The new year is a time for new beginnings. As an experienced writer, you might be wondering what your plan of attack should look like in 2014. In this blog post, we will bust some myths and lay out some facts for experienced writers to consider as they are starting to put together their study plans.

Myth

Don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of time until the 2014 UFE! No need to start studying until later, much later!

Fact

While there certainly are many months until the next UFE, your time between then and now, will likely be taken up by a busy season at work, personal commitments, and family obligations etc. If you work for a small firm, your busy season is likely to start in March and ramp up in April, which means that you won’t have as much time to study during those months. If you work for one of the Big 4 firms, your busy season starts now and continues until March or even April.

So what should you be doing now? If you work at a small or medium-size firm, you need to begin reviewing your technical as soon as possible and hopefully this month. If you work at one of the Big 4 firms, you will have less time to study at the beginning of the year but you will need to ramp up it as soon as your busy season is over.

Why is this important to your success on the UFE? Your knowledge of technical will be much more solid in your memory if you build it up gradually as opposed to trying to cram it all in one or two months before the exam: the more often you cover the material, the easier it will be to access it in your memory! As mentioned in a previous blog post, researcher shows that if we want to successfully (at the right time) and easily (not spending all our time trying to recall it) retrieve information, we should continue to re-expose ourselves to it. That is why it’s important to start reviewing your technical early and to continuously build on that foundation that you create in the early months of your study plan.

Myth

Your biggest enemy on the way to passing the UFE is stress. In order to avoid stress, don’t study too much and don’t start studying too early – or you’ll simply burn out!

Fact

Stress is undoubtedly a factor in passing the UFE. And we certainly don’t recommend burning out! Our past experience working with hundreds of experienced writers shows that starting to study early will not by itself burn you out or cause you unnecessary stress. Quite the opposite, if you don’t begin studying early enough and don’t build your skills and knowledge gradually, you will most definitely become stressed when you finally get around to hitting the books––you’ll feel overwhelmed and emotionally drained very soon. Who wouldn’t get stressed when feeling behind schedule or incapable of remembering any of the technical when attempting the first simulation of the year? Burn out is not caused by studying. It is caused by the stress of not knowing and not being prepared.

So what should you do to prevent burn out and bust the myth? You need to create a long-term study plan that suits your life and schedule from the beginning (e.g. one of the factors to consider is when your busy season will take place). By long-term we don’t mean just a week or two in advance of the exam, but from today until you go into UFE study leave.

When building your schedule, you need to be realistic about how long things take. For example, imagining that your review of the PMR technical will take one week is unreasonable. Your study plan needs to take into consideration the number of hours that you are planning to study (this will largely also depend on your work schedule) and at the times when you feel most productive. Some people feel that studying in the morning suits them best, while others prefer to study while commuting to work. Most importantly, when creating your study plan, you must be mindful of how you experience stress. For some of us, stress builds up if we don’t have a day off from our work or study (which means taking Sunday or Saturday off is a must). For others stress takes hold when they have to study after work. It’s truly unique to each individual and you need to figure out what works best for you! However, most importantly you need to establish a well-balanced long-term approach.

Myth

You will learn your technical as you practice UFE simulations – no additional studying is required.

Fact

When writing UFE simulations, you’ll definitely come across many technical points that will be useful for your studying. However, waiting until you see these points in the simulation and ignoring your technical beforehand is counterproductive. Why? Because you are simply wasting each simulation as you won’t be able to practice developing your appropriate case writing techniques (which requires you to incorporate case facts with technical) since you haven’t adequately reviewed your technical. In addition, by only writing the simulations, you will not come across all of the technical points that are relevant to the UFE. Therefore, you must become familiar with technical points beyond what are covered by the simulations.

As an experienced writer, you know that your main competition comes from the current year’s SOA students. These students will start studying in March for the SOA so why would you, as an experienced writer, wait until July to start prepping yourself for the big UFE marathon?

Lastly, you might be currently thinking that you don’t want to start studying until your PAR arrives or until you figure out your individual weaknesses. While it’s definitely critical to consider your individual case writing weaknesses, you need to know your technical regardless of what your individual case-writing weaknesses happen to be. This is a technical exam and technical is its foundation. A solid house needs strong foundations; even strong case-writing skills are only as valuable as the technical foundation they are built on!

So what’s your action plan after reading this post? That’s right! To prepare a study plan that fits your needs and goals and to follow it! Don’t follow a generic plan that suits an “average” candidate since there is no such thing––every candidate is unique. And if you need help with that study plan, contact your exaMENTOR coach––we are just an email away!