Practice like you play
Coaches are always telling athletes to approach practice as if it were a game. In the late 1990s, Roy Williams-the current UNC basketball coach and winner of the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship-gave a speech in which he talked about how one of his former players was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and was in awe at how hard Michael Jordan practiced, including during preseason workouts. Apparently, Jordan did everything at 100% full speed, which is probably why he’s considered the greatest basketball player ever. How YOU practice with CIA questions carries over much the same when it comes to your “game-time” exam performance.
Ted Griswold, the Incoming President for the North Central Florida IIA Chapter, suggested candidates study by taking quizzes straight through without stopping and without distraction. Based on his own experience, he mentioned the importance of not looking at the answer explanations until after all questions are answered. On the actual exam, candidates won’t get immediate feedback.
The Gleim CIA Review System forces you to commit to your answer choice before looking at answer explanations; thus, you are preparing under true exam conditions. We have found that people who take 20-question quizzes, either in our CIA Test Prep software or CIA Gleim Online, have a much higher pass rate if they simulate exam conditions as opposed to taking them at a coffee shop or in front of the TV where they could easily be distracted. These candidates are successful because they are used to answering a large chunk of questions without having some sort of external stimulation (i.e., distraction), while those who study with the TV on have had no practice in concentrating for such an extended period.
