, which pushed my GA1 to a B+, resulting in a 41 study score even though I got an A+ on the exam, which really pissed me off. So yeah, if ur in a strong cohort then you'll be fine, but if ur cohort is very weak then you need to make sure that you're rank 1 so that if you do do well on the exam, you can get a decent score and not get ur GA1 and GA2 scores dragged down.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2019, 12:47:53 am by Seamus Wong »

cotangent

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Re: How to Do well in Accounting
« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2019, 11:26:55 pm »
+1
Just to add on: Insights, CPAP and Compak are good companies to get papers from. TSSM is trash. Their tests and exams have the most basic questions and it wont help you much if you are already confident with the content. AND they have SOO MANY ERRORS in their answers. I mean if you are really struggling with the content, then maybe buy it, but other than that, its a waste of time. I remember some Compak exams like 2018 and 2019 were tricky, so try to get a hold of those.
2019: Accounting [45]
2020: Methods [45] Specialist [44] Physics [42] Chemistry [36] English [38]
ATAR: 99.05
2021: BoE (Hons) @ Monash University, Clayton

Seamus Wong

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Re: How to Do well in Accounting
« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2019, 05:40:42 am »
0
Just to add on: Insights, CPAP and Compak are good companies to get papers from. TSSM is trash. Their tests and exams have the most basic questions and it wont help you much if you are already confident with the content. AND they have SOO MANY ERRORS in their answers. I mean if you are really struggling with the content, then maybe buy it, but other than that, its a waste of time. I remember some Compak exams like 2018 and 2019 were tricky, so try to get a hold of those.

Oh yeah TSSM exams were so shit

idrk

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Re: How to Do well in Accounting
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2019, 08:09:03 pm »
+2
Just adding on to this, In my view the most important part of Accounting is to develop a strong conceptual understanding of the content. Knowing the concepts well, will provide the basis to answer any theory question regardless of how abstract, as well as provide an understanding for how the practical side functions so that you may tackle any question. Personally this was a lot more effective for me rather than rote learning answers or methods to solve practical questions without proper understanding.

Another thing to be in the very top scores in big theory questions is to pay attention to situational data, such as type of business and what they trade. By incorporating references to this, your answer will show a greater level of understanding than one with generic response.
Methods 43 [2018] Physics 38 [2018] Accounting 45 [2019]
Specialist Maths 41 [2019] English 42 [2019] Legal 41 [2019] Economics 39 [2019]
ATAR: 99.20