u/dtdt66

I signed up for CIMA Traditional Route on 14 Feb 2026 and:

-Did E1 on 28 Feb 2026 (113/150)

-Did F1 on 14 Mar 2026 (125/150)

-Did P1 on 4 Apr 2026 (113/150)

I’m 27 this year as a Senior Finance Executive working in-house in a SME. During work hour, I tend to have quite a bit of down-time (I secretly automated half of my day to day work) and I will use this time to study while at work.

My way of study is simple: brute forcing all the mocks I could find, I didn’t even read the study text at all (waste of money imo).Also, the only resources that I’ve paid are Kaplan Mock, Study Text and CIMA Aptitude.

I watched some of the lectures on OpenTuition but I can’t really focus. So I chose to just keep spamming mocks and ask AI to explain for me.

Below will be the resources/mocks that I used for each test:

E1

- Accowtancy (120 questions)

- Astranti (60 questions)

- Kaplan Mocks (250 questions)

Total: ~430 questions

F1

- Accowtancy (120 questions)

- Astranti (60 questions)

- Kaplan Mocks (250 questions)

- Viva (60 questions)

- This is the only exam I have fully watched all the lecture videos on OpenTuition, this lecturer is the only one among the other 2 that could make me listen.

Total: ~490 questions

P1

- Accowtancy mocks (120 questions)

- Accowtancy tutorial questions (~200 questions for all topic?)

- Astranti (60 questions)

- Viva (60 questions)

- Kaplan Mocks (250 questions)

- CIMA Aptitude 1&2 Test yourself (979 questions)

- CIMA Aptitude 1&2 Mock (120 questions)

- PearsonVue (28 questions)

Total: ~1817 questions

All these numbers are actually underestimated already, I’ve been using AI to generate more questions but it can’t be traced. For me, P1 is by far the hardest, I just did my OCS today and P1 isn’t even close.

Honestly, I would say my way of studying isn’t worth it at all. I’m doing this because I’m self funding. I will still be doing this all the way until I finish CIMA, no matter how many more exams it has, I won’t stop. If you have the money I would highly suggest to either go for FLP or get a tuition provider.

I’m sitting for May OCS and the result will only be released on June 25th which means I have total of eight weeks to prepare for my level 2 papers.

I would prefer to continue studying throughout this period so I’m thinking whether to study for F2 or P2.

I started from E1 and it actually helped me during my F1 and P1 (there are some syllabus overlapping). But studying E2 for 8 weeks is a little overkill I would prefer to study for a harder test. So I’m thinking which one of it is more irrelevant to E2 so I won’t lose out from skipping E2 first or should I take 2 tests at once?

Tldr :

1. F2 > E2 > P2

2. P2 > E2 > F2

3. F2 + E2 > P2

4. P2 + E2 > F2