Enroll in a Class or Self-Study for CMA?

Yen is from Vietnam and joins our blogger community after completing her CMA exam in Sep 2015. Yen reflects on her 2-year journey with her posts every Thursday.

As mentioned in my last post, my goal is to write down the important decisions and milestone of my CMA journey. I hope my experience can help other candidates currently studying for the exam.

Should You Enroll in a Class or Self-Study for CMA?

Have you ever considered enrolling in a CMA class or go for self-study?

At first, I register for CMA course. We have to study 3 hours per day and three days per week after working hour.

Teachers maybe give students lecture note, some tips and I can get knowledge from them faster. But please take note IF YOU GET SOMETHING EASY YOU LOSE IT EASY TOO.

From the day 1, I was passionate about learning. However, my diligence did not remain long. Sometimes I couldn’t go to class because of many paperwork; I can’t leave my office on time. In fact, there are many reasons prevent you come to the evening class.

Sometimes I present in class but not concentrate. I don’t know what the teacher was talking about. I lost my motivation, and I know that I cannot study when my brain and my body get tired. CMA became something suffer me a lot, and I gave up after three months studying like this.

Three months (again) get out of CMA, get out of boring evening class, and I know I must restart. This time, I decided to read Willey book by myself. In the beginning, the huge and thick book suffer me with many new words. However, this time I got over. Reading book take me so much time but I enjoy whenever I found out useful knowledge by myself.

That is only my experience. In fact, many students pass the CMA exam by studying for an evening class. Human is different, and we are not in the same condition. If your workload is not heavy, you don’t have the habit of reading, entering class should be the best choice for you.

Thanks for your reading,

Yen

Note from Stephanie

Hello, Yen! Your blog post is unique because you have passed the exam and your sharing is a reflection of a completed journey. It is interesting because it gives us readers a different perspective.

I especially like what you said “IF YOU GET SOMETHING EASY YOU LOSE IT EASY TOO.” Self-study (either reading a textbook or taking an online course) is the way to go in the US. However, I believe “coaching classes” are still popular in other countries.

In these classes, the instructors often teach in the local language and give you lecture notes that suit the style of local candidates. They are trying hard to help, but what candidates didn’t realize until too late is that this is a US Exam: you cannot pass unless you read, learn, write and breathe in English for a few months.

As Yen said, there are people who pass taking evening live classes, of course, but I’ve seen too many failure among my readers. So I feel the need to speak up.

If interested, I have a more elaborate discussion here.

• Yen’s Next Post on Nov 3: Practicing Multiple Choice Questions is the Most Important