Home › Study Guides › How to Pass the CPA Exam: Section Order, Hours and System
Three decisions decide it, and the credit window most guides still quote is out of date by a year.
Passing the CPA exam comes down to three decisions: what order you test the sections in, how many hours you actually put in per section, and how you sequence practice questions against full mocks. Get those three right and the rest is execution.
The structure you are planning around is three Core sections, meaning Auditing and Attestation, Financial Accounting and Reporting, and Regulation, plus one Discipline section chosen from Business Analysis and Reporting, Information Systems and Controls, or Tax Compliance and Planning. The passing score is 75 on a scaled nought-to-99 range for each section. Core sections are open for continuous testing, while Discipline sections run only in one-month windows at the start of each quarter, so your Discipline date has to be planned around the calendar rather than around when you feel ready.
One planning fact worth getting right, because a lot of older guidance has it wrong: the conditional credit window is no longer eighteen months in most places. NASBA amended its model rule in April 2023 to extend the window from eighteen to thirty months, giving candidates an additional year to pass the remaining sections after their first pass. The important caveat is that the model rule has no automatic effect on individual state board rules, and each of the boards decides whether and when to adopt it. So confirm your own state board's current window before you plan a testing schedule around either number. If you are working from a study plan or a forum post written before 2023, assume its timeline assumptions are stale.
On section order, there is no single correct sequence, and candidates pass in all sorts of orders, but three principles show up consistently. Take your hardest section while momentum and available study time are highest, which for most candidates means Financial Accounting, with the broadest content, or Auditing, with dense and unfamiliar terminology if you have not worked in audit; putting your toughest section first while you are fresh beats saving it for last when fatigue and the credit clock are both working against you. Sequence Regulation after Financial Accounting if you can, since Regulation's tax content builds on accounting concepts the other already covers, including basis, depreciation and entity accounting, so testing them back to back lets the concepts reinforce each other rather than going stale. And pick your Discipline by career relevance, then plan its testing window early, because those sections only open one month per quarter and missing a window can add three months to your path with no benefit to your preparation. A common low-risk order for candidates without a strong pull toward one Discipline is Financial Accounting, then Auditing, then Regulation, then the Discipline section, which front-loads the broadest content while momentum is high and leaves the narrower specialised section for last.
On study hours, estimates vary by background, whether you are a recent accounting graduate or a career changer, and whether you are working full-time, but the ranges candidates who pass first time typically report run roughly as follows. Financial Accounting takes the most at around 130 to 160 hours across eight to ten weeks. Regulation runs around 100 to 130 hours across seven to nine weeks. Auditing runs around 90 to 120 hours across six to eight weeks. Among Disciplines, Business Analysis and Tax Compliance each run around 90 to 110 hours across six to seven weeks, and Information Systems around 70 to 90 hours across five to six weeks. These assume roughly fifteen to twenty hours a week of dedicated study, which is a realistic ceiling for most candidates working full-time. Studying full-time compresses the windows meaningfully; studying around a demanding job means stretching them rather than cutting total hours, since cramming material at this level rarely holds up under exam pressure. Two adjustments are worth making to any generic estimate: recent accounting graduates typically need less time on Financial Accounting and Regulation, where the material is fresher, but should not assume that advantage carries to Auditing, which many undergraduate programmes cover lightly; and career changers, or anyone further from their last accounting class, should add twenty to thirty per cent to every section, especially Financial Accounting with its broad content surface.
On sequencing practice against mocks, this is where most self-study candidates lose efficiency, either mocking too early before they know the material or never mocking at all, so they never build exam-day stamina and pacing. The first phase, topic drilling, should take sixty to seventy per cent of total study time: work practice questions organised by topic rather than randomly mixed, and stay on a topic until you are consistently scoring seventy per cent or better before moving on. This phase is where the actual learning happens and full mocks cannot substitute for it. The second phase, mixed-topic sets, takes fifteen to twenty per cent: once individual topics are solid, start mixing across the section's full blueprint, which builds the skill of recognising which rule applies to which fact pattern without a topic label telling you in advance, something the real exam requires and topic-isolated drilling does not build. The third phase, full-length timed mocks, takes ten to fifteen per cent and belongs in the last two or three weeks before your date: take at least two full four-hour mocks under real conditions, with no phone and no pausing, because mocks test three things topic drilling cannot, namely stamina over a full four-hour block, pacing across both question types, and how your accuracy holds up when you are tired at hour three. Scoring 75 or better on a mock taken under true timed conditions on unseen questions is your green light to schedule.
Do not skip straight to mocks to save time. A mock taken before topic mastery mostly confirms you are not ready without diagnosing which topics need work; topic-level review does that diagnosis, and mocks only confirm readiness.
Four things commonly sink candidates who were otherwise prepared. Running out of time on simulations, which are worth roughly half the section score but get less practice because multiple-choice questions are quicker to write and review, so deliberately schedule simulation-heavy sessions. Studying broad instead of studying the blueprint weight, since every section's content is weighted unevenly and some areas carry double or triple the testing weight of others, so check your section's current blueprint weighting and allocate hours to match rather than evenly. Treating the credit window as slack instead of a deadline, because waiting too long between sections means earlier material fades before a later section assumes you still know it, and testing sections closer together often outperforms spacing them out even with slightly less preparation time each. And under-practising rationales rather than answers, because getting a question right for the wrong reason does not transfer to a slightly different fact pattern; review the rationale on every question, right or wrong.
CoStudy's role here is the first two phases: topic-organised and mixed practice questions with full rationales, across all three Core sections and all three Discipline options. It is not a substitute for the video lectures and structured curriculum a full review course provides if you are learning material for the first time, being built for drilling and retention once you have been through the content. The first ten questions of any section are free with no signup.
A few questions come up repeatedly. On section order, there is no required sequence, though Financial Accounting, then Auditing, then Regulation, then your Discipline is a common low-risk one, and sequencing Regulation after Financial Accounting helps where possible. On total hours, most candidates report somewhere around 450 to 600 across all four sections, varying significantly by background, with Financial Accounting the most time-intensive single section. On full-time against part-time study, both work, and the key variable is total hours per section rather than calendar time, with full-time study compressing a section into four to six weeks and part-time study around a job typically needing seven to ten to reach the same totals without cramming. On knowing when to schedule, two full-length timed mocks scoring 75 or better on unseen questions in the final weeks is a reasonable signal, and scoring well on topic-isolated sets alone is not sufficient, because mixed timed conditions test different skills. And on what happens if you do not finish in time, your earliest passed section's credit expires and you retake it, though the exact window and any extensions are set by your state board rather than nationally, which is why confirming your board's current rule matters more than any number quoted in a study guide.
CoStudy is a study tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by the AICPA or NASBA. Exam structure, timelines and requirements vary by state board and change over time, so confirm current specifics with the AICPA, NASBA and your state board of accountancy before planning your testing schedule.
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