Student saves time, passes CPA Exam when switching to Surgent

Hi, my name is Jonathan Marseglia, I am a tax manager and tax attorney at Garcia & Ortiz PA, and I passed three sections of the CPA Exam by studying about 96 hours per section with Surgent – nearly half of the time that put into studying when I used a different CPA review course!

I used a different CPA review provider for REG and used Surgent CPA Review to pass AUD, BEC and FAR. I highly recommend Surgent, and thought their materials were excellent. I passed FAR, BEC and AUD within a four-month period. I passed all those exams and the only exam I studied for more than 96 hours for was FAR, about 92 hours for BEC and about 80 hours for AUD.

Before Surgent, I passed REG with another CPA review provider and used it to prepare for AUD and scored a 62 on the CPA Exam. I was receiving a score of 79 on their pre-assessments before I took the CPA Exam. After receiving my score, I was disappointed and wanted to try a different program, so I signed up with Surgent. I saw that you can pass in 96 hours, so I studied hard, sat for the AUD exam and passed with a score of 89. I was very happy with my results and decided to stay with Surgent. I later took BEC and passed with a score of 90 and studied about 92 hours for that section. For FAR, my pre-assessment score was a 45 and I studied about 110 hours and passed with a score of 78.

There were a few ways in which I thought Surgent was far superior over the prior review course – the prior review course did not do a great job of tailoring questions to my weaknesses – sometimes I would see the same questions that I correctly answered over and over, while I struggled in other areas. The prior course also did a poor job of organizing its materials to make studying efficient. For example, many of the videos were 20-30 minutes in length and while the presenter was entertaining and captivating, it unnecessarily increased the amount of time and effort required to study. Finally, I thought the simulations were poorly constructed. The research simulations, for example, used another website to do the research, so you did not get the same experience as you would in taking the exam. Also, many of the simulations asked similar questions or had similar tasks rather than giving the student a variety of simulations.

I can’t say enough good things about Surgent! I thought the Liz Kolar videos were excellent, and I love that she pinpoints for you what you need to know to pass the exam. She was spot on. I thought the Susan Cox videos were excellent as well and the simulations did a good job capturing the sort of the things you would see on the exam. I was extremely happy to get my scores and I encourage you if you are thinking of using Surgent, to use Surgent and the best of luck studying!