Sometimes serious cramming sessions do pay off. Upon graduating with his MAcc, R. Marcus Young took a consulting job in Portland, Oregon. When CPA exam season came, he wasn’t even sure he was going to take it until his brother-in-law convinced him to.
Young took some time off from work and began a rigorous study session three weeks before the test. His wife, Stephanie, and daughter, Victoria, went to Utah to stay with family so he could study from dawn until dusk without interruption. “The weird thing is that you never really know how well you’ve done. When I finished I had no idea if I had passed all the sections or not,” he said. “I was just putting down material to fill up the page and hoping for the best.”
His wishful thinking became a reality three months later when he received his score—ninety and above on all three sections. Among all the jumping and celebrating, a thought crossed his mind: “I wonder if I was in the top ten or anything.”
A couple of weeks later he received a simple letter telling him he got the top score in Oregon; he also received a minor case of laryngitis. “I was alone when I read it,” he recalled. “I actually yelled so loud that I lost my voice for a couple of days.”
Young credits his BYU experience as practical preparation for the exam. “The professors in the accountancy program didn’t just stick to math or technical problems; they taught us how to approach a problem by using logic and common sense,” he said.
Young graduated in 2001 and works as a consultant at Experio, which is the consulting services unit of Hitachi. “I am happy with my choice to go into business consulting, even though none of my friends in school chose this route,” he says. “I understand more and more what makes an enterprise tick.”
