CPA index or CPA summary notes?
Why should I create an index when I can just grab someone else’s?
Why do I need summary notes when I can just refer to my index and look it up in the study guide?
Well both resources are valuable … hear me out and I will tell you why.
We always say if you can teach the content then you know you understand it. How do you determine this?
By summmarising the content.
Putting it all in your own words but that is not all once you have put it in your own words make certain that you have created to tool to make sure you can find it.
What am I talking about? I am talking about first creating a summary then using this to guide your index.
The first step is to create CPA summary notes for each module so let’s get into it!
Overview of preparing CPA summary notes
We often advise CPA students on how important it is to prepare module summaries – using your own words, not just borrowing notes from someone else. The benefit of summarising comes from:
- Spending time carefully reading and thinking how to ‘reduce’ the content into a summary
- Reviewing the summary at a later date to help remember all the knowledge
This is a key difference between ‘reading’ and ‘studying’.
To help you start preparing your own summaries – we have produced an example based on Ethics & Governance Module 1, so you can see what to do, and how beneficial it will be.
Now over to you…
So the aim for you is to try and summarise Module 1, which is about 50 pages long into some that is only 10 – 12 pages long.
PREPARING CPA SUMMARY NOTES WILL TAKE YOU QUITE A LONG TIME. But, this is ‘studying’ not ‘reading’ and this is how you end up learning the material really well and not ‘forgetting’ it as soon as you put the book down.
Then – when you start revising for your exam – you will have about 70 – 100 pages to read – in your own words, and it will sink in much deeper than ever before.