CMA Exam Difficulty: Tips to Overcome Challenges, Pass Percentage
Check some common challenges CMA students face and strategies to overcome them here.
CMA Exam Difficulty: Tips for Overcoming Challenges
CMA Exam Difficulty: The Institute of Cost Accountants (ICMAI) conducts CMA exam bi-annually. Candidates prepare day and night to pass all three exam levels under CMA course. Preparing for CMA exam can be daunting owing to its pass percentage affecting aspirants. Besides CMA, accounting aspirants consider chartered accounting (CA) and company secretary (CS) for a career in similar fields.
Students may join top coaching institutions for CMA exam to stay motivated during their preparation. CMA pass percentage indicates that more than half of test takers may not pass exam even with complete efforts while preparing.
Check this article for CMA exam difficulty with pass percentage and tips to overcome common challenges while preparing for ICMAI CMA exam.
Also Read: Know all about CMA
CMA Exam Difficulty: Tips to Overcome Challenges
One can overcome a few challenges during CMA exam preparation with help of their mentors, and past toppers easily. Check some common challenges during CMA exam preparation and tips to overcome these challenges below:
If the preparation is right, CMA is not as hard as students complaint about the same. If the pass percentages is compared with ICAI CA exam, CMA pass percentage is comparatively less. However, the number of candidates appearing in CA Final if compared with CMA Final course is huge. The pass percentage of CMA Final course in December 2022 term stood at 6.85% for both the groups, and 17.77% for candidates who onlyu appeared for Group IV exam.
Out of 3751 candidates who appeared in both the groups of CMA Final course, 373 test takers passed the exam for only one course group, while 257 candidates passed the exam for both the groups of CMA Final course in December 2022 term.
CMA Intermediate course level has two different groups. Candidates can either take the test papers for both groups or a single group. The test papers included in the CMA Intermediate course level are as follows:
CMA Intermediate Course Group - I
- PAPER 5: Business Lawns and Ethics (BLE)
- PAPER 6: Financial Accounting (FA)
- PAPER 7: Direct and Indirect Taxation (DITX)
- PAPER 8: Cost Accounting (CA)
CMA Intermediate Course Group - II
- PAPER 9: Operations Management and Strategic Management (OMSM)
- PAPER 10: Corporate Accounting and Auditing (CAA)
- PAPER 11: Financial Management and Business Data Analytics (FMDA)
- PAPER 12: Management Accounting (MA)
Lengthy Curriculum and Time Management
Candidates preparing for CMA exam may find course material to be vast and daunting. Vast syllabus may lead students to miss important parts of the CMA subjects while preparing. One can overcome this challenge by breaking down the syllabus into smaller parts. CMA students can also mark their strengths and weaknesses before starting to study for the exam.
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One has to set daily and weekly goals to manage time during the preparation phase.
Focus on Concepts
The CMA exam requires a deep understanding of complex financial and managerial accounting concepts, often involving difficult calculations. To overcome the challenge, candidates have to practise regularly and solve numerous practice problems to get an understanding of all concepts. Incase of difficulties, candidates must not hesitate to seek help from mentors and batch mates.
Balancing CMA Preparation with Full-Time Job
CMA aspirants work in organisations as a part of practical training. Managing both work and exam preparation can become difficult. Students must focus on managing time by creating a schedule to balance their work and study.
CMA exam is conducted at three course levels, namely Foundation, Intermediate and Final. CMA exam for all three course levels are conducted as an offline centre based exam. In the past sessions, ICMAI, the conducting body of the CMA exam, had conducted the Intermediate and Final course exams as an online centre based exam. While the CMA Foundation was conducted as a remotely proctored exam from home. However, the mismanegement in the online exams led ICMAI to shift back to the offline centre based exam.
ICMAI may change the mode of the CMA exams in the upcoming exam sessions. Stay tuned to shiksha's CMA exam pattern article for key developments in the test structure from time to time (https://www.shiksha.com/accounting-commerce/accounting/cma-exam-pattern)
Lack of Important Resources for CMA Preparation
CMA preparation can be fruitful with an abundant supply of preparation material such as mock tests and past question papers. An effective preparation requires candidates to practise regular mock tests & practice papers. In addition, candidates must seek help while analysis of their test papers from tutors and mentors. CMA mock tests and MQPs help candidates analyse their strengths and weaknesses.
CMA Exam Difficulty vs CA Exam Difficulty: Pass Percentage
CMA exam is considered difficult among other accounting exams, including CA and CS if the pass percentages are compared. Similar to CA, ICMAI also has three course levels, including CMA Foundation, CMA Intermediate, and CMA Final.
Also Read: CMA vs CA: Which is Easy?
In the recent exam results, CA had better pass rates than CMA exams. However, the total number of test takers is also more in case of the CA exams. Candidates can analyse the CMA Inter pass percentage and CMA final pass percentage in comparison with CA to predict the exam difficulty from the table below:
CMA Inter vs CA Inter Pass Percentage
| Candidate Appeared for |
CMA Inter Pass Percentage (June 2024) |
CA Inter Pass Percentage (May 2024) |
|---|---|---|
| Group-I only |
11.06 |
27.15 |
| Group-II only |
28.87 |
18.28 |
| Passed in either one of the group |
8.66 |
18.42 |
| Passed both groups |
16.55 |
CMA Final vs CA Final Pass Percentage
| Candidate Appeared for |
CMA Final Pass Percentage (June 2024) |
CA Final Pass Percentage (May 2024) |
|---|---|---|
| Group-III only |
14.38 |
27.35 |
| Group-IV only |
14.02 |
36.35 |
| Passed in either one of the group |
8.06 |
19.88 |
| Passed both groups |
11.22 |
The CMA and CA pass percentage analysis above indicate that more candidates pass the CA exam each year than CMA. This suggests that the CMA exam may be more difficult. However, a crucial point to consider is the number of test takers in each exam.
Maximum marks in the CMA exam is similar irrespective of the course level. Papers under all three course levels have a maximum of 100 marks. Candidates answering all the questions correctly will get 100 marks. In the CMA Foundation eaxam, each exam paper has 50 multiple choice questions. Each question fetches two marks. Whereas, the CMA Intermediate and CMA Final have different marking scheme with descriptive and objective type questions. Marks for each question of Intermediate or Final exam paper ranges from seven marks to 15 marks.