Choosing a college (in South Africa)

Anonymous wrote:

I am planning to sit the May exams in Johannesburg, but I can not find a colege near me that does CIMA. You have been to SA. Can you help?

Well, while it would be wrong of me to recommend specific colleges, I can suggest a couple of things that will help:

1. Find out which colleges teach CIMA in your area. The CIMA college finder is an online tool for just that. Simply enter your country or city, and the results will be there. You can then contact the colleges. Your first stop should always be the 'Quality Partner' colleges.
2. Ask around. There's nothing better than a recommendation. My Learning Burst on choosing a college goes into more detail.

I hope that helps.

Studying online - does it work?

Anonymous wrote:

I am not near any college that teach CIMA. I have passed all CBA exams on my own, but I need help and not sure if internet college will be good.

There are lots of online colleges, and the standards vary. The best thing to do is to get recommendations from students who have used them. Go into the CIMA forums on CIMASphere, and search for relevant discussions. Also, take a look at my Learning Burst on studying online, which has more information on how to find and choose an online college, and how to make online study work for you.

AAT and CIMA - exemptions

CAUTION - THIS POST RELATES TO THE CIMA 2010 SYLLABUS, SO IS NO LONGER VALID


Anonymous wrote:

If I finish all the 3 levels of AAT will I be able to skip the foundation level of CIMA? If so do I have to use the same medium I used for AAT, or can I write CIMA in another language?

Thanks for your question. If you have any exemptions questions, you can find the answer here, on the CIMA website.

The short answer is 'yes' - if you have passed the full AAT qualification, you get exemption from all of the CIMA Certificate in Business Accounting (CBA - what you called 'foundation'). If you've only done the International AAT qualification, you get exemption from two papers at CBA.

Getting practice answers marked

Leevan wrote:

"Do you know any CIMA tutors who are willing to give me feedback on my attempted past year questions?"

Great question, because it shows that you're thinking carefully about how to get best value from your question practice.

I would suggest getting in touch with your nearest CIMA Quality Partner college. You can search CIMA's college finder, by country and city. Tutors at colleges are often quite happy to mark and give feedback. Sometimes they might ask for a fee, but sometimes they do it as a favour, as it's good marketing for their courses. Pick a Quality Partner college, if you can, as they have been accredited by CIMA.

Time management

CAUTION - THIS POST RELATES TO THE CIMA 2010 SYLLABUS, SO IS NO LONGER VALID


Leevan asked:

"Thanks a lot Mr Harris. Fortunately I realize my main reason for scoring bad marks during the exam is due to bad time management. Is there any advice you can give on managing my time effectively in the exam hall?"

Running out of time, at the end of the exam, is only part of time management. The trick is to allocate an equal amount of time (on a 'per mark' basis) to each of the requirements and questions. I have two pieces of advice:

Firstly, you have to be disciplined. If you find a question that you like, the temptation is to spend far too long writing about things related to the question. This leads to two probems - you are less likely to stick to just answering the question, and you won't have enough time left to answer the rest of the questions.

Secondly, you must practise answering exam-standard questions under timed exam conditions. It's too easy to say "just another few minutes won't hurt", but it will. Writing answers under a time constraint is a skill that needs to be developed and practised.

If you want more information on time management, there's a Learning Burst here. There's also one on using past exam questions here.