What study manual would you recommend?

[justkay]

Originally Posted by StephonMarbury2

I didn't want to imply that it was a personal attack. Poor choice of words. I just meant that it is unfair to expect ACE not to defend themselves against such a negative review. Even if it is just an opinion, it creates an extremely damaging perception, and it's well within their rights to express that there have been positive opinions as well.

I agree - ACE and TIA should absolutely make rebuttals, and I'm interested to hear how they reply to any negative feedback. And likewise, students who used ACE and liked it should also comment. But to say it's OK to post positive feedback and not negative isn't fair.

Anyone who comes on here and reads Chance123's post and says "oh, that's it, I'm not buying anything ACE" is an idiot. As you said, there are as many positive reviews as there are negative, for both TIA and ACE.

[justkay]

Originally Posted by Chance123

Study manual
The study manual was very detailed. Too detailed in my opinion though. It did not separate out the most important concepts from the less important. Because of the level of detail, I would say that it can serve as a substitute for the source material except for the fact that there were so many mistakes in the manual. Some were arbitrary, others were less intuitive (e.g., formula errors). I (and I believe others) informed ACE of some of these mistakes, but since I didn’t see most of them show up in the errata, I stopped letting them know. Also, there were a lot of grammatical errors in the manual. I understand there will be such errors in all published documents, but there were so many in this manual to the point that it was distracting. Please learn the proper usage of commas! The manual needs a thorough editorial review.

I also used the ACE study manual, but I didn't think it was too detailed. I think it was just right for the first 2 or 3 passes through the material, and then I switched to the more condensed seminar manual and the flashcards. I do agree that it would be really cool if they could somehow emphasize what they consider really important (starring the list or something), but in general I think the manual is very good. The errors were a bit of a problem, but that definitely seems to be fixed for this next round with the DP manual.

Originally Posted by Chance123

Flash cards
I used these to a significant extent. I believe they were the strongest of all of ACE’s products. It seems like they were pulled directly from the study manual, so as a result, any errors in the manual showed up on these as well. But since the flash cards were much more condensed, there were relatively fewer errors. It would’ve been nice to have them provide some more blank cards. I think I added 100 or so to their deck of 550.

Agree with the errors comment, again it seems they really took care of this in the DP round, and therefore I'm betting in the next round of CSP. The flashcards were great and I can't imagine studying without them. I agree that more extra blank cards would be helpful. Also, hole punched, but that's not hard to do yourself, either.

Originally Posted by Chance123

CDs
I listened to the first few tracks, couldn’t take any more of Ben’s “kill me now” tone, and tossed them aside.

I thought Ben's reading was pretty good, actually. I didn't get much use out of the CDs, but my commute is a measly 5 minutes. If it were longer, I would probably love these. Definitely need to read through the cards at least once before using the CDs, though. I also found if I took them in chunks, and just listened to the first 50 over and over until I was familiar, then the next chunk, etc. They were much more useful.

Originally Posted by Chance123

Live seminar
This was the weakest of all their products. To be quite blunt, it was terrible. Maybe Jacob and Ben know what they’re talking about, but it did not come across that way at all. On top of that, the sample questions provided were weak. I did not feel like they were exam caliber questions. On top of that, they were full of errors. They made it seem like the errors didn’t matter, as long as the problems illustrated the concepts. The problem with this though is that we were still learning and fuzzy on the concepts, so when you throw in bunch of calculation errors, it does not help our cause. I found myself not knowing whether I had the concept or the calculation wrong. I felt like the seminar was a step back in my study progress and after I left, I decided to throw everything that happened during those few days out of my memory and pretend like the seminar never happened.

I agree that the errors made things difficult, but I really thought that overall it was quite helpful. Again, I would love to see the professional proofreading used for the next CSP seminar as for the DP manual this time around, because the DP manual is a big improvement over the CSP in error count.

In general, the biggest drawback was the errors, and that is something ACE has clearly taken feedback on and is making steps to fix, which appear to have made a big difference looking at the DP products. I would definitely recommend the ACE study manual and flashcards. The CDs are good if you spend a lot of time in the car, running kids to practices, etc. The seminar is helpful too, imho.

I would also recommend TIA's online seminar - it's really good and got me through a lot of the tougher concepts.

Please note that the above is entirely my own personal opinion, and is not endorsed by nor represents the opinions of either TIA or ACE. This is based on my study habits that may greatly differ from someone else's.

[drizzle]

I also purchased the ACE manual and did attend the seminar. I thought the ACE manual was very thorough and I agree with EnSkywalker that the flashcards were incredibly useful. I would disagree however that they come pre-bound with rings, only because I like to split them to my learning preference based on the cards I want to focus on memorizing each day.

As for the seminar, I found it very helpful as both a review and a new way of attacking certain problems (i.e. GAAP problems) and both Ben and Jacob were very open to both questions and feedback before, during, and after the seminar sessions. There were sections that were more useful to me than others, but I think that boils down to individual work experience. I would definitely recommend going to the seminar prepared and viewing it more as a review session.

[mlschop]

Any updated thoughts on manuals?

[ReAct]

Any recents thoughts to add on this?

It seems the two manuals have somewhat merged in style. ACE now offers similar online videos as TIA.

[ACEManual]

Gotta love these posts that never go away...

Probably a good place to give an update on the updated ACE products. The study guide will be available on November 15th. They are in route to the bookstores. So it is just a matter of shipping times.

Flash cards and audio CDs are currently ahead of schedule. The release dates on those products is December 15th and 30th.

OLS is currently available and we're making updates for the new material.

The study schedule should be posted to the website very soon. I'll make a post when that happens.

[LoneGirl]

Originally Posted by redwoody86

Any recents thoughts to add on this?

It seems the two manuals have somewhat merged in style. ACE now offers similar online videos as TIA.

I used the ACE manual last spring and passed. I also highly recommend their live seminar.

[Maximus]

Ditto what Lonegirl said!

In hindsight, had I not attended the ACE live seminar, I would have been at a significant disadvantage to those who did! The manual that they provide to attendees is pretty much a golden ticket to the passing candidates list!

[ReAct]

I ended purchasing every ACE product available. I just took the exam yesterday, so here are my fresh thoughts about how well they prepared me:

Study guide: This is very thorough, and there are few mistakes in it (less than the source material). You could almost use this as your primary study material and skip the source material, but I would not recommend this. I read along with the source material, and made notes of where to add things in, and that was few and far between.

Online seminar: This was fantastic to have as an on demand resource. I rewatched many of the videos the week before the test to get a refresh. The comments on the past exam problems was also a great way to go through the problems. I highly recommend this. My only gripe was the the quality of the videos was inconsistent. Sometimes there is background interference noice, or the video of the pdf is not as good quality, so it was harder to watch some of those videos on my iPhone. The newer recordings are better, so this will get better over time.

Live seminar: I thought this was helpful. I went to the live seminar directly after finishing the source material, and used it as a general review and a barometer. One person mentioned that the seminar guide is well worth the money for the practice problems-- I totally agree. I may have gotten more value out of the seminar guide than the seminar itself. I definitely recommend the seminar.

Flash cards: If I pass, this is why. I was prepared for every single list question on the exam. I added in a few in (that were not tested), and took some out, but these were very very helpful, and how I spent the majority of my last 6 weeks studying. If you only could purchase one ACE product, it would be there.

Audio flash cards: These were not helpful to me. The pacing and speed and words they were saying just did not match up with what was in my mind. My memorization technique was not to memorize the cards verbatim, and that is what these would help you with. I used these very infrequently, and only helped with a few things that I needed to rote memorize. Would not recommend.

Overall, I highly recommend ACE, hope they helped me pass, and would use them again even if I failed. Thanks guys!

[horse_face]

Originally Posted by ReAct

I ended purchasing every ACE product available. I just took the exam yesterday, so here are my fresh thoughts about how well they prepared me:


Flash cards: If I pass, this is why. I was prepared for every single list question on the exam. I added in a few in (that were not tested), and took some out, but these were very very helpful, and how I spent the majority of my last 6 weeks studying. If you only could purchase one ACE product, it would be there.

Every question? Efficient frontiers?