If you are considering going to college for a degree in accounting or if you are already enrolled in an accounting program, you will more than likely have to take many financial accounting exams during your time as a student.



In 2007, the College Level Examination program introduced a financial accounting exam. Most of the questions focused on entry level accounting skills that are taught in the first year of any accounting program across the country. If a student believes he or she already knows the basics of a topic, they may opt to take a CLEP test. Once the test is passed, the student will receive credit for taking the test and not have to take the class. If a student believes he or she can CLEP out of an accounting class, they may choose to take the financial accounting exam instead.



The financial accounting exam focuses on different topics including vocabulary and general topics of accounting, preparing, using, and analyzing data for accounting, applying accounting techniques, and why certain beliefs and policies of accounting hold true today. Twenty to thirty percent of the financial accounting exam focuses on general topics dealing with accounting. Another twenty to thirty percent focuses on being able to read and analyze an income statement. Analyzing a balance sheet is thirty to forty percent, cash flow statement is five to ten percent, and the smallest weighted section of the test is investments and liabilities, which is less than five percent. Students taking the CLEP financial accounting exam must finish the exam in an hour and a half or less, which seems very reasonable since there are only seventy five multiple choice questions on the test.

It takes a few weeks for the CLEP financial accounting exam to be scored. It is scored anywhere between twenty and eighty, and a student will receive credit for the class if they score a fifty or above. Some of the questions included in the financial accounting exam are not included in your score, because the writers of the test only want to see how students would answer them for future use. You are not penalized for guessing on the CLEP financial accounting exam, so be sure to answer all questions even if you are unsure of the correct answer. If you leave any answers blank, the machine scoring your test will automatically mark the answer as being incorrect.