I was referred to a story in the September 10^th Toronto Star about the UFE by my girlfriend’s Mom. It’s about time this momentous occasion is chron­icled in the most-read daily in the country:

Starting Tuesday, more than 650 students will write the profes­sional accounting exam in Toronto — more than 2,500 in Canada.

I’ll be one of those 650 students sitting in the Inter­na­tional Centre right beside Canada’s busiest airport (and you can hear every plane fly overhead) on Tuesday. I won’t be the only one!

The UFE lasts three days, with a five-hour business case followed by two four-hour exams, each of which consists of a few shorter case questions. Last year, for example, the question on the first day was 15 pages long and candi­dates had to provide accounting, audit, tax and other business advice for a ski resort formed by the merger of three smaller ones.

This is not entirely correct. I know that case inside and out, and it was actually about a partnership between three ski resorts to sell a lift ticket that could be used at any of the partner hills. No merger. Minor details to the Star, but you’d be hard-pressed to earn any marks if you made such a big mistake when you were writing the thing last year.

Illness has not inter­rupted an exam in recent years, but evidence of serious stress — shaking hands, nervous ticks, vomiting — is routinely observed in washrooms beforehand.

I’m pretty lucky in that I deal with stress well. I’ll be nervous and anxious for sure, but I won’t be throwing up.

Bruce Densmore runs a UFE prepa­ration program, Densmore Consulting Services, Inc. He won’t say how much he earns but he clearly makes more than his two main competitors, if only because his services are offered by three of the Big Four firms. He labels his company “a high-cost, high-quality provider.” As he says, “If we mess up, there’s a price to be paid” — with messing up meaning a low pass rate.

I was lucky enough to take Densmore’s course at the end of July at U of T. It really helped a lot – I learned valuable case-writing skills and improved my scoring immensely. It’s like night and day comparing cases I wrote before the course and after.

One thing is for certain about this monstrous exam – it will be the biggest challenge of my life so far.