6 Tips for Choosing the Best Prep Course Provider
Professional qualifications offer candidates greater insight into key finance and accounting topics. The curriculum incorporates the industry’s best practices and trends which ensures that candidates have the expertise required to climb up the ladder. Being an extensive program, candidates often need to spend months preparing and practicing the curriculum. An experienced training provider helps candidates focus on the right learning outcomes and prepare for success.
Here are 6 key features you must look for when choosing the right guide for your learning journey.
Tip 1: The Program Curriculum is a core element of their training programs
The questions asked during the exam, center around the program curriculum and the Learning Outcome Statements (LOS) developed by the governing program bodies. The program body surveys the needs of the industry and job requirements across the globe to ensure that the curriculum is relevant, current, and valid.
By choosing a training provider that focuses on the curriculum day in and day out, you ensure that you have chosen someone who has first-hand insight into the changes of the curriculum and knows the best study strategies.
Tip 2: Training Faculty’s Qualifications & Experience
Skilled prep providers employ multiple trainers to teach different topics which ensures that you are learning from a trainer who is well aware of the specific topic and can monitor the highs and lows of the particular subject on a personal level. Knowledgeable trainers will focus on ensuring you master the curriculum, do not neglect the learning outcome statement (LOS) and are more likely to predict key areas that may appear in the exam based on their experience.
An added advantage would be to learn from a trainer who achieved the qualification himself and has over years of experience training and working in the related industry.
Tip 3: Flexible training solutions
To successfully prepare and achieve a professional qualification, candidates are expected to prepare for at least 3-5 months. Therefore, it’s important to choose a training program that best suits your lifestyle and needs.
Live classroom sessions offer candidates the opportunity to interact and solve queries with their fellow peers as well as trainers during the lecture. They also include in-class practice tests and mock exams that replicate the ambiance of an exam hall. This serves an important purpose as these exams are strictly monitored and mock exams help candidates abide by the guidelines set by the governing body.
On the other hand, Live Online programs offer scheduled live online sessions by the trainer every week. It includes a participant panel that allows candidates to raise questions and interact with the trainer via audio or text. The testing method for these sessions is generally online mock exams and full-length practice exams that are known to mimic real-world testing conditions.
Tip 4: Confirm the claims made by the Prep Provider
Program governing bodies like the CFA or IMA Institute do not release previous exam questions, therefore any provider stating that they use actual questions from previous exams is a red alarm. Furthermore, if the provider is stating a particular pass rate for their material, confirm how this has been calculated and its validity.
Tip 5: Reliability of Prep Provider’s Study Material
The most efficient way to pass the exam is to practice as many questions as possible. The significant issue that students face is that even though the content has been understood well when attempting mock exams, they are often confused or lost. Therefore, the more questions you practice, the more comfortable you will be. Some important study materials to go through before the exams are end-of-section questions, mock exams, and question bank tests. These questions will equip you with tricks, tips, and methods for quicker problem-solving.
Certain providers may encourage studying for the exam without using the curriculum which isn’t recommended as although the prep material highlights the core elements for the exam, they should never be seen as a substitute for the main curriculum.
Tip 6: Study with an Approved Prep Provider
The approved prep provider program highlights training institutes that fulfill the guidelines required to offer candidates a holistic and effective learning journey. Some of the guidelines are training expertise of more than one year, developing course material in-house by experts, etc. One key highlight of these providers is that they constantly update their content according to the exam changes to maintain their prep provider status. These providers also offer candidates additional support outside the classroom which shows that they are willing to help the students thoroughly understand and excel.
Although take note that, choosing a certain provider among the many approved is solely your choice as the institute doesn’t verify the claims made by these prep providers.
Therefore, remember that the goal when choosing a prep provider isn’t choosing the most cost-effective one but rather a training guide that will help you achieve your qualification.