Preparing for a CII Exam Re-Sit

Facing an exam re-sit can feel disheartening, but it’s a common part of the journey toward CII qualification. Rather than dwelling on the setback, it’s crucial to reflect on what went wrong and develop a more focused study plan for the next attempt. This article offers practical strategies to help you approach your re-sit with confidence and a renewed sense of determination.

This article is correct as at 1 October 2024.

Preparing for an Exam Re-Sit

It great to hear of and celebrate exam success, but it’s equally important to us that we can help and encourage candidates who didn’t get a pass. CII exams are challenging, and it can be difficult to identify what went wrong or how to approach the exam differently the next time around, so we wanted to offer some tips and strategies to help you succeed on your re-sit.

Learn from your experience

In all walks of life, it’s important to learn from our experiences to improve, and exams are no different. Understanding why you didn’t pass is important. While it could simply be down to lack of revision, it’s often a combination of a number of smaller factors. Once you’ve had time to process the outcome, reflecting productively on what went wrong will help you focus your revision more effectively. This might involve factoring in more study time, improving exam technique, spending more time practising mock papers under exam conditions, or simply being more organised on exam day so you enter the exam in a better frame of mind.

Study the whole syllabus

With any exam, there will be an element of luck with the specific questions that come up, so we always advise candidates to revise the entire syllabus. Just because you need 60% to pass an exam doesn’t mean you only need to revise 60% of the syllabus. Yes, there are areas of the study text that could be examined more heavily than others, and for some exams, the CII provides guidance on how many questions candidates can expect per learning outcomes. More in-depth study in these areas is a productive strategy, but you will still want to be familiar with the remaining syllabus.

No Room for Complacency in the Exam Hall

We often hear of candidates that think they won’t need to revise for R01 (regulation) because they have 10+ years of experience working in compliance, or R03 (taxation) because they have an accountancy background, but this is simply not the case. These exams are designed to cover broad ranges of topics, and unless you are writing the syllabus for the CII, the chances of being able to pass with no revision at all are practically zero. Over-estimating your knowledge and underestimating the exam is a not a good equation for exam success.

An Effective Study Timetable

One of the most common reasons for not passing an exam is due to lack of revision, which is often down to candidates setting themselves unrealistic timescales.

For re-sits, you should be better equipped to understand the time you’ll need to spend on each area of study. We suggest you estimate how much time each topic or task will take and allocate study blocks accordingly. Be realistic about how much you can accomplish in each session, also be realistic about the amount of time you can afford to spend revising each week and work backwards from there.

Allowing enough time for revision is key to success and an effective timetable is the best way to ensure you achieve this.

Effort and Commitment

This one is hard to talk about, but facts are facts. If you don’t put in enough effort or the right amount of commitment to your study, your chances of passing are low. Studying towards CII exams is hard work, sometimes boring (sorry, but true!), and takes sacrifice. The CII provides an estimated number of hours they expect a person will need to study on average to sit the exam – this is an average figure. Whilst someone might need a lot less time if they are already a subject expert, someone newer to the topic might need significantly longer. And that’s ok – take as much time as you need to get your knowledge up to scratch before you sit the exam. Sitting it before you know you are ready will only add more stress and pressure.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts—extensive revision, using all available resources—you still might not get that pass. That’s okay. It’s ok to have to re-sit – most people do. Learn from your mistakes and put every effort into passing the re-sit. The most important thing is that you don’t stop trying.