How much material is there for CPA when compared with CFA?

Question

Hey all, had a discussion with a colleague the other day and decided to tap into the hive mind here :)The CFA exam obviously has 3 x 5-6 books to go through for the entire exam, but I was wondering how much material does the CPA exam have. I read up that it's about 14 hours of exams in total across 4 exams, but the Kaplan materials seems to be only 4 books (i.e. 1 for each exam?) so the material seems a lot less.Thoughts?

PaulAdaptPrep · Answer

I've had this discussion with a friend of mine who is a CPA. He said depending on your educational background, it may take 300-500 hours of studying in total to pass the four sections of the CPA. This seems to line up with what prep providers recommend online.In comparison, it should take about 300 hours for Level 1 and 200-300 for Level 2 and 3, again depending on education and work experience. So in total, CFA should significantly outweigh CPA.

WesMantooth · Answer

I don't know much about the US CPA program, is it different in every state? I know you need to specify which state you received the designation in. The new Canadian CPA (merging of the three accounting bodies-taking the hardest parts of each) is quite extensive and covers a similar amount of material as the CFA program.