How to Mark Your Own CPA Canada Cases

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A big part of getting ready for CPA Canada exams is reviewing your practice case attempts and checking how well you did. Even if your cases are marked by CPA Canada, CFE National Marking Centre, or someone else, marking them yourself helps you get better at case writing and seeing where you need to improve. Self-marking lets you find out what you need to study more, where to cut out extras, and areas you need to focus on to ensure you pass the exams. Marking own cases also gives you quick feedback, so you can keep moving with your studies without having you wait for feedback from the experts.

Materials needed

To get started with marking your own case, first gather all the resources you need. These include:

  • Your response (both Word and Excel)
  • Feedback guide
  • Official solution
  • Case
  • Sample strong answer (if available).

Feedback guides are one of the most important tools in self-marking. They are provided in CPA Canada’s PEP modules and the Capstone 2. If you are missing the feedback guides, you can purchase it from CPA Canada’s RMM module.

Some modules also offer walkthrough guides and debrief notes. I find these too time consuming to review, so I suggest skipping them unless you have a lot of available time. For example, if you’re working full time and studying during evenings and weekends, you won’t have time to review these extras, so you can skip them, but if you’re studying full-time, then you can use them.

Feedback guides explained

In the CPA Canada marking centers, including the CFE Marking Centre, exam papers are graded using a Performance Matrix. These are not the same as the PEP and Capstone feedback guides, but they are similar. As the Performance Matrix is not publicly available, the feedback guides are the next best resource we have to determine your grade.

The feedback guides are typically in Excel and show the marking scheme. They break down the case into assessment opportunities (AOs), which is a fancy way of saying the problems in the case you are expected to find and solve. For each of these AOs, there are minimum proficiency indicators (MPIs), which tell you what exactly you needed to write to achieve a specific grade. The following grades or “rankings” are available:

  • Not addressed (NA)
  • Not competence (NC)
  • Reaching competent (RC)
  • Competent (C)
  • Competent with distinction (CD)

To pass the CPA Canada exams, you need a mix of C and RC. Achieving a CD doesn’t give extra points in the exam so it’s best not to aim for that grade, instead use the extra time to firm up the other AOs.

The feedback guides across the PEP modules and Capstones are consistent, but there are slight differences. For example, if you are self-marking Day 2 of the CFE, there will be a different feedback guide based on your chosen role. CFE Day 1 also has its own unique feedback guide and grading scheme.

The biggest value of feedback guides is learning what exactly is required to get to RC/C. This will help you find what is unnecessary in your writing and should be removed. For example, in CFE Day 2, the “issue” statement is not in the feedback guides, this teaches us that it doesn’t give any marks, so it can be removed or kept brief.

Using CFE Day 2 RMZ as an example, let’s look at AO#1, which is about revenue recognition.

The gray area on the bottom tells us what is needed for each of the grades. For example, to get C, you needed yes on revenue recognition criteria + yes on conclusion + yes on adjustment/journal entry. These specific items (revenue recognition criteria, conclusion, adjustment/journal entry) are the MPIs that we spoke about earlier.

A student who achieved a C grade would have the feedback guide fill out like this:

You’ll notice there are “x” boxes on MPI#1 (“Discusses revenue recognition criteria”) in 3 discussed lines and 2 attempts. As per this feedback guide, to achieve a “discussed” or “Y” (Yes), at least 3 discussed X’s are needed, out of which 2 must be in Step 2 and Step 4. This specific student hit those areas, so they received a Y. Another student may have gotten “x” in Steps 1,3,4,5, but not in Step 2, in which case they would not receive “Y”, they would get “P” (Partial). The lesson here is that some areas in the technicals are more critical than others. For example, when you’re answering IFRS 15 rev. rec. AOs, put more emphasis on Steps 2 and 4 to ensure you get a discussed grade.

A student who achieved RC grade would have the feedback guide fill out like below:

So in a nutshell, the self-marking process is like this: Go through your case attempt, give yourself “X” for every line you attempted or discussed, then give yourself a final grade (ie, C, RC, NC, NA) based on the ranking scheme. Seems pretty easy, so why do students request external marking?

The complexity is in determining what exactly is attempted or discussed. This is a gray area. The exam markers go through extensive training to learn how to use professional judgement when evaluating cases. This is why Canadian CPA exams are subjective, which makes them harder to prepare for compared with other international accounting exams.

Here’s guidance to help you differentiate discussed and attempted:

  • For qual items, answering “so what”, “why” and “how” means discussed, while point form or generic writing is attempted. Generic means not using case specific information.
  • For quant calculations, writing assumptions, providing support for calculations, and having your calculations close to the correct answer means reasonably calculated, while missing these means attempted.

Additionally, each feedback guide will define what is “discussed” or “attempted” in that specific AO. For example, in the RMZ AO#1, discussed means having: “Technically correct discussion of the step, incorporating case facts as support. Reasonable supporting calculations are provided, where applicable.”

This means you must:

  • Use the correct Handbook criteria
  • Conclude as “met” or “not met”
  • Explain why you concluded as met/not met using case facts
  • Provide calculations where needed.

Steps to self-marking & debriefing

Here’s a step-by-step guide to self-marking and debriefing. First, open your case attempt (Word/Excel), the feedback guide, the case file and the case solution. You can have all these printed out or on your computer. If it’s on your computer, a good tip is to have at least 3 monitors so that you can put everything side by side. Experienced CPA Canada NMC (National Marking Centre) markers have up to 4 or 5 monitors so that they can quickly grade hundreds of cases.

Once you have the above materials ready and open, follow the steps below. 

  • Step 1: Determine if you addressed the AO: As a first step, you want to confirm if you identified the correct AOs. Any AO missed will result in NA. Scroll through the feedback guide, compare with your answer, and give yourself NA for areas that you missed. If you have any missed AOs, then open the original case file, read through it again and try to find the trigger for that AO. Once you find the trigger, you can either: 1) read the solution, or 2) try to answer this AO to the best of your ability. Your grade will still be NA, but this will let you practice your technical skills as opposed to just reading the solution. Quick tip on case writing: When you’re writing cases, separate each AO (with titles, bolding, underling) so that you and the CPA exam marker can identify your AOs in the lengthy memo.
  • Step 2: Mark the AO using a “step-down” approach: Reviewing the requirements (ie, MPIs) in the feedback guide, go top-to-bottom and give yourself a grade for each AO. The goal is to achieve RCs or Cs. If you have doubts on your score, always rank down as it’s likely the CPA markers will also score you at the lower level.
  • Step 3: Debrief with the solution: For every AO not ranked at C, you need to determine how your response can be improved to move up to the C level. This is a critical step in improving your technicals and case writing so that you can perform better on future cases. Compare your attempt for each specific AO with the solution and debrief the following in writing:
    • What you missed
    • What you wrote extra
    • Where did you have errors (technical or calculation)
    • Why did you have these errors
    • How can it be improved in the future
  • If you didn’t print your case and you’re self-marking on the computer, use “track changes” or a different colour font (i.e. red) to write yourself feedback. Your feedback can also include how much additional time you think you should have added to the AO to perform better. Here’s an example of feedback from a marker which you can replicate for yourself:
  • Step 4: Summarize and optimize: Once you have self-marked and debriefed all the AOs in the case, you will then create a summary of performance on the entire case. Write down the areas you did well, the areas you struggled with, and how exactly you will change your approach for the future AOs and cases. You can write this summary in a separate notebook, on the bottom of the feedback guide, on the original case file, or any other resource accessible to you. You can also create an Excel tracking file that tracks your performance on all cases. You should be reviewing the summary and the tracking file often so that you are reminding yourself of your successes, mistakes, and where to focus. For instance, you may discover that you’re constantly getting C in Management Accounting, but NA/NC in Taxation. This is a sign to spend extra study time on Taxation.

It’s important to note that there are different ways to self-mark and debrief, the above is one suggested approach that I find works well with most students. If you find that another methods works better for you, you should adapt and use that method. For example, if you find that you learn better by comparing your attempt with the sample strong answer, as opposed to the official solution, then use the sample strong answer instead.

Why you’re not getting C (Competent)

There are several reasons why you’re not getting a C , including:

  • Time management – Not enough time allocated to the AO. You might have understood the issue and how to solve it but did not have the time to provide your full analysis.
  • Lack of technical knowledge – You did not include the necessary criteria or formulas to achieve a C. Maybe you remembered the recognition criteria but missed discussing the definition criteria first.
  • Missing conclusion or recommendation – For pretty much all AOs, a conclusion on your analysis is required to achieve C. You need to recommend the best course of action for the user, whether this be an adjustment entry, to pursue an opportunity or not, to adjust their organization structure and so on.
  •  Not enough depth – Your response did not include enough explanations. This is the tricky part where a judgement is needed to determine if you got discussed (which is the same thing as depth) or attempted.
  • Lack of case facts – To achieve C, you need to not only need to provide the correct technical, but make your discussion specific to the case. For example, it’s not enough to say that the revenue recognition criteria is “MET” because the contract price is known. Instead, link it to the case to explain why/how (i.e. did the case provide you with the dollar amount of the exchange?). Using RMZ as an example, notice how the analysis links to the units and price, which are specific to the case:

Conclusion

Preparing for CPA Canada exams means actively self-marking and debriefing your practice cases. This process helps to improve your technicals and case writing skills, highlighting areas that need more focus. The feedback guides let you estimate your grade and learn why you didn’t score C. Find a self-marking and debriefing method that fits your learning style and ensure you do it immediately after practicing a case, without waiting for external feedback so that the insights and areas for improvement are fresh in your mind.

Extra resources

CPA Canada PEP and CFE professional case marking services are offered by the Gevorg CPA Team. Please contact us to learn more.