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Certificate in Business Accounting, CIMA’s CGMA® Professional Qualification Objective Test and Case Study Exam pass rates

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Mark Foley shares four top tips on mastering the CIMA Case Study Exams The CIMA Case Study exams are the final capstone exams of each level of the CIMA Professional Qualification, which students must pass to gain the CGMA designation. We explore four tips to help you prepare for the exams.

Understand the three Case Study levels

Each Case Study exam lasts three hours, with multiple tasks of equal lengths. There is a natural progression to the levels — Operational, Management and Strategic — that simulate how work as a management accountant progresses. To reach the Case Study level, you will have already passed the Objective Tests, which focus on ensuring that you have acquired the knowledge and skills for each pillar. Case Study exams are more about interpreting data and require practical answers to practical questions and simulate real-life business scenarios.

Operational Case Study (OCS)

Focus — The short-term role of the finance officer and the implementation of decisions.

Skills you need to convey — How to work with others in the organisation and use appropriate data and technology to translate medium-term decisions into short-term actionable plans.

Stats — Three-hour exam containing four tasks related to the enterprise, performance, and financial pillars; allotted 45 minutes per task, each task has two to three sub-tasks.

Management Case Study (MCS)

Focus — The role of the finance manager involves translating long-term decisions into medium-term plans.

Skills you need to convey — How to use data and relevant technology to manage organisational and individual performance; allocate resources to implement decisions; monitor and report the implementation of decisions; prepare and interpret financial statements to show performance.

Strategic Case Study (SCS)

Focus — The role of the senior finance manager entails long-term strategic decision-making.

Skills you need to convey — How to support organisational leaders to craft strategy and evaluate and manage risks that might prevent the successful implementation of strategy, including sourcing financial resources; value the organisations.

Stats — Three-hour exam containing three tasks related to the enterprise, performance, and financial pillars; allotted one-hour per task, each task has two to three sub-tasks.

Understand the Case Study exam cycle

Understand the pre-seen materials

Pre-seen materials — known as ‘preseens’ — are background information about the fictitious organisation featured in the Case Study exam. This information forms the basis of the tasks you can expect to see in the exam. The preseen tells the story of the company, including the industry and context in which it operates, its financial statements, management accounts, markets and competitors. Preseens are usually 26–30 pages long. Key tips include:

• Be ready — Familiarise yourself with the company, industry and current events.

• Analyse — Perform an analysis such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) or political, economic, social and technological (PEST); review financial statements and reporting issues. The end of the preseen will contain live issues regarding what is happening in the industry. For instance, a new standard may have come out that will change reporting standards from the current year to the next and that the Case Study exam must address.

• Cross-reference with the blueprint — Being able to know what you can do is critical. Can you discuss finance options, dividend policy or evaluate digital strategies?

Tackling ‘I can’ from each of the core activities in each of the sections is necessary for success. For instance:

• I can identify relevant costs and benefits. • I can advise on the communication process. • I can recommend a dividend policy. • I can use appropriate technologies to gather data for costing purposes, from digital and other sources.

Have a broad syllabus knowledge and know your company intrinsically.

You become the person when you role-play the exam. Avoid prefabricated answers, as the exam will have details not included in the preseens. Your answers have to be relevant to the question.

Plan your exam approach Manage your time — If you can complete a section early, that time does not get applied to the next section. We suggest spending all of your allotted time within the section.

Keep your answers real and relevant — Remember, this is a role-based exam; identify one or more factors that might be relevant, then explain why that approach would be relevant. The more tangible details you provide, the higher you are likely to score. Do not offer irrelevant arguments for the sake of padding your answers. Aim for neat, discreet paragraphs.

Understand the scoring — People mark the exams, and the pass rate is 60%. Even though a scale is scored 80 out of 150, 60% is the pass rate.

The sub-tasks will be weighted differently. Each case will contain tasks from all five of the core activities:

• Evaluate opportunities to add value. • Implement senior management decisions. • Manage performance and costs to aid value creation. • Measure performance. • Manage internal and external stakeholder.

Scoring example

As the MCS Examiner said: “For a 12-mark answer, it might be possible to identify, say, four issues. A candidate who aims to write about four topics only has to score three marks for each to obtain full marks.”

You have all the tools you need to do well on the CIMA Case Study exams. From all of us at the Association, we wish you the very best for your next Case Study exam.

• The content of this article is based on a Case Study Masterclass webinar delivered by CIMA and BPP in November 2020

CIMA CURRENT ADVICE

Should you sit your case study exam online?

Many students do have a successful experience sitting their case study exams online. However, due to the less controlled environment of the online setting and the need for a continuous and regular internet connection, there are some students who have a disrupted exam experience. Test centres offer a reliable, controlled environment in which to take a test. Where possible, if you feel comfortable travelling to a test centre and feel at ease with the safety and hygiene procedures that have been made available in test centres as a result of the COVID19 pandemic, we recommend that you take your case study in a test centre.

Pearson Vue have more information on the measures that have been put in place.

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CIMA Exam Results and a Look at the Grading Mechanism

• By Stephanie Ng
• / 3 COMMENTS

Eager to find out when you will get the CIMA exam results, and how to interpret the performance report?

CIMA Exam Results for Objective Tests

Since the implementation of the new format, it is the easiest and fastest to get the CIMA objective test exam results — you get a “pass” or “fall” grade immediately after the computerized exam.

After 48 hours, you will receive an email, confirming that CIMA exam results breakdown is available in the MYCIMA portal.

CIMA Exam Results Breakdown

The results are shown in a table format, listing the subject areas in the objective test.

Each subject area is marked “proficient” or “not proficient”, with more detailed comments on how you can improve.

Here is a sample showing the candidate getting a “not proficient” in Financial Reporting:

Image courtesy of thecimastudent.com

If you’d like to have a glimpse at how the full performance report looks like, check out this official video from the CIMA:

A Note on CIMA Exam Pass Mark

The CIMA states that you need a 70% accuracy to pass each objective test. At the same time, they tell you the CIMA exam pass mark is 100.

Please understand that you are given a scaled score ranging from 0 to 150. The emphasis is that this score is scaled, meaning that you cannot figure out your percentage accuracy by a straight formula. In fact, if you try to divide 100 by 150, you get 66.7% instead of 70%.

The scaling is a way for CIMA to balance the more difficult questions with the easier questions . The system weighs difficult questions slightly more, such that students who got a few more difficult questions wrong would still score the same as those getting more easier questions right.

CIMA Case Study Results

The questions in case study exams are more complex. Human graders instead of computers mark this exam, and therefore, we need to wait for approximately 5 weeks after the end of the testing window to get the results.

Similar to the objective test, the performance report is available on the MyCIMA portal, and is presented in the form of a table. We will see “Strong”, “Moderate” or “Fail” in each of the 5 competencies.

In this example, the table is showing “Moderate” under technical skills is marked “Moderate”, with details on areas of improvement:

For those who would like to know the technical side of grading, here is a detailed explanation by the CIMA:

A Note on CIMA Case Study Pass Mark

The pass mark for case study is 80, out of a scaled score of 0 to 150. The candidate must also score a “Moderate” or “Strong” across all competencies in order to pass the case study exam. This is to ensure that the candidate is not weak in a particular area and that he/she is “business ready”.

Even if you pass, take a look at the performance report for rooms of improvement. This will only help you in the next CIMA case study exam.

Is This helpful?

I hope the discussion on CIMA exam grading and results is helpful in preparing psychologically for this exam. If you have any questions, please drop a note in the comment section. Thank you and good luck!

For Your Further Reading

• Frequently asked questions on the CIMA exam
• CIMA exam historical pass rates

About the Author Stephanie Ng

I am the author of How to Pass The CPA Exam (published by Wiley) and the publisher of this and several accounting professional exam prep sites.

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CIMA Student Series: Management Case Study (MCS)

Here Louise McAndrew discusses the challenges she faced in passing her CIMA MCS exam, as well as offering some great advice to students yet to take the exam.

Louise McAndrew is a Strategic level CIMA student with just P3, F3 and the SCS left to study before becoming fully-qualified. Louise has mainly worked in not for profit organisations and is currently a Finance Officer for a charity in the social care sector (see her Linkedin profile here ). She is AAT-qualified but took a break from studying to have a family. Louise has two children, one of secondary school age and one of primary school age.

The Management Case Study had higher pass rates than the OCS and SCS in 2018. That doesn't mean it's an easy exam though. Here Louise McAndrew discusses the challenges she faced in passing her MCS exam, as well as offering some great advice to students yet to take the exam.

When did you take the MCS exam and how did you get on? Was it your first attempt?

I took the MCS in August 2018 and passed with a pass mark of 95. It was a huge relief as it was my third attempt having failed the first two times by just a couple of marks. The results came out on my birthday too so it was a great way to start the day!

I made my first attempt at the exam in November 2017 but due to a heavy workload in my office (new financial year budgeting), I couldn’t resit until May 2018 and then I passed the August 2018 case study.

How long did you spend preparing for the MCS paper (how many weeks/months and how many hours on average per week)?

As soon as the pre-seen material came out I started working through it. Prior to that I had started looking through past papers to get an idea of the kind of answers CIMA were looking for in the MCS. I hadn’t done this before for the previous two attempts and can honestly say that was probably what contributed to me failing.

I work full-time and have a family so I was squeezing revision in wherever possible. I was probably fitting in around 10-12 hours per week. I was actually on a family holiday the week before the exam so I brought my books with me to study on the beach!

Did you take a course or did you opt for self-study?

I self-studied as I find it difficult to commit to a course with work and family commitments. But I did purchase case study materials from Astranti and VIVA to help me with the revision.

Is it your intention to continue with self-study for the remainder of your studies? Would you recommend this approach to others?

I only have 3 exams left so I’ll carry on with self-study. I don’t really have an opinion in terms of recommending self-study. For me it’s the only viable option but for others they may prefer a classroom environment. I’m on a Facebook group called the CIMA UK Student Group which has a whole CIMA community in there so I’d recommend anyone studying to join as there’s lots of help and encouragement on there.

What (if anything), did you find especially difficult with the MCS in relation to your preparation? e.g. balancing personal life with study, balancing work with study, the material was dull etc?

This particular case study was pretty dull. It was about a camera company and there was quite a lot of unnecessary information about camera components. I needed to decipher what information was actually relevant to what might be asked.

What (if anything), did you find especially difficult with the MCS in relation to the exam day? e.g. time management, nerves etc?

I was incredibly nervous on the day as I didn’t want to fail again. Once the exam got going though, my nerves calmed and I was able to focus on answering the questions. I didn’t run out of time on any of the questions as I felt more prepared this time.

Was there an area of the Management syllabus that you liked more than others?

I preferred the E2 unit and found it was my strongest area. At operational level I preferred F1 but I studied operational level on the old written syllabus. Since it’s moved to computer based assessments I have preferred the Enterprise subjects as they’ve been easier to grasp.

Was there an area of the Management syllabus that you liked less than others?

I found the F2 and P2 units quite tough and when studying for the MCS those were the units I particularly needed to concentrate on. Whilst I was able to confidently calculate ratios, I needed to be able to explain how the ratios would be affected by changes in equity and debt etc.

Was there a particular area of either P2 or F2 you found tougher?

I couldn’t get my head around WACC calculations so it was my weakest area. Even when studying the case study I really needed to revise its meaning as I knew it was likely to be tested. It was a question on one of the case studies I failed and I don’t think I answered it very well.

Do you have any tips for other students about to sit the MCS?

I would definitely say look back on past papers. It gives you a really good idea of what CIMA are looking for in their answers. Also, if you’re not able to commit to a course then it’s definitely worth buying case study materials such as pre-seen analysis, strategic analysis, Key Issues and case study mock exams as they are always catered specifically for the case study being tested.

Have you used VIVA’s case study materials? If so, how did you find the materials?

I had been using Astranti but I found their mock exams to be too long-winded to follow. Other people recommended VIVA so I bought their Case Study materials and found them really helpful.

Do you have any final comments/recommendations/feelings/thoughts about your MCS experience?

The case studies are just as tough as the objective tests so I would say if you don’t pass first time then keep going. It will be worth it when you pass.

‍ You might want to explore and learn more about our CIMA MCS Course . You can also check out our free webinars for the MCS.

Like to explore how VIVA can help you with your CIMA studies?

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CIMA Management Case Study

Theory revision series

In our post-exam surveys after almost every management case study exam, students tell us they wish they’d spent MORE time revising the theory from their E2, F2 and P2 exams.

For many students, it’s been months (if not years) between them passing their objective test exams and attempting the case study – a lot of time for their knowledge to slip!

And yet, to revise all three subjects in full is nigh on impossible when you also have to understand the pre-seen and master your case study technique too.

Our aim is to save you time and make your life easier!  We have examined the last 8 years of case studies to work out what theory tends to come up regularly and what rarely comes up at all, and summarised all the key examinable topics in a clear and simple way in our revision texts and videos.

Our MCS theory revision series: + Covers all the most important theory that you need to know for the case study exams + Converts the key content from over 1,200 pages of syllabus study texts into just 453 pages + Condenses the theory into manageable chunks, with around 26 hours of video to watch + Gives you the platform to successfully apply the syllabus theory to the pre-seen company and the un-seen exam scenarios

Find out exactly what’s covered and take a look at our samples from the theory revision series below.

“I couldn’t recommend Astranti enough. I used them throughout my case study preparations and found their materials prepared me so well for the exams, meaning I was confident in all aspects from exam technique to theory to case study analysis.”

CIMA Case Study Student , January 2024

“I have completed CIMA’s MCS and SCS with Astranti and have passed them both at first attempt. Great Customer Service, Course Structure is Excellent. Mocks and Theory Revision Kits are the best feature of the course.”

CIMA Qualified , April 2022

Learn what it takes to pass

Focus on the key topics you’re most likely to be tested on

Refresh your syllabus knowledge with help from our tutors

Clear and simple examples bring each topic to life

Reduce revision time

Avoid rereading the full E2, F2 and P2 study texts

Save yourself time and focus on the most important topics

Revise from one place, using our study texts or videos

Switch up your learning

Watch the videos, download the audio or print the study texts

Cement your knowledge in the way that suits you

Content is split into manageable chunks to make things easier

Take a look for yourself…

Part 1 – Key theory from CIMA E2

Part 1 - What's covered?

• Chapter 1: The elements of business models
• Chapter 2: Management and leadership
• Chapter 3: Culture and conflict
• Chapter 4: The management of groups
• Chapter 5: Project management

Total video running time: 8 hours

Part 2 – Key theory from CIMA F2

Part 2 - What's covered?

• Chapter 1: Long-term finance
• Chapter 2: Group accounts
• Chapter 3: Foreign currency transactions
• Chapter 4: IFRS 15 revenue
• Chapter 5: IFRS 38 intangible assets
• Chapter 6: Provisions and contingencies

Total video running time: 9 hours

Part 3 – Key theory from CIMA P2

Part 3 - What's covered?

• Chapter 1: Investment appraisal
• Chapter 2: Activity based management
• Chapter 3: Cost planning
• Chapter 4: Cost management
• Chapter 5: Product life cycle and pricing strategies
• Chapter 6: Risk management
• Chapter 7: Performance evaluation
• Chapter 8: Performance measurement in responsibility centres
• Chapter 9: Transfer pricing

Total video running time: 9.5 hours

What our students have to say…

Please see our  testimonials page  for our latest student reviews. Here are a couple of examples:

“I have completed CIMA’s MCS and SCS with Astranti and have passed them both at first attempt.

Great Customer Service, Course Structure is Excellent. Mocks and Theory Revision Kits are the best feature of the course.”

“I have purchased the theory revision series for Management Case Study and now Strategic. Very informative and provides useful scenarios you can expect to see in the exams as well as gaining an understanding of how to build application marks in case studies.

I passed MCS first time with the help of this, so I’ve purchased in again for SCS. Fingers crossed! Would highly recommend this revision series. Thank you!”

Passed CIMA MCS , October 2021

Purchase the theory revision series

The Theory Revision Series is also part of our MCS Premium Course. Head to the course page to find out more.

MCS Theory Revision Series £165

To qualify for the pass guarantee you need to ensure you complete ALL of the following steps. Failure to complete all of these steps will mean you will not qualify.

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How to pass the Operational Case Study

As you may already know, Operational Case Study (OCS) is the first case study under CIMA's CGMA professional qualification and is designed to test your ability to apply the technical knowledge you’ve learnt from E1, P1 and F1.