How this boy from Delhi prepared for CA Finals during the COVID pandemic securing an AIR-46 in Nov’20 attempt

• Meet Aekansh Jain, a qualified Chartered Accountant who cleared his CA Final Examination in November 2020 and secured AIR-46.
• He started preparing for his CA during high school and was aiming to become a Chartered Accountant since then.
• Aekansh says – My initial attempt was in November 2020, so, I wasn’t too rattled by the postponement of my exams. But it worried me a lot thinking that the November attempt would be more difficult for me as I only studied for five months while my peers prepared for over 10 months.
• Here is CA Aekansh Jain’s experience of preparing for CA final exams.

Mindset during the nationwide lockdown

I was having a meeting with a client in the office and then I came to know from my colleague that a lockdown has been imposed across India. This was on 21^st March 2020. I wasn’t too surprised about the lockdown since it was imminent considering the rising number of COVID cases.

However, I was definitely concerned about what would happen next as we were watching the news and staying updated. Initially, the lockdown felt like a relief to me since we didn’t have to travel and go to the office. So, I thought I would rest for some days but of course, we didn’t have that luxury as we soon started working from home.

The work-from-home situation had its own problem. For instance, there were no set working hours, and the fact that we were at home, it was taken for granted that we would be available any time of the day. This was definitely problematic and I could see the work hours and pressure increasing on us.

All in all, my plan to study during the lockdown went out of the window. But after a few days of adjustment, I managed to squeeze in some time to study at the end of the day.

I also distanced myself from social media and news updates since I realized it was hindering my preparation. The pandemic was beyond my control but what I could control was my studies and that’s what motivated me to study despite it being so taxing during the lockdown.

Preparation strategy for CA Final Examination 2020

In the first 2 years of my CA articleship, I couldn’t study anything on my own. I had to rush to the office for client meetings and work being so hectic and demanding, it always used to take preference over studies.

But I got a leave of about 5 months from my office and my actual preparation started from that time. In the beginning, just like any other student, I was completely clueless as to where I should begin.

Since I couldn’t study properly during the two and a half years of Articleship, it took me some time to ease back into my studies. Although I completed the first reading by July 2020, it was still very casual and I knew I had to prepare better.

Audit and Law especially took a lot of time for me because I hadn’t taken any classes in these subjects. But, thankfully, I was able to complete my preparation for Law through the vast number of revision videos available on Youtube.

After studying and solving the previous year’s question papers, I started my revision which ended by mid-September. Then, I started my second revision in September and I aimed to complete it by October, just before my CA Finals.