Time and consistency
Four or five hours after work are hard to protect. Miss a night, and now you’re behind. The cycle of work, study, sleep, repeat can make the next session something you dread.
PUTTING IN THE TIME. STILL NOT GETTING IT?
That 30-minute lecture
just took two hours.
You watched it. Rewatched it. Read the chapter.
So why are the practice questions still confusing?
The questions are what matter on test day. But in the study routine you’ve been following, they come last.
THE PLAN30 min
Watch the lecture
PAUSE. REWIND. REWATCH.2+ hrs
Then read the chapter
FINALLY, THE QUESTIONSStill stuck?
“I thought I understood this.”
And there’s a second problem: if you cover each topic once, then leave it until final review, you’ve only covered it twice—weeks apart.
Let’s walk through why—and what to change ↓A FAILED ATTEMPT DOESN’T DEFINE YOUR ABILITY
Capable people struggle
with these exams.
You’ve already made it through demanding coursework. You’re putting in the hours. A disappointing score can still leave you wondering, “Am I just not cut out for this?”
Look at the pass rates before you turn that frustration on yourself. In 2025, fewer than half of AUD and FAR exam attempts earned a passing score.
Before you question your ability, examine your study process.
Those numbers show how difficult these exams are. Now let’s look at why a familiar lecture-first routine can leave you working hard without feeling ready.
2025 CPA EXAM PASS RATES
48.21%AUD
42.12%FAR
Percentage of exam attempts passed, not individual candidates. Rates vary by section.
Source: AICPA ↗THE LECTURE TRAP
Understanding the explanation
isn’t the same as solving it.
You press play, zone out, rewind, and watch it again. Then you read and highlight the chapter. By the time you attempt the questions, a substantial part of your study day is gone—and you can still be unsure where to begin.
There’s a missing connection: textbook context is how a concept is explained in a lecture or chapter. Question context is how you recognize and apply it inside a multiple-choice question or simulation.
On test day, no one explains the concept first. You have to identify what’s being asked, pick out the relevant information, and solve it yourself.
Following someone else’s explanation and answering on your own are different skills.
A lecture can help. But your routine needs to turn that explanation into something you can actually do.
And while you’re spending hours on each new topic, what’s happening to the topics you studied last week?
FOLLOWING AN EXPLANATION“That makes sense.”
Someone else connects the dots.
ANSWERING ON YOUR OWN“Here’s how I solve it.”
You connect the dots in test-day context.
THE RETENTION GAP
You study it once.
Then don’t see it for weeks.
Every day brings more dense, technical material. You’re trying to understand new topics while holding onto everything you’ve already covered.
If your plan is to work through each lesson once and revisit it only during final review, each topic effectively gets two passes: the first time you learn it, and the time you try to remember it several weeks later.
After six to eight weeks of lessons, you reach final review and discover how much has become unfamiliar. Now you’re trying to relearn it all in a week or two—or pushing the exam back.
The problem isn’t just learning the material. It’s keeping it available when you need it.
01First lesson“I understand it.”
WEEKS OF OTHER TOPICSNo planned return to this topic
02Final review“Why can’t I remember this?”
THREE PROBLEMS, ONE PROCESS
Time. Overwhelm. Retention.
You may recognize one of these problems. You may be dealing with all three at the same time.
Overload and understanding
A review course gives you a library of information. You still need a strategic way to learn it. A completed lesson or progress indicator doesn’t, by itself, demonstrate that you can answer the questions.
Retention
Even consistent, productive sessions can leave you short on test day if you forget the earlier material. New understanding needs reinforcement.
Adding more effort to the same process doesn’t necessarily address what’s going wrong inside it.
WHY “DO MORE” MAY NOT FIX IT
More hours. Another course.
Another attempt. Same problem?
When the process isn’t working, it’s natural to look for more help. Each option can be useful—but ask whether it addresses the reason you’re struggling.
More time or another exam attempt
You may eventually get there. But repeating the same approach can cost more time, exam fees, and energy without solving the underlying issue.
A tutor or study group
Another explanation can clarify a concept. The next step still has to be you practicing and solving the questions yourself. Conversation alone isn’t a substitute for that.
Supplements or a cram course
Useful reinforcement works best as part of an effective routine. It can’t do all the work of repairing an unfocused main study process.
A different review course
If how you’re studying is the issue, buying another library of material can add cost and overwhelm. Before replacing your course, examine how you’re using it.
The question to solve: how do you learn, understand, and retain each topic—repeatably?
Because the cost can go far beyond the next exam fee. It can mean months—or years—longer in study mode, promotions or earnings put on hold, and more evenings your family doesn’t get back. For some candidates, repeated frustration turns into giving up on getting licensed.
You’re working toward a career and a life beyond these exams. Your study plan should help you move toward them.
WORK BACKWARD FROM TEST DAY
Build the skills
the exam actually tests.
On test day, you need to answer multiple-choice questions and task-based simulations. Working backward from that, your study time should develop the skills involved in doing those things.
That means learning to decipher what’s being asked, work through the problem, reverse-engineer explanations, and make sense of the underlying concept.
This is the SuperfastCPA philosophy: pair active study methods with deliberate strategies and a disciplined daily and weekly routine.
Spending less time sitting in front of your review course can sound too good to be true. The part that makes the approach work is a willingness to study differently—and to follow through consistently.
Here’s how we turn that philosophy into a process you can use.
HI, I’M NATE HANSEN, FOUNDER OF SUPERFASTCPA
I passed all four sections
in three months.
While working full time.
That experience is the origin of the SuperfastCPA method. I built my preparation around an approach I could repeat while holding down a full-time job: focused practice, a consistent routine, and returning to the material throughout the day.
That’s what I want to show you here—how to use your review course with a clear purpose each time you sit down, and how to keep learning between your main sessions.
For 12 years, I’ve been helping CPA candidates put this approach into practice. Thousands of member messages and roughly 200 customer interviews have given us a detailed look at how people use it around real jobs, families, and busy lives.
I turned the strategies into a course so you can learn the process and apply it to your own preparation.
WHERE THE METHOD STARTED4 sections.
3 months.
A full-time job.
3 months.
A full-time job.
Nate Hansen
Founder, SuperfastCPA
THE PROCESS BEHIND THE TOOLS
Meet Study Process Pro.
Study Process Pro is our video course for learning how to approach the different parts of CPA preparation as one connected system.
It teaches you how to work through new topics, understand them in question context, capture difficult concepts, and keep earlier material in your routine as the weeks go by.
You apply the strategies inside the review course you already own—Becker, UWorld/Roger, Gleim, NINJA, or another main course.
SuperfastCPA supplies the process and supplemental study tools. Your main review course supplies the exam-preparation material you’ll practice with.
The first part of that process is protecting a session you can actually complete consistently.
Keep your review course. Learn a more deliberate way to use it.
START WITH CONSISTENCY
Finish your main session
before your day takes over.
If your plan requires three to five uninterrupted hours, evenings can feel like the only option. But that puts studying in direct competition with fatigue, family, friends, and everything that comes up after work.
Miss a four-hour session and the catch-up plan can become eight hours the next day. A demanding plan quickly becomes an unrealistic one.
The Study Process Pro routine starts with a focused two-hour main session in the morning. Use active study strategies rather than spending the session passively working through every lecture and chapter.
Getting the main session done early gives it a protected place in your day. You can start work with it already behind you, instead of dreading it all afternoon.
Can you study at another time? Yes. The important part is consistently protecting focused time. Mornings are recommended because fewer demands have had a chance to take over.
But the two-hour session isn’t the whole routine. The next part makes use of time that usually disappears in small pieces.
MAKE THE SMALL MOMENTS COUNT
Your phone becomes
a way to keep reviewing.
Open your phone’s screen-time report. How much time is already going to scrolling and checking apps? If it shows two or three hours a day, imagine redirecting even part of that toward passing your exams.
You don’t have to find another uninterrupted block of time. Start with the moments you already have: waiting for a meeting, standing in line, or taking a short break.
Listen to Audio Notes while driving or walking your dog. Take a five-question quiz when a few minutes open up. Read Review Notes or use Follow-Along Notes when you can focus on the screen.
The goal is to distribute additional review across your day, instead of needing to squeeze everything into one long session after work.
That creates room to relax and recharge in the evening—and makes the routine easier to keep coming back to.
Two hours means your main uninterrupted session. Mini sessions add study time beyond that; this is not a promise that two total hours will be enough for every candidate.
Now let’s look at what you actually do during those sessions.
MORNING2-hour main sessionFocused practice in your review course
THROUGHOUT THE DAY3–5 minute opportunitiesNotes, audio, follow-along notes & quizzes
EVENINGSpace for the rest of your lifeA routine designed to leave room to recharge
Build a routine that fits your day.
Get the process and mobile tools together in the Total Bundle.
STRATEGY ONE
Plant the seeds.
Then give them a chance to grow.
If you plant a garden, you don’t leave it alone for several weeks and expect everything to grow properly. You return to it. Water it. Pull out weeds. Give it attention.
Your first pass through a CPA topic works the same way. Using the Study Process Pro strategies, you learn the essential ideas—the “80/20”—directly in question context.
You are establishing an understanding to build on. You don’t need to get trapped trying to perfect every detail before moving forward.
But moving forward doesn’t mean abandoning the topic. You will return to it repeatedly so your understanding has opportunities to deepen.
That’s why planting the seeds and ongoing re-review are inseparable parts of the process.
STRATEGY TWO
Stop saving review
for the end.
The final 30 minutes of your two-hour main session are dedicated to a cumulative re-review set. Study Process Pro shows you how to set this up using your main review course.
Instead of allowing previous topics to disappear, you keep pulling them back into your study sessions. Then your mini sessions provide another layer of review throughout the day.
Compare two passes with 100+ encounters with each topic. If you consistently complete Perfect Days in the app throughout your preparation, you can revisit each topic a hundred times or more instead of leaving it untouched until final review.
A Perfect Day includes 10 five-question quizzes, 20 minutes of Review Notes, 30 minutes of Audio Notes, and 15 minutes of Follow-Along Notes. Those are repeated opportunities to recognize, recall, and apply the material alongside your main study session.
The 100+ comparison describes cumulative exposure across consistent preparation—not 100 reviews of every topic in one day or a guaranteed count over a fixed number of weeks.
Think about learning a language. Reading each lesson once doesn’t make you fluent. You have to keep using the words and structures until they become familiar and useful. CPA topics also need repeated application.
You want earlier material to become more familiar as test day approaches—not less.
A TWO-PASS PLAN2 passes
Learn → weeks pass → Relearn
CONSISTENT PERFECT DAYS + MAIN STUDY100+ encounters
Cumulative exposure depends on consistent use and preparation length.With each topic across preparation
Learn → Practice → Revisit
New topic + earlier topics
Practice → Revisit → Refine
STRATEGY THREE
When it finally clicks,
capture the understanding.
You’ve spent time working through a difficult concept. Suddenly you see why it works. That breakthrough feels obvious in the moment—but it can be hard to reconstruct a week later.
So when you make that connection, capture it in your own words. Then review it regularly alongside your question practice.
This isn’t about copying the whole textbook or making a flashcard for every sentence. Study Process Pro explains which types of information deserve this treatment and which don’t.
You learn how to make sense of a difficult topic in test-day context, how to check your own understanding, and how to record the insight in a form you can revisit.
Those three strategies form the core. The next layer addresses the details around exam day.
YOUR OWN WORDS
“What made this click?”
- What is the question really asking?
- Why does this approach work?
- What was I missing before?
- How will I recognize it next time?
Capture the insight. Come back to it.
THE DETAILS AROUND THE EXAM
Plan the final 48 hours.
Don’t just hope they work out.
Study Process Pro also covers what I call “score shifters”: practical choices around your preparation that can affect how well you’re able to use what you’ve learned.
One example is scheduling. If you work Monday through Friday, a Monday exam may let you use Saturday and Sunday for focused final review immediately beforehand.
Compare that with taking an exam midweek and trying to squeeze your final review into the evenings after two full workdays. The available study conditions can be very different.
The point isn’t that one weekday guarantees a better score. It’s to plan your exam and final review around the focused time you can realistically protect.
The course includes a module on how to use those final 48 hours, along with strategies for simulations, retakes, and other parts of the process.
Put the pieces together, and each one supports the others.
WHY THE PIECES WORK TOGETHER
A routine with a reason
behind every part.
Consistency gets you to the desk.
A protected main session keeps preparation from depending on whatever energy is left at night.
Active practice makes the session useful.
You spend time learning to answer the kinds of questions you’ll face on test day.
Re-review keeps previous topics in play.
Cumulative sets, captured insights, and mobile tools create repeated opportunities to practice.
It takes discipline. It also gives that discipline a clear direction. You know what to do when you sit down, what to do when something doesn’t make sense, and how to keep improving the material you’ve already covered.
That’s the process our members have used across very different schedules and starting points.
Put the complete process to work.
Study Process Pro + all-section study tools. $997 together; $1,394 purchased separately.
REAL USERS. REAL RESULTS.
Working parents. Career changers.
Candidates starting over.
Our members have included students still finishing school, people returning decades after graduation, working parents, and candidates who had already failed multiple attempts.
Over 12 years, we’ve received thousands of member messages and recorded roughly 200 customer interviews for the SuperfastCPA podcast. Members have included attorneys, a CIA agent, and a U.S. Marshal, alongside accountants, parents, and career changers.
Their circumstances differ. The common thread is finding a routine they can follow and applying the strategies consistently.
Start with Carson and Anne’s experiences, then explore the original messages below. You can pause the strip and open any screenshot to see the full story.
“I worked full-time through all four exams so I would take those 5 question quizzes throughout the day and listen to the audio lectures during my everyday commute. Passed all 4 exams on my first try…”
“Your study schedule (2 hours every morning) combined with the quizzes and notes was the game changer, Nate.”
Individual customer experiences, not a guarantee of your result. Passing requires consistent study and practice.
FROM OUR MEMBERS’ INBOXES & FORUM
More stories from our members
50 member stories. Select a screenshot to read it. Individual experiences vary.
THE PROCESS + THE TOOLS
Here’s what SuperfastCPA
puts in your hands.
Study Process Pro: learn what to do.
The course teaches the connected system: your main session, learning new material, ongoing re-review, capturing understanding, and the more specific strategies around exam day. Apply it to the review course you already have.
The Study Tools: make review easier to do.
- Review Notes: revisit simplified explanations of important concepts.
- Audio Notes: review while driving or walking your dog.
- Follow-Along Notes: read along while listening.
- Mini quizzes: short, five-question sets designed for mobile practice, with simplified questions you can work through on the go.
The Total Bundle includes both Study Process Pro and lifetime study-tool access for all exam sections. The course and Study Tools Bundle are also available separately.
But access alone isn’t the transformation. Implementing the process is.
WATCHING IS THE START
You don’t learn to juggle
just by watching a video.
Imagine buying a course on juggling. The instructor explains the routine and demonstrates the drills. It all makes sense.
You now understand what to practice. But you still have to pick up the balls, try the drills, drop them, adjust, and practice again before you can actually juggle.
Study Process Pro works the same way. Watching the videos gives you the framework. Applying the strategies develops your skills.
There may be moments when you feel stuck or confused. Work through them using the process rather than expecting the purchase itself to solve the problem.
Learn the routine. Practice it consistently. Evaluate how your studying changes.
OUR 60-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE
Give the process
a real opportunity to work.
The guarantee asks you to take two steps:
- Watch the Study Process Pro videos all the way through so you understand the strategies and how the routine fits together.
- Implement the strategies and use the study tools for 30 days so you can evaluate the process through your own experience.
If you’re not seeing the improvement described, contact support within the 60-day guarantee period to request a refund.
This is an implementation-based guarantee, not a promise of a particular score or an automatic pass.
If you’re ready to bring the discipline, here’s how to get the process and tools.
MAKE YOUR NEXT STUDY SESSION DIFFERENT
Get the complete system.
The Total Bundle brings Study Process Pro and all the study tools together.
OUR RECOMMENDATION
SuperfastCPA Total Bundle
- Study Process Pro course and study strategies
- Review Notes and Audio Notes
- Follow-Along Notes and mini quizzes
- Lifetime study-tool access for all exam sections
- 60-day money-back guarantee with implementation requirements
$1,394 purchased separately Save $397 with the bundle
$997One-time payment
Get the Total Bundle — $997 ↗Start with Study Process Pro after you receive your login details.
Does SuperfastCPA replace my review course?
SuperfastCPA works alongside your main review course. Use Study Process Pro to guide how you learn and practice in that course, and use our mobile study tools for additional review. The approach can be applied with Becker, UWorld/Roger, Gleim, NINJA, or another main review course.
Is it really only two hours a day?
The routine centers on a focused two-hour main session, plus short review sessions throughout the day using the notes, audio, follow-along notes, and mini quizzes. Two hours refers to your main uninterrupted session, not a cap on total study time. Your preparation needs and schedule may vary.
Do I have to study in the morning?
Mornings are recommended because you can protect your study time before work and other commitments begin. Another time can work if you can consistently protect it and study with focus.
What if I have already failed an exam?
Start by looking at your process: consistency, how you practice, and how you revisit earlier material. Study Process Pro includes strategies for retakes as well as new material, helping you approach your next attempt with a more deliberate plan.
Should I stop watching every lecture?
The approach prioritizes active work with questions and explanations. Use lectures or other resources strategically when you need help understanding a topic, rather than treating every video as a prerequisite to attempting questions.
What does the Total Bundle include?
The Study Process Pro course and lifetime access to the study tools for all exam sections: Review Notes, Audio Notes, Follow-Along Notes, and mini quizzes. You get the process and the tools to help you implement it.
How does the 60-day money-back guarantee work?
Watch the Study Process Pro videos all the way through, then implement the strategies and use the study tools for 30 days. If you are not seeing the improvement described, contact support within the 60-day guarantee period to request a refund. The guarantee requires implementation; it is not a promise of a particular exam score.
What happens after I purchase?
You will receive login details by email. Start by watching Study Process Pro, then set up your main study session and mobile review routine. Your tools are available through the SuperfastCPA companion app for iPhone and Android.
A CLEAR PLAN. A CONSISTENT ROUTINE.
You bring the discipline.
We’ll show you the process.
Give your study time a structure you can repeat—and give yourself a path forward.
Get started with SuperfastCPA ↑