ASAP Technology:
Award-Winning Adaptive Learning Software
Passing The CPA Exam is Tough
More content is added to the exam each year, national pass rates hover under 50%, and an increasingly high number of candidates are struggling to pass all four exam sections the 18-month window.
To make matters worse, other courses are selling an ineffective learning model that hasn’t changed in decades. Some throw around the term “adaptive” in their marketing material, but one look at their courses proves it’s just talk. You’re still forced to watch every video, read all material, and answer every question…and then guess if you’re actually ready to sit or not. Surgent CPA Review co-founder Liz Kolar set out to create a new kind of CPA Exam prep course.
By combining her 30+ years of CPA Review teaching experience with state-of-the-art technology, the winning result is Surgent’s award-winning course, fueled by proprietary adaptive learning software called A.S.A.P.® Technology.
A.S.A.P.® Technology: A revolutionary approach to CPA Review
You start by completing a specially selected cross-section of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs). Your answers enable the software's algorithm to gauge your knowledge across all CPA Exam content areas, which, in turn, is used to generate a hyper-personalized study program.
That’s when you move into the Study Phase, where you’ll get “Daily Surge” cards with recommended study material, paired to your specific knowledge gaps. Because each student learns differently, we let you choose which type of study material you’d like to review, including tailored suggestions within our:
Bite-Sized Video Lectures
Led by a team of expert instructors, and accompanied with helpful study notes, most Surgent videos last just 10 to 20 minutes, and each one focuses on a specific, digestible topic. Videos double as an excellent option for students who prefer an audio course, as these can easily be streamed on-the-go with headphones or through a car stereo.
Reading Material
Like our video lectures, Surgent reading material is also broken out into specific topics, so you can study exactly what you need to learn without wasting time covering areas you already know.
Multiple-Choice Questions
Since the exam focuses so heavily on MCQs, we know it's critical for you to master them during your exam prep. And to make our MCQs more beneficial, we include high-quality reference materials directly in our course that help you learn, while also getting more comfortable with the MCQ format. This includes explanations, video links, relevant terms, references, and authoritative texts-- to teach you exactly what you need to know to master that concept.
MCQ performance informs the software’s real-time algorithm, which ensures that your study plan continues to adapt as you master content through your studies.
Simulations
Our course will automatically add simulations to your study program when the software determines that you’ve mastered enough MCQs. Our course prepares you for all types of simulations, including written communication simulations and task-based simulations, like research simulations and document review simulations. All of our sims include extensive explanations, plus a more intuitive number entry, which was designed to fully match the new CPA Exam user experience.
Do You Know Your CPA Exam ReadySCORE?
Surgent CPA Review's ReadySCORE™ accurately and clearly indicates your CPA Exam readiness, so you know exactly how you're performing cumulatively, by content area and topic, and throughout all question types, like multiple-choice questions, task-based simulations, and written communication questions. With ReadySCORE, you"ll know exactly how ready you are to sit for the CPA Exam.
ReadySCORE is calibrated to real CPA Exam scoring. In fact, Surgent students who achieve a ReadySCORE of 75 or more pass the CPA Exam a remarkable 92% of the time (vs. national average pass rates, which hover around 50%). And students improve their ReadySCORE, on average, from a 43 to an 84 while studying with Surgent. It really works!
Recently, ReadySCORE was recognized at the 2019 American Business Awards, named winner of the Silver Stevie in the Technical Innovation of the Year – At Organizations With Up to 100 Employees category. One judge commented, “[This is] a pretty remarkable and innovative feature. There are many testing programs that don’t offer any guidance on testing progress, so this is a nice feature to see” while another noted, “The efficiency gains Surgent ReadySCORE delivers to their students is amazing.”
How is ReadySCORE calculated?
You’ll start your exam prep with a thorough assessment, which includes questions pulled from all CPA Exam categories. We take your assessment results and real category content weightings from the AICPA’s blueprints to calculate your baseline ReadySCORE, or what you could expect to score on the CPA Exam if you took it that day.
As you make your way through each study session, our software’s real-time algorithm tracks your performance by content area, topic, and question type, and updates your ReadySCORE to reflect your progress in each of those areas, which you can use to ensure preparedness for every aspect of the CPA Exam.
CPA Exam Candidates Can Use ReadySCORE to:
- Identify the content areas and topics where you need to spend more—or less—time studying, which always align with the latest Exam blueprints.
- Ensure preparedness for all question types: multiple-choice questions, task-based simulations, and written communication questions.
- See how you're progressing with each passing study session.
- Take the guesswork out of CPA Exam readiness.
MyMCQ: The Right Questions at the Right Time
Our latest software enhancement, MyMCQ™, focuses on serving you the multiple-choice questions that are just challenging enough to progress through your studies as quickly as possible. After determining your current knowledge level, MyMCQ begins tailoring the multiple-choice questions that you see to your comprehension level for each topic.
So, if you're just beginning to understand a topic, you will see questions that are easier. As you begin to attain mastery, you will see more challenging questions.
MyMCQ shortens the amount of time that it will take you to study and successfully pass the CPA Exam by keeping you from wasting time on concepts you already know. By eliminating multiple-choice questions that are too easy, you'll spend more time focusing on more challenging topics, which will help you close your knowledge gaps and increase your ReadySCORE much more quickly. In fact, since MyMCQ was introduced to Surgent's already time-saving course, candidates have been able to pass while saving an additional 17% of study time, on average.
How does MyMCQ work?
Starting in the Assessment phase, MyMCQ uses your responses to each question to gauge your current knowledge level. At the end of the Assessment, after you've been given your diagnostic report and baseline ReadySCORE, MyMCQ will begin showing you multiple-choice questions appropriate to your comprehension of the materials you need to know to pass the CPA Exam. Using advanced machine learning, MyMCQ is continually adapting, just like your ReadySCORE, to serve you multiple-choice questions at an appropriate difficulty level to push you toward optimal efficiency.
Want to reduce your study hours even more? You can manually raise the difficulty level at any time and MyMCQ will optimize your path to achieve even greater efficiency.
MyMCQ and the CPA Exam
MyMCQ helps prepare candidates for the actual CPA Exam by mimicking the multi-stage adaptive test delivery model used by the AICPA. When sitting for the CPA Exam, candidates will be presented with questions that increase in difficulty. The better a candidate performs, the harder the questions will become. This same process is applied to Surgent CPA Review through MyMCQ!
Linear or Adaptive Learning? Take Your Pick!
Students have had great success with our adaptive model, but we realize that not everyone prefers that learning style. We make it easy for those who prefer a more traditional, linear approach to navigate through the course outline and create their own study sessions comprised of MCQs, reading material, video lectures, and sims.
We also have students who successfully use a combination of both linear and adaptive learning, starting with the adaptive approach to identify where they need to focus, and then switching to the linear learning style, watching as many videos and reading as much material as they’d like to on a particular topic.
Not sure which model is best for you? Our success coaches are a great resource! And 1-on-1 sessions are included at no charge with our Premier Pass and Ultimate Pass courses.
The Proof is in the Pass Rates
The bottom line is that Surgent students pass the CPA Exam at a rate much higher than the national average, while actually studying less.
- Thanks to the sophisticated technology at the heart of our course, we’re able to track how students progress through it and improve in a way that no other course can. That’s how we know that students using our course dramatically improve their CPA Exam readiness.
- In fact, students using Surgent CPA Review reach an average ReadySCORE of 82 once they enter the Practice Phase of the software.!
- Just how accurate is the ReadySCORE at predicting CPA Exam success? Very! In fact, students who achieve a 75 ReadySCORE pass the exam 92% of the time!
