Using the best CIA review course for you is essential to passing the CIA exam. I always recommend that CIA candidates purchase a CIA review course, and getting the right one for you ensures that you have the most efficient and effective study experience. And if finding your ideal CIA review course sounds tricky, don’t worry! I have the information about the top CIA review courses on the market that you need to make this decision. My analysis of the pros and cons of each exam prep option will enable you to find the review course that fits your specific study scenario.
Your Best CIA Review Course Options
No matter how much you’ve already investigated the CIA review course industry, you don’t have to spend any more time assessing the most popular or the most obscure contenders. Instead, you can rely on my personal experience to narrow down the list and pick the course that meets your educational needs.
I’ve identified the best CIA review course for candidates in all kinds of situations. So, depending on your familiarity with the exam content and your particular mixture of learning styles, the right course for you may be:
- Gleim CIA Review
- Surgent CIA Review
- HOCK CIA Review
And assessing each of these courses on their own is the only way to be sure of your decision.
Gleim CIA Review: The Best and Most Comprehensive Course
If I had to choose just one CIA review course to recommend to every candidate, I would choose Gleim CIA Review. Gleim CIA Review is one of the top CIA review courses on the market and certainly the most popular among my readers. Furthermore, Gleim CIA Review is the most comprehensive and thorough course on the market. This course gives you the most value for your money and also ensures that you’ll be fully prepared for CIA exam success. So, no matter your familiarity with the exam content at the start of your studies, Gleim CIA Review can get your knowledge where it needs to be to earn a passing CIA exam score.
Gleim has been helping candidates pass accounting certification exams for over 45 years, so they have the expertise to help you pass as well. You can get everything you need to pass the CIA exam on your first attempt, as you can see when you consider the contents of the Gleim CIA courses.
Contents of Gleim CIA Review 2024
Gleim offers two CIA review courses that you can purchase as a complete set or as individual parts. These courses are the Gleim Premium CIA Review Course and the Gleim Traditional CIA Review Course. The Premium course includes video lectures, access until you pass, and help from accounting experts, while the Traditional course does not.
So, when you purchase the Gleim Premium CIA Review Course, which is the best value, you’ll receive the following study materials and resources:
1. A Streamlined, Smart Interface
Both the Gleim Premium and Traditional CIA Review Courses include Gleim’s proprietary SmartAdapt technology. This adaptive learning technology gauges your performance on diagnostic quizzes to determine your strengths and weaknesses with the exam content. Then, the course guides you to study the topics with which your understanding is the weakest. Finally, the course serves you more practice questions about those topics until your knowledge increases. In this way, the course enables you to cut down on study time while still becoming fully prepared for every type of exam question.
Each time you study, the Gleim course learns more about your knowledge levels and adapts to create a smarter study path for you. Therefore, your study sessions are always productive. What’s more, the interactive study planner logs the study sessions you completed and missed to adjust your review schedule regularly. So, with this tool, you can make sure that you’ll finish the course before your exam date.
2. Video Lectures
Gleim CIA Review is the only course on the market to include video lectures. Furthermore, these video lectures are high-quality productions featuring active professors who are also CIAs and IIA thought leaders.
The Premium Gleim CIA Review Course comes with 45 hours of in-depth video lectures. And the Gleim course has divided these 45 hours up into bite-sized lessons that are easy to watch without getting overwhelmed. The structure of the videos also accommodates candidates who want to follow along in their study guide and take notes.
Finally, the video lectures also cover multiple-choice question (MCQ) answering techniques so you have the best plan for addressing real CIA exam questions. The Gleim instructors explain the answers to the MCQs in detail so you know exactly why the correct answer is right. Consequently, you’ll also see why the incorrect answers are wrong. In this way, you’ll achieve a deeper comprehension of the exam topics while increasing your familiarity with the exam questions.
3. Textbooks
Gleim has a reputation for writing very thorough yet conveniently structured books. And most importantly, Gleim always keeps the content of their books as closely aligned to the IIA’s CIA exam syllabus as possible. Therefore, Gleim has one book for each part of the CIA exam:
- 1: Essentials of Internal Auditing
- 2: Practice of Internal Auditing
- 3: Business Knowledge for Internal Auditing
These books contain study unit outlines that discuss the main subject areas of the exam and include appropriate examples for additional explanation. You’ll also find practice questions within the books. But, you don’t need to work through all of these questions, as you’ll also have access to the online test bank.
4. Test Bank
Gleim CIA develops the best practice questions in the industry. Therefore, the Gleim CIA Review test bank outshines the test bank in any other CIA course. Consequently, you won’t find a more effective way to test your knowledge of the exam concepts before you sit than answering Gleim practice questions.
With a little over 3,000 relevant questions, the Gleim test bank is not the biggest on the market. However, this test bank is the most comprehensive and realistic. Furthermore, Gleim provides answer explanations for every question. So, just like in the video lectures, you’ll learn why the correct answer is right and the incorrect answer is wrong. And using these explanations to learn from your mistakes keeps your review fast and beneficial.
Finally, the Gleim CIA test bank also replicates the exam testing environment better than any other CIA course. Gleim has made the effort to reproduce the real exam screens as accurately as possible so that you know what to expect on exam day and don’t encounter as many surprises. Because other review course providers don’t go to such lengths, Gleim’s exam emulation may seem like a luxury, but it is actually an invaluable aspect of their outstanding test bank.
5. Expert Help
Another distinguishing feature of the Gleim Premium CIA Review Course is access to real accounting experts. Gleim provides candidates with this type of assistance so candidates have somewhere to turn when they struggle with tricky internal auditing topics like ratios or sampling. Though these courses are self-study, Gleim doesn’t want you to get stuck in your studies, so they allow you to contact an accounting expert who will provide an answer to your question via a convenient component of the course.
Gleim also supplies all of their CIA candidates with the opportunity to interact with an exam mentor for the duration of their studies. These exam mentors will help you create a study plan, navigate the CIA exam scheduling process, and use the course in the way that suits your learning style. This additional guidance gives you the best experience with the course and the best support for the CIA exam.
6. Access Until You Pass
Some CIA review providers, like the IIA, make you pay for updates to your course materials or extensions to your course access. However, Gleim is different. With their access until you pass guarantee, you get free updates to the course as long as you’re using it. And, your access to the course never expires, so you don’t have to pay any additional fees. This no-hassle policy even lets you request a refund if you fail the exam. So, the Premium Gleim CIA Review really leaves you with nothing to worry about once you pay for it. You’ll get all the updates and access you need to pass the CIA exam as soon as you can, no matter how long the process takes.
7. Audio Lectures
The Gleim CIA audio lectures are not the audio files of the Gleim video lectures. Instead, the audio lectures are high-level discussions of the most important CIA exam concepts. Therefore, the audio lectures provide a different perspective on the exam material. And because they allow you to simply listen along in order to study, the audio lectures also let you take another approach to your review. Specifically, the audio lecture approach is flexible, so you can study while you complete another activity like chores, exercise, or travel.
8. Exam Rehearsal
When you’re ready for a taste of the CIA exam environment, you can turn to the Gleim Exam Rehearsal. This timed practice test helps you pinpoint any remaining weak areas the week before you sit for the CIA exam. So, when you complete this test during the last few days of your review, you can further refine your understanding of particular topics. And in doing so, you can maximize your real CIA exam score. The Gleim Exam Rehearsal is perfect for weeding out any remaining problem areas. So, having this feature handy in your review course can really boost your confidence in your CIA exam preparations.
The Price of Gleim CIA Review
Gleim CIA Review is the most complete CIA course on the market, but it is not the most expensive. Therefore, because of all the value it provides, this course is worth the investment.
Without any discounts, the Premium Gleim CIA Review Course costs $1,249, and the Traditional Gleim CIA Review Course costs $1,099. However, with my exclusive Gleim CIA Review discounts, you can save on your course.
If pricing remains a concern, you can also finance your Gleim CIA study materials. You’ll just need a U.S. social security number to apply for financing.
Get the Gleim CIA Discount![optin-monster-shortcode id=”bhqbp6jwuoz7rkkmagiv”]
Surgent CIA Review: The Best Course for Retakers
Surgent CIA Review (formerly ExamMatrix CIA Review) is a high-tech CIA review course that uses innovative technology to help candidates strengthen their weaknesses with the CIA exam content. However, the Surgent course is not the most instructive, as it doesn’t include video lectures, thorough books, or help from experts. For these reasons, I recommend Surgent CIA Review to candidates who have failed part of the CIA exam and need to intensify their review so they can pass their retake.
Surgent is not the oldest CIA review course provider in the industry, but it is one of the most determined. The founders of Surgent CIA Review have dedicated themselves to making the testing process faster and easier for candidates by enhancing their course with convenient and powerful features. Therefore, Surgent CIA Review is a great course for candidates to try if they’ve taken a hit from the CIA exam and are getting a little tired.
Components of Surgent CIA Review
Surgent offers just one CIA review course option. And, this course is not as comprehensive as Gleim CIA Review. However, the materials you get with Surgent may be enough for experienced candidates to pass with. These materials include:
1. Adaptive Online Platform
Surgent acquired ExamMatrix in 2015, and in the process, inherited adaptive technology for their online review courses. With this technology, Surgent developed a course that does the following:
- Employs an easy-to-use, intuitive interface
- Adapts to your performance on practice questions
- Reports your progress with the exam content via detailed analytics
- Adjusts the agenda of your daily study sessions accordingly
- Serves more difficult practice questions as your understanding improves
- Regularly calculates your exam readiness
Surgent’s proprietary adaptive learning technology, called A.S.A.P. technology, identifies your strengths and weaknesses with the exam content and uses this information to direct the focus of your studies and determine the practice questions you should answer.
Additionally, Surgent’s ReadySCORE technology collects figures from real-time performance analytics, study time reports, and progress data to calculate a number that indicates your current strength of knowledge per content area and topic and represents how well you would score on the real CIA exam at that time.
With such extensive and advantageous information at your fingertips, you’ll find the Surgent CIA Review course useful for bouncing back from a CIA exam failure.
2. Test Bank
Surgent CIA Review includes more than 2,000 practice MCQs. This number is a lot more than the amount you’ll answer on the CIA exam. However, it is not as many practice questions as Gleim and Wiley have.
As I mentioned, you’re more likely to memorize the practice questions in your course if you don’t have enough of them. And memorizing questions is a bad CIA exam strategy because you won’t see those exact questions on the exam, but the exam will ask you about those concepts. So, you must save your brain space for a deeper understanding of the exam content instead. So, the fact that Surgent’s test bank is small is not ideal.
But, this test bank also comes with full-text answers to the practice questions, which you can use to ensure that you got the question right for the right reason. Or, you can determine why your answer was wrong and the correct answer was right. Learning from your mistakes in this way does make the Surgent test bank valuable, especially if you just need a fresh set of practice questions to prepare for your exam retake.
3. Digital Textbooks
The entire Surgent CIA course is online and mobile-compatible, including the textbooks. The three textbooks, one for each exam part, only come as PDFs. So, if you’re hoping for hard copies, you’ll be out of luck. What’s more, Surgent’s books are not the most comprehensive. Therefore, you probably won’t find them helpful for passing the exam on their own.
4. Content Updates
If you purchase Surgent CIA Review, you’ll receive 18 months of course access. Of course, 18 months is not as extravagant as access until you pass, but it might be long enough for you to pass a failed CIA exam part. And during this time, you will get free updates to your course content if the exam changes or Surgent makes improvements. So, you will always be studying with the most current and accurate course materials, even if the amount of time you have to study with them is limited.
5. Pass Guarantee
If you spend a sufficient amount of time studying with Surgent’s CIA course and fail, you may be able to take advantage of the pass guarantee. This guarantee refunds your money so long as you meet the conditions.
The Price of Surgent CIA Review
Surgent CIA Review is mostly a high-tech test bank. And thankfully, because it doesn’t meet my definition of a full review course, you won’t pay a full review course price.
Instead, Surgent CIA Review costs $499. However, when you use my Surgent CIA Review discount code, you can save on this course.
HOCK CIA Review: A Good Course for Visual Learners
HOCK CIA Review is another one of your CIA exam prep options. And this course is a good option for visual learners, as it has some of the most engaging CIA lectures.
Brian Hock, CMA, CIA, created Hock Training in Russia in 2000. He did so with the purpose of offering a classroom course setting for various accounting certification exams such as the CPA, CMA, and CIA. And with the success of Hock Training, Hock founded HOCK International in 2003 in the U.S.
HOCK’s courses have been going strong ever since. In fact, the company has even developed the HOCK CIA Challenge Exam Material to help candidates pass the IIA Challenge Exam, which is a special opportunity available to select CIA candidates. HOCK has helped people around the globe become CIAs. And you’ll see why when you discover what HOCK CIA Review includes.
Components of HOCK CIA Review
HOCK has two CIA review courses available to candidates. The HOCK CIA Complete Course has textbooks, practice questions, and videos, while the HOCK CIA Standard Course just has textbooks and practice questions.
So, purchasing the HOCK CIA Complete Course equips you with the following resources:
1. Textbooks
HOCK writes their CIA textbooks for candidates who don’t have a background in internal auditing. So, the textbooks start with the basics and build upon them. What’s more, the books are also easy to read and understand. For these reasons, linguistic learners can appreciate this element of HOCK’s CIA course.
HOCK does offer PDF and hardcopy versions of their textbooks, but you have to pay more to receive the printed versions.
2. Video Lectures
The HOCK CIA course contains 40 hours of video lectures. These video lectures follow a classroom setting format, so they are different from the YouTube-style videos that involve someone talking to the viewer through the screen. Additionally, the HOCK videos feature Brian Hock as the instructor. While lecturing, Brian discusses the main points from the textbooks, provides further explanation of difficult concepts, and works through calculation-based problems. With their unique structure and useful content, the video lectures are a good resource for visual learners.
3. Test Bank
HOCK’s CIA test bank holds 2,705 MCQs. This number is quite a bit lower than the Gleim and Wiley test bank figures, and HOCK’s test bank is even smaller than Surgent’s. However, HOCK continues to add CIA questions to its test bank and improve the overall size. HOCK does go in-depth with each of its answer explanations in the test bank, which is rarer than one might think.
However, other qualities of this test bank are the mobile app availability. Another helpful feature is the inclusion of 3 mock exams that use new questions not appearing in the test bank. HOCK doesn’t emulate the CIA exam testing environment as well as Gleim, but if this isn’t a must-have feature for you, you likely won’t mind the absence of exact exam emulation.
4. Flashcards
The HOCK course also has 689 flashcards that focus on the main concepts and formulas you need to know. However, these flashcards come in a PowerPoint format, so you can’t get printed versions directly from HOCK. Consequently, since you can download the flashcards, you can print these out on your own.
5. Guarantees
HOCK affords CIA candidates four guarantees with the purchase of their CIA review courses. These guarantees include:
- One-On-One Support: gives you access to teachers and textbook authors so you can ask questions about the exam material as long as you’re studying.
- Up-To-Date Materials: keeps your online materials up to date as Hock releases revisions.
- No Expiration: allows you to use your updated materials and receive support until you pass the exams without having to worry about dealing with a set expiration date.
- Best Price: promises that you’ll pay a low price for your HOCK course because HOCK sells the materials directly to you.
6. Candidate Support
Lastly, HOCK supplies candidates with three layers of support:
- Teacher support – You can get answers to all of your questions from the HOCK experts.
- Technical support – You can receive any assistance you may need for using your materials correctly.
- Exam support – Once you’ve completed your studies, you can get help with the exam registration process from HOCK.
The Price of HOCK CIA Review
The cost of the Standard course, the one without videos, is $779. This amount is more than you’d pay for the Gleim Premium CIA Review Course when you use my Gleim CIA discount. And the Gleim course comes with videos as well as adaptive technology.
Wiley CIA Review: The Best Supplemental Course
Wiley CIAexcel is another popular CIA review course. However, the Wiley course is not as complete as the Gleim CIA course. Currently, Wiley CIAexcel doesn’t come with video lectures, audio lectures, or personalized candidate support. Therefore, I find Wiley CIAexcel to be best for candidates searching for supplemental study materials.
Wiley has also been in the review course industry for years, and they have many respectable courses on the market, such as their CPA and CMA courses. But the Wiley CIAexcel course still leaves a little to be desired, so you’ll need either plenty of internal auditing knowledge or another CIA review course to accompany it. You’ll see what I mean when you assess the contents of Wiley CIAexcel.
Contents of the Wiley CIA Review Course
Wiley CIAexcel has several CIA review course products available, but the product with the most features is the Wiley CIA Exam Review Package. Again, this package doesn’t have video lectures, access until you pass, or help from experts. However, it does including the following materials:
1. Study Guides
Like Gleim, Wiley has also written one book for each CIA exam part, and these books cover the CIA exam content well. The introductory chapter of each book reveals the CIA exam format and presents basic study tips. Then, the following chapters address all of the topics tested by that exam part. You can elect to receive either the printed or digital versions of these books with your review package.
The Wiley books contain mostly text because the CIA exam is primarily theoretical and rarely features computational questions. But, Wiley does their best to break all the text up with subheadings, bullet points, and highlight boxes. Also, each chapter ends with a few sample questions for you to answer.
2. Test Bank
The Wiley CIAexcel test bank is the biggest on the market. It supplies candidates with 5,300 MCQs so you can get more than enough practice with the exam questions. The specific breakdown of the practice questions in each course part is:
- 1: 770+
- 2: 740+
- 3: 3,800+
Additionally, because their test bank is only available online, Wiley has also taken steps to emulate the exam environment with their practice questions. However, the Wiley questions aren’t quite as challenging as the Gleim questions, so they don’t represent the CIA exam as well.
Wiley’s practice questions also include explanations of the answers, and you can make as many practice sessions and practice tests as you want within the test bank.
3. Focus Notes
Wiley offers 3 spiral-bound decks of focus notes in total, 1 for each exam. And Wiley will ship these decks to you, but you can also choose to receive them in an e-book instead.
Wiley doesn’t call their focus notes flashcards for a reason, and that reason is that their focus notes contain quite a bit more information than flashcards. By packing more content onto their focus notes, Wiley helps you remember important mnemonics and checklists. Consequently, the focus notes are very helpful for your final review.
And thanks to their design, you can use the Wiley focus notes to supplement your other Wiley materials or a different CIA review course. Finally, because the focus notes are portable, you can use them to study on the go.
The Price of Wiley CIAexcel
The Wiley CIAexcel course doesn’t come with a lot of study materials. But thankfully, Wiley doesn’t overcharge you for what their course does come with.
If you purchase all 3 parts of the Wiley CIAexcel CIA Exam Review Package together, the cost will be $375.
IIA CIA Learning System: The Most Expensive and Limited Course
I don’t recommend the IIA CIA Learning System to CIA exam candidates for several reasons, the first being its limited coverage. This course is void of many essential study materials, which makes it insufficient to prepare you for the CIA exam. So, before you spend money on something the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) is peddling, you should discover the course components.
Contents of the IIA CIA Learning System
The IIA CIA Learning System is one course that offers the following review resources:
1. Textbooks
The IIA CIA Learning System has three textbooks, one for each part of the CIA exam. However, the price of the course only includes digital books. So, if you want to receive physical copies of the text, you must pay an extra fee. Few other CIA review providers charge candidates in this way.
2. Practice Questions
The IIA CIA Learning System contains interactive practice questions, but the IIA does not reveal how many questions its course holds. And based on my experience with the course, I don’t think it offers as many practice questions as Gleim CIA Review or Wiley CIAexcel. So, you will probably receive the same practice question more than once. And answering repeat practice questions increases the likelihood of memorizing the questions rather than understanding the concepts. This issue, in turn, reduces your chances of experiencing CIA exam success.
The practice questions appear in the pre-test, section quizzes, post-test, and CIA practice exams. And, the course does supply some analytics on your performance with the practice questions. However, this data is not always deep enough to be helpful.
3. Study Planner
The IIA CIA course comes with a study planner that the course fills out for you using the results of your performance on some pretests. The study planner targets the areas you struggled with so you can review more efficiently and effectively. Therefore, this tool is helpful.
4. Flashcards
Finally, the IIA CIA Review System features flashcards. The IIA specifies that these flashcards allow you to review key internal audit terms and definitions, but they don’t say how many flashcards you get. And, these flashcards seem to only be available in a digital format, not a printed format.
Elements Missing from the IIA CIA Learning System
As you can see, the list of materials in this course is pretty short. Sadly, the list of what this course doesn’t contain is longer than what it does have. The IIA CIA Learning System is lacking:
1. Professor-led Video Lectures
The IIA says that the course includes video tutorials that offer an overview of the IPPF components. So, these videos don’t seem to include helpful explanations of the exam content, real-world examples of applying the exam principles, walk-throughs of MCQs, or in-depth discussions of MCQ answers.
2. Audio lectures
The IIA doesn’t seem too concerned about candidates with different learning styles, as evidenced by the fact that their course contains neither video nor audio lectures. So, if you learn best by having someone explain information to you, you’ll struggle to grasp and retain the exam concepts when using the IIA CIA Learning System. And, of course, you also won’t have the option of studying while accomplishing other tasks.
3. Help from Experts
Unlike Gleim CIA Review, the IIA CIA Learning System does not afford candidates any assistance from exam or auditing experts. So, if a particularly troublesome exam topic keeps tripping you up, you’re on your own. You can’t ask someone from the IIA to help you overcome or lead you through the study process in any way.
4. A Vast Test Bank
Yes, the IIA CIA Learning System does come with practice questions. But, as mentioned, the number of questions is limited, as is your ability to access them. So, this test bank is inferior to the bigger and more realistic test banks of Gleim and Wiley.
5. Access Until You Pass
If you purchase 1 part of the IIA CIA course, you’ll get access for 1 year. And if you buy the 3-part course, you can access everything within for 2 years. However, if passing the CIA exam takes you any longer than that, you’ll have to pay for your IIA CIA Learning System again. You won’t receive any extended course access for free.
6. A Complete Course Demo
If you’re wanting to see this course for yourself before you buy it, you’re out of luck. The IIA does not let you demo this course in any way. You can read sample textbook passages, but you can’t get into the course at all unless you pay for it.
The Price of the IIA CIA Learning System
The second reason I advise against choosing the IIA CIA Learning System is the high cost. The price of the course for all 3 exam parts without physical books is $895. If you want the printed versions of the materials, you’ll have to put in another $100 to cover the price of $995.
So, to get the IIA CIA Learning System and everything it lacks, you must spend almost $1,000. And you can’t expect that price to go down because the IIA has not supplied my site with any IIA CIA Learning System discounts.
The Worst Part About the IIA CIA Learning System
As if the limited coverage and high cost of the IIA CIA Learning System weren’t enough to deter you, I have one more surprising yet solid reason to avoid this course. And that reason is that while the IIA markets and heavily promotes the IIA CIA Learning System, they do not write this course themselves.
Yes, despite the fact that the IIA released the IIA CIA Learning System 6.0 in 2019, which was revised for the new CIA exam, IIA did not do the revising or writing of this course. And they never have. Instead, the IIA outsources the course to Holmes Corp., a third-party review provider. Holmes creates the course independently of the IIA, even though the IIA presents the course as their own.
Therefore, because the IIA is really just selling the materials another party has written, the IIA CIA Learning System does not give candidates any inside information. The IIA calls it the official CIA course, but nothing about how Holmes makes the course sets it apart from any other course. Holmes doesn’t receive secret exam information that the other review providers are denied. And compared to the other CIA courses, the IIA CIA Learning System lacks value.
So, once again, I can’t endorse this course. The IIA CIA Learning System is overpriced, underwhelming, and outmatched by other review courses on the market.
Help Finding the Best CIA Review Course for You
As mentioned, I believe candidates should always use a review course to prepare for the CIA exam. Studying with CIA exam prep gives you the best chance of earning a passing score. However, I don’t believe just any CIA review course will do. You need to find the right one for you, and that process will require some research. So, use the information provided here and my CIA exam site to learn more about your review course options. And if you want a more specific suggestion, you can also ask me for a personalized recommendation.
Finally, you can learn more about the CIA process and how to pass the CIA exam on your first attempt by signing up for my free CIA e-course. Then, you’ll have everything you need for CIA success!
