Roger CPA Review: Great If You Look For Entertaining Lectures

Roger CPA Review was founded by Roger Philipp in 2001 after his teaching experience in Dauberman CPA Review, Mark’s CPA Review and Stanley Kaplan CPA review.

Originally began as live classes in San Francisco, the review courses have expanded into the online format with optional offline lectures on a USB drive, and students outside of the US can take the classes. Roger boasts a 86% pass rate with over 85,000+ students went through his CPA review program.

Roger CPA Review is expanding nationally and internationally via their online New Generation course. Discount is available to college students, past students from another CPA Exam review course, and employees of partner firms.

Roger CPA Review Program Overview

So let’s take a look at the 3 offerings — online,  offline (USB) and cram courses. Note that live class is no longer offered.

1. Online Classes

• Accessible anytime and anywhere with an Internet connection
• 100 hours of instruction directly filmed from live classes. The lectures are broken down into bite-sized chunks, ranging anywhere from 5 minutes to 50 minutes
• 12 months of viewing access
  • $50 fee to renew after 12 months for an additional 6 months
  • Students originally have 5 viewings per video, but can call in and have them reset at any time Students have unlimited lecture viewings.
• The course comes with lecture books (Roger’s proprietary work), homework (Wiley) and simulation software (Wiley)
• Content updated every 6 months
• Ability to customize the course with offline lectures via a portable USB drive, and a 6 month extension.

2. USB Classes

Same as Online Classes except:

• You get to watch the lectures as many times as you want
• You can only access in two computers, vs anywhere for online classes. (Second installation can be arranged on request)
• $200 charge to extend the 12 month USB course to 18 months at time of enrollment.   ($300 if decision to add is made after purchase)
• You have no/bad internet connection

3. Cram Course

• Online ($195, $275, or $150 if you’re currently enrolled in that section); Flash Drive: ($295 or $375)
• Cram Courses are available in online and flash drive only.

So What’s The Strengths and Weaknesses for Roger CPA Review?

I didn’t take Roger and didn’t have friends who took the course, but I understand that Roger is quite popular in the San Jose / San Francisco area where his course is originally based.

First of all, here is a demo straight from Roger to show his unique teaching style:

Roger CPA Review: Pros

1. It’s Personal

Roger is experienced (>20 years of teaching CPA review) and personally teaches every class and writes his own book. Quality is guaranteed and no need to worry about the quality of instructor you will get from big institutionalized CPA review course such as Becker.

Feb 2013 update: Mark Dauberman has joined Roger as Senior Editor, helping with the course textbooks and other course related initiatives. Roger Phillip used to work for him at Dauberman CPA Review.

2. Entertaining Teaching Style

As you can see, Roger is really a dynamic and engaging speaker. You’ll love it if you are into rap talks and this sort of cool stuff.

3. Focused On The Teaching

One thing I appreciate Roger’s decision is to outsource the course materials to Wiley. In other words, he uses Wiley’s books and software while he specialize on the teaching and explanation. This arrangement spares his time in updating the course materials (which Wiley does annually) and focus on what he does best.

Also, you may be interested to know that Roger recently authored a book under the Wiley brand on the latest CPA Review 2011 Update. The fact that Wiley is asking Roger to write a book for them means Roger is up to a pretty decent standard.

4. Course Extension

Roger CPA Review offers an extension on any or all sections for both the 4-part online.

Roger CPA Review: Cons

1. Beware Of The Restrictions

For example, the online access have a 12-month access period. In my opinion, this is not a big concern as long as you are aware of the limitations.

2. Help Can Be Slow?

Some readers told me about the relatively slow response from the message board (the main help channel). While it is definitely not as good as something like a live phone help at Yaeger, it is still better when compared to self-study books such as Wiley, and the self-study versions of Becker, Gleim and Bisk.

Here is Roger CPA’s response. Looks to me that the message board is well taken care of:

“We have two professional moderators on our Homework Help Center that are professional CPAs and go through and answer students’ questions. We always encourage students to go through and see if their questions was already asked, because oftentimes they were. Additionally, if there’s a lapse in response time, it’s because the moderators are generating the best answer.”

3. Talking Too Fast?

I have quite a few feedback from readers (including emails and the comments below) who finds Roger talking too fast. I think if you are a native English speaker growing up in America who live or work in a fast-paced environment, this shouldn’t be a problem.

However, if you are an “older” candidate, accustomed to the “Old School” style of learning or you are an international candidate, you may want to double check a few demos before making the decision.

My Recommendation

Roger is great if you get bored easily and prefer a lively instructor to make studying easier.

Again, if you haven’t already, please watch the demo above to see if you like his teaching style — watch long enough to test whether you can catch everything he says, given he is a relatively fast talker.

Check out this page on CPA exam review courses comparison for more choices first, or…