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Here’s Your CPA Exam Score Release Schedule For the First Half of 2021

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

For those who get a special thrill out of meticulously planning your future, you’ll be stoked to hear the CPA exam score release schedule for 2021 is out — for the first half of the year, anyway. Considering the current state of the world, it’s nice to have something solid you can kinda sorta rely on, insofar as The Powers That Be have done an excellent job sticking to their end of the bargain as best they can under chaotic and ever-changing conditions this year.

You’ll see it looks pretty similar to the second half of 2020 with seven score releases spread over the six-month period and an eighth scheduled for the following half of the year.

If you take your exam on/before: Your target score release date is:
January 23 February 9
February 15 February 23
March 10 March 18
March 31 April 9
April 23 May 11
May 16 May 25
June 8 June 16
June 30 July 13

via the AICPA

By the time we reach the end of this period, it will have been an entire year since the launch of continuous testing for the CPA exam. Hopefully South Carolina will join the other U.S. jurisdictions (and India!) offering this improved year-round testing by sometime next year. Michigan and Connecticut are also in the process of a necessary legislative transition in order to extend continuous testing to candidates in these jurisdictions; however, it’s expected that process will wrap shortly. When we last checked in on how states were preparing for the transition to continuous testing after a launch date was announced last March, 14 jurisdictions were still in the process of getting things in order.

Graphic via NASBA March 2020

Here’s the updated map as it appears on NASBA’s site as of the publication of this post:

Graphic via NASBA November 2020

Although coronavirus and the related Prometric closures earlier in the year certainly affected exam scheduling and availability, in a perfect world continuous testing offers up more than 75 testing dates throughout the year than candidates had available to them under the previous model.

Perhaps by 2021 the world will be a better, less cootie-infested place and candidates will be free to take advantage of the increased available dates. That’s all we can hope for really.

Related Posts

Q1 CPA Exam Pass Rates Worst in Three Years

Jeff shared some pretty depressing news on Another71 yesterday, it looks like pass rates are down. Way down:

Auditing and Attestation:
2009 Q1: 47.61%
2010 Q1: 46.86%
2011 Q1: 43.88%

AUD passing rates are down 7.8% over 2009 and 6.4% over 2010.

Business Environment and Concepts:
2009 Q1 46.23%
2010 Q1: 46.59%
2011 Q1: 42.32%

BEC passing rates are down 8.5% over 2009 and 9.2% over 2010.

Financial Accounting and Reporting:
2009 Q1 45.54%
2010 Q1: 44.95%
2011 Q1: 42.43%

FAR passing rates are down 6.8% over 2009 and 5.6% over 2010.

Regulation:
2009 Q1: 47.96%
2010 Q1: 49.00%
2011 Q1: 41.28%

REG passing rates are down 13.9% over 2009 and 15.8% over 2010.

What’s strange about this is that REG was the section least changed in CBT-e, leading us to wonder if some CPA exam candidates were, in fact, better at written communication than they thought. Taking these easy 10 points out of FAR, AUD and REG could have something to do with the first quarter’s awful scores, or it could be that candidates were not familiarized enough with the new format to do smashingly this time out.

One commenter on Another71 said “I took REG and felt like I studied for the wrong exam when I saw the questions,” which I’ve heard a lot about BEC but never about REG. In fact, for the last four years I have consistently told candidates that REG is the easiest for some candidates simply due to the cut-and-dry nature of tax and business law. It is not as large and all-encompassing as FAR, nor does it require all the extensive calculations. But this information could be game-changing.

The other strange fact here – and I have no specific numbers on this, going on my perception based on comments I have received from candidates who tested last quarter – is that for those who did pass, it seemed like many of them scored in the high 80s and 90s, as opposed to the usual large number of 75 – 79s like I usually see from passing candidates. Since I didn’t actually aggregate any real data, it’s hard to say whether or not this is an important point to mention. Perhaps I’ll try harder next quarter to get some actual numbers.

It’s also important to recall my conversation with the AICPA earlier this year when we discussed the possibility of changing the passing score in 2011. The exact statement was “In terms of the score reported to candidates, right now the passing score on that reported scale is a 75 and it’s going to remain there because we want to have consistency over time” from John Mattar, Director of Psychometrics and Research. What I took that to mean was that a 75 last year may or may not be the same as a 75 last year, which could explain why more candidates missed the mark this time around.

What do you think?

Here’s Your Open Thread For the Second CPA Exam Score Release of Q3 2019

Dear procrastinators, I have to tell you something. There are a mere six CPA exam […]

Ambitious Future CPA Wants to Shortcut CPA Exam Application

While I have not and will not ever sit for the CPA exam as we have already discussed ad nauseum, I still know a thing or two about how to get through it and – most importantly – how to buck the system. So if you have a CPA exam question, please get in touch. I haven’t missed an answer yet, must be doing something right.

Today’s question comes from an ambitious future CPA exam candidate interested in getting this nonsense over with as quickly as possible so he can move on with his life and pursue his dreams of a fantastic life in public accounting. I love candidates like this, they breeze right through the exam and leave it beaten and battered they run off to make tons of money.

Hi Adrienne,

I’m e-mailing in response to something you mentioned in a post you made last November about a CPA exam sign up short cut that involved “fake” applying to sign up for the exam before eligibility so that when you re-apply it goes through much quicker. My situation is I’m a dual degree major, I get my 150 credits this coming May, graduation date of 5/21/2012. I have a full-time big four job lined up and want to get the whole thing out of the way before I start in Sep/Oct, as I’ve heard I have a snowballs chance in hell of getting it done while working. While my state (Virginia) allows you to sit with 120 (which I have) you have to have an official bachelors degree, which they don’t give me until May. Since my spring semester is going to be very light, I was hoping to try your little trick and see if I can study during the spring and sign up really quickly in May and get one part out of the way. There would be 9 days left in May after I’m official. Is this doable? Or just dumb? Worst case scenario I just don’t have a summer and take all four in one period. Thanks.

Regards,

CPA Scheduler

The trick to which this candidate refers involves applying for the CPA exam before you are actually eligible in order to cut down on processing time when you do actually qualify. A re-application only takes a week or two (not including the time it takes to get your payment coupon and NTS), so you can start scheduling exams much sooner than you’d be able to if you waited to apply after you got your degree and met the other requirements. To my knowledge, this works in California for sure and the board will even tell you to do it if you talk to the right person. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in other jurisdictions as well, and if anyone in another state has done this, please let us know.

Anyway, even if this candidate does that, there’s no way he’s going to be able to get in two parts before the close of the April/May window.

The other option here would be to apply in a different state that doesn’t require a bachelors. Off the top of my head, I can’t name one but NASBA’s Accountancy Licensing Library should be able to help. Sit for the exam in that state, then just transfer either your exam scores or license over after the fact. It’s easier to transfer a license than scores but in order to be licensed in the state you applied to that isn’t your own, you’ll probably have to meet that state’s experience requirements, which might require experience under a licensed CPA in that state. Contact any state boards you are looking at and your own for more info straight from the source on how transferring works.

Long story short, even if you can only manage to get two – three parts done over the summer before you start work, you’ll be in great shape. Just the fact that you’re thinking about these things now tells me you will do just fine and will figure out where to make time to study even after you’re working. I wouldn’t recommend trying to knock out all 4 in one testing window, mostly because you don’t actually have to do that. If you think you’re up for it then by all means knock yourself out but there’s no reason to put yourself through that if you don’t have to.

Let us know how it goes and good luck! You’re one I won’t be worried about at all.

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