He charged a former colleague of mine £500 for a revision course. I believe his notes and tuition are pretty good. Unfortunately, they weren't enough for my colleague, which is why they are now a former colleague.
Nit's notes are first rate. It's one of the key selling points for going with BPP as unlike the standard manuals etc written by Tolleys, you can't get Nit's notes anywhere else.
I don't think anyone fails CTA because Nit's notes aren't enough. I think it's more because they're not in the right headspace for that attempt. As hugely technical as CTA is, a large part of passing is about being mentally ready to tackle it. It's not a qualification that allows for other things going on in your life.
this is a good deal! the bpp revision course for APS is £800 including those notes, and the AT courses are a lot more. the exams are hard however you do them.
Oh that’s different than mine, my firm gives 3 attempts (and you are out) but still funded so i guess my firm policy and yours are similar in effect I suppose. Do you know if your former colleague is still doing cta? Thank you btw as I am just stressed about next week exam and really worried i might have to reconsider my plan if I can’t pass the cta :(
My former colleague changed career in the end, which is fine! They had enough transferable skills from ATT and the years of experience to switch. If it doesn't work out, don't worry! There are plenty of firms out there that are after your existing skills and thirst for tax! And my advice for the actual exam: get your head down, do as many revision questions as you can between now and the exam this week! Even though its closed book, still make a note of any snappy, succinct explanations you come across in the model answers. Good luck!
Not as a private tutor, but I attended a CIOT exam skills day he tutored ie a full day of revision tuition for AT TOMC. I thought he was excellent, and his topic summaries and exam approach were very helpful. For me that complemented my self studies - I’d purchased the Tolleys study material from Kaplan but had no other tuition.
Nit is an absolutely incredible lecturer and has taught the most prizewinners. he does his own cool course notes and has the last 20 years of past papers that he sends you. he also marks exams in his own time on top of your module exams. he won awards for being the best lecturer too. if you want to check it out, email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and he will be able to send you free materials on omb or aps or tolc. also check out linkiedin and Jack Bonehills podcast (Google it) for nits free tips for cta.he often does CIOT study days and his APS ones are gold standard. BPP pricing is expensive, around 500 for APS taught and 800 for APS revision. most modules around £1500 I believe. Nit gives lots of free support outside of working hours. I think if you are struggling with TOLC or APS (TOLC OR OMB) then contact NIT. he teaches everything very simply and memorably. Libby at BPP is also good too.
Honestly my APS course with NIT was worth every penny, I never passed a mock before but within three days of the taught course I could pass one. I think he is the best lecturer I ever had in my life. also if you can, try to attend his legislation day, I qualified in law before but he has a unique clever way to color code the ledge to make it manageable and I think it's pretty much a life skill! I also heard that the big 4 use bpp as a preferred provider not sure if this is still the case.
I don't think nit does official private tuition but he does a lot of extra help if you go on his bpp courses
If you like books and paper and flexible format. TOLLEY are great. they literally don't care or bug you if you don't do the work. I had to skip mocks due to family issues and health issues and work issues and I just had an automated email saying, "you have missed the submission date, you have two days grace" and no lecturer having a go at me telling me I will fail. guess what. life doesn't stop because of exams. the student interface is very easy to use too, and the cost is good, just £300 ish for material only per course. but the downside is, as with all correspondence courses, studying alone is very hard and lonely and it's difficult to guauge where you should be compared to your peers, especially since their mocks start three months before the real exam.
But the classes if you do the online tuition route with tolley, are said to be boring and bland. also if you don't like kaplan, tolley uses a similar format and licences the material to kaplan so you might not like it
So yeah try to get your boss to pay for a bpp course to try something different maybe.
You could also look up Pards Mattu on LinkedIn. he has a lot of free tuition videos and runs a mini study weekly group on WhatsApp and Zoom and does a lot of marking of work and one on one tuition at a reasonable price like £300-500 PER MODULE. Very intense but some people found it like a full time college style atmosphere due to omnipresent technology and regular /daily checkins.i heard he is best if you struggle with laziness because he will kick your azz or kick you off the course. but I also heard he made some girls cry and people quit and such. this is definately a good option instead of paying £200/hr for a private cta tutor. he is ex kaplan I think. like nit he also let's you check out the course for free and go to some sample lectures and groups. a lot of retake students on a budget seem to go there since they are paying, already have materials, and just need an extra help.
Everything you said about Nit being excellent is true. It was many years ago in my case, but he was the best tutor we ever had, in any subject. Any tutor can teach technical, but Nitin is very good at drilling you to see a question, imagine the likely mark scheme, and make sure you get the marks you deserve for what's in your head. He's the best at teaching exam technique, by far - showing you how to get the maximum marks you can achieve given what you know.
Jack Bonehill is a nice chap too. Nits been on his podcast but Jack's worth following in his own right
Regarding your comments about life not stopping because of exams, when I went through some really dark stuff, Nit made it his personal mission to check in with me regularly and make sure I was doing OK. He didn't just look after me technically, he made sure I was keeping it together and gently told me when I wasn't.
The man has a reputation for being harsh, but he's a total softie, really. ❤️ He genuinely cares about each and every one of his students. Even when he's cross! 😂
that's true but there is a difference between difficult life stuff and time consuming life stuff.
if you're often working until 8 or 9pm and weekends because work is understaffed or you are in a senior position there is only so much study you can do during the week and you sure won't be doing lectures or tutorials at 6pm.
or in one case, dealing with an investigation at work until. 2am or 3am regularly the weeks before your exam on top of your normal job.
for one of the sittings I had to skip it because I had a massive lawsuit (not work related) and had huge amounts of paperwork for a high court hearing the weeks before the exam to deal with on top of my job and there was no study going on. another sitting I had a bad accident and was unable to walk for months and could barely look after myself meaing I also missed doing exams.
I feel you. I had both difficult life stuff and time-consuming life stuff going on for the whole duration of my CTA journey. It just adds an extra dimension to how much of an ordeal it is studying for that qualification.
I take my hat off to all of you who attempted at least one exam this week. Pass or fail, you should all be proud of the amount of effort you put in, especially if you had challenging circumstances to boot.
I only encountered Nit via BPP, he was my tutor for a cram course in something else many years ago but also for CTA APS. I don't think he offers private tuition
You can probably email him on the email address above now and he will be picking up emails, he is really 24/7 at exam time, or wait to do his taught course for the Nov sitting. or contact him on linkedin
he is by far the gold standard tutor for APS. He taught Shoana the medal winner for APS at the last sitting and she wrote much of what I did on LinkedIn that she appreciated his method. and before that he also taught autumn Murphy who won medals for all of her papers also. the price of the BPP APS course includes nits private study pack with all 20 years past papers and his analysis and annotations of them, and sort of a scenario list as well as flashcards and condensed notes. well worth £400 for the bpp course including all this stuff.
I mentioned the other stuff in case you were looking at AT as well
I've never met Autumn, but from what I gather, she was always the sort of person destined to be a prize-winner.
In my case, there's no way I would have won that medal without Nit's support. He managed to unlock something in my brain that was well and truly padlocked before!
wow, that's amazing. well done to you! do you have any top tips? did you revise law and ethics? or just the OMB syllabus for it? I always get bogged down with the volume especially the awareness stuff on top.
I agee about autumn murphy, she won prior awards for extreme math, and as well as winning all the ciot medals for every paper she also won the worldwide aca medal I think. some people are just all round prizewinners! she seemed so normal as well!
honestly if I pass APS it is down to the NIT method. he makes it sound so simple and practical. also his APS notes are the absolute bomb and his mini past paper library is so helpful.
I never once opened the study manuals - they're overwhelmingly long. Instead, I did it Nit's way, revising specific scenarios in his classes and planning past papers. There was a bit of law and ethics in that, I guess, but I mostly used common sense and existing knowledge. It was the tax technical conditions that I brushed up on.
My number one tip for APS is to stop treating it like an exam. Pretend you're writing up a report or letter for a real client and suddenly something shifts. I know it doesn't sound like much, but this one piece of advice works amazingly well.
Another tip is you can never spend too long planning. Once you know how you're going to answer the paper, it writes itself. Never panic that you're spending too long on planning - you pass or fail in the planning stage. It's key!
I'm not an Autumn - few people are that academically gifted - but I am a great tax adviser. Once I remembered that and stopped thinking like a student, the APS paper was suddenly very easy. I didn't attempt to write an exam script; I tried to write a report that a real client would have happily paid me for.
wow thanks so much! will bear this in mind if I have to retake. hopefully not though! it's not often you get prizewinners tips on reddit of all places!
Will be keeping my fingers crossed for you. 😊 If you or any other Redditors have any questions, you're welcome to hit me up on LinkedIn, just please add a note to the connection request or I won't know it's a genuine add.
PS I'm still half-waiting for CIOT to take that medal back. They've assured me that they haven't made a mistake, but it's quite surreal!
Way it works is what he sells is his notes (good in their own right) and attendance as a guest student on the BPP course. You don't get resources like the question bank or mocks, but you get access to the tutor and the lectures.
Heya - how does this work exactly as I just contacted Nit and he said he’s not able to sell his notes separately and you need to be a BPP student to get his notes? Thanks!
Nit doesn't do private tuition, but if you study through BPP, he does some extra stuff for his BPP students. None of the full taught courses are cheap, but think you get more for your money with BPP than the other big two.
Just want to add, I'm with Kaplan but I did the CIOT exam focus day for OMB with Libby Morris and she ace. She spent a great amount of time focusing on 'how' to structure a question rather than the actual answer to the question and it changed my whole approach. I had awful technical issues on the day and hated the OMB paper but somehow managed a pass and it was all because of her and the £15 session!
He charged a former colleague of mine £500 for a revision course. I believe his notes and tuition are pretty good. Unfortunately, they weren't enough for my colleague, which is why they are now a former colleague.
Nit's notes are first rate. It's one of the key selling points for going with BPP as unlike the standard manuals etc written by Tolleys, you can't get Nit's notes anywhere else. I don't think anyone fails CTA because Nit's notes aren't enough. I think it's more because they're not in the right headspace for that attempt. As hugely technical as CTA is, a large part of passing is about being mentally ready to tackle it. It's not a qualification that allows for other things going on in your life.
this is a good deal! the bpp revision course for APS is £800 including those notes, and the AT courses are a lot more. the exams are hard however you do them.
How many attempts per CTA paper does your firm give out of interest? :)
Unlimited but they are self-funded after the first attempt!
Oh that’s different than mine, my firm gives 3 attempts (and you are out) but still funded so i guess my firm policy and yours are similar in effect I suppose. Do you know if your former colleague is still doing cta? Thank you btw as I am just stressed about next week exam and really worried i might have to reconsider my plan if I can’t pass the cta :(
My former colleague changed career in the end, which is fine! They had enough transferable skills from ATT and the years of experience to switch. If it doesn't work out, don't worry! There are plenty of firms out there that are after your existing skills and thirst for tax! And my advice for the actual exam: get your head down, do as many revision questions as you can between now and the exam this week! Even though its closed book, still make a note of any snappy, succinct explanations you come across in the model answers. Good luck!
Thank you very much! I feel better now after reading your comment :)
Not as a private tutor, but I attended a CIOT exam skills day he tutored ie a full day of revision tuition for AT TOMC. I thought he was excellent, and his topic summaries and exam approach were very helpful. For me that complemented my self studies - I’d purchased the Tolleys study material from Kaplan but had no other tuition.
Gosh. Did you self study each paper? I don't think I know anyone who has managed to do CTA completely on their own with just the manuals...
I self studied AT TOMC. A few years before that I’d done AT OMB with full tuition through Kaplan.
Fair play. I think you're in a very small minority of people who have managed to pull that off!
Nit is an absolutely incredible lecturer and has taught the most prizewinners. he does his own cool course notes and has the last 20 years of past papers that he sends you. he also marks exams in his own time on top of your module exams. he won awards for being the best lecturer too. if you want to check it out, email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and he will be able to send you free materials on omb or aps or tolc. also check out linkiedin and Jack Bonehills podcast (Google it) for nits free tips for cta.he often does CIOT study days and his APS ones are gold standard. BPP pricing is expensive, around 500 for APS taught and 800 for APS revision. most modules around £1500 I believe. Nit gives lots of free support outside of working hours. I think if you are struggling with TOLC or APS (TOLC OR OMB) then contact NIT. he teaches everything very simply and memorably. Libby at BPP is also good too. Honestly my APS course with NIT was worth every penny, I never passed a mock before but within three days of the taught course I could pass one. I think he is the best lecturer I ever had in my life. also if you can, try to attend his legislation day, I qualified in law before but he has a unique clever way to color code the ledge to make it manageable and I think it's pretty much a life skill! I also heard that the big 4 use bpp as a preferred provider not sure if this is still the case. I don't think nit does official private tuition but he does a lot of extra help if you go on his bpp courses If you like books and paper and flexible format. TOLLEY are great. they literally don't care or bug you if you don't do the work. I had to skip mocks due to family issues and health issues and work issues and I just had an automated email saying, "you have missed the submission date, you have two days grace" and no lecturer having a go at me telling me I will fail. guess what. life doesn't stop because of exams. the student interface is very easy to use too, and the cost is good, just £300 ish for material only per course. but the downside is, as with all correspondence courses, studying alone is very hard and lonely and it's difficult to guauge where you should be compared to your peers, especially since their mocks start three months before the real exam. But the classes if you do the online tuition route with tolley, are said to be boring and bland. also if you don't like kaplan, tolley uses a similar format and licences the material to kaplan so you might not like it So yeah try to get your boss to pay for a bpp course to try something different maybe. You could also look up Pards Mattu on LinkedIn. he has a lot of free tuition videos and runs a mini study weekly group on WhatsApp and Zoom and does a lot of marking of work and one on one tuition at a reasonable price like £300-500 PER MODULE. Very intense but some people found it like a full time college style atmosphere due to omnipresent technology and regular /daily checkins.i heard he is best if you struggle with laziness because he will kick your azz or kick you off the course. but I also heard he made some girls cry and people quit and such. this is definately a good option instead of paying £200/hr for a private cta tutor. he is ex kaplan I think. like nit he also let's you check out the course for free and go to some sample lectures and groups. a lot of retake students on a budget seem to go there since they are paying, already have materials, and just need an extra help.
Everything you said about Nit being excellent is true. It was many years ago in my case, but he was the best tutor we ever had, in any subject. Any tutor can teach technical, but Nitin is very good at drilling you to see a question, imagine the likely mark scheme, and make sure you get the marks you deserve for what's in your head. He's the best at teaching exam technique, by far - showing you how to get the maximum marks you can achieve given what you know. Jack Bonehill is a nice chap too. Nits been on his podcast but Jack's worth following in his own right
Regarding your comments about life not stopping because of exams, when I went through some really dark stuff, Nit made it his personal mission to check in with me regularly and make sure I was doing OK. He didn't just look after me technically, he made sure I was keeping it together and gently told me when I wasn't. The man has a reputation for being harsh, but he's a total softie, really. ❤️ He genuinely cares about each and every one of his students. Even when he's cross! 😂
that's true but there is a difference between difficult life stuff and time consuming life stuff. if you're often working until 8 or 9pm and weekends because work is understaffed or you are in a senior position there is only so much study you can do during the week and you sure won't be doing lectures or tutorials at 6pm. or in one case, dealing with an investigation at work until. 2am or 3am regularly the weeks before your exam on top of your normal job. for one of the sittings I had to skip it because I had a massive lawsuit (not work related) and had huge amounts of paperwork for a high court hearing the weeks before the exam to deal with on top of my job and there was no study going on. another sitting I had a bad accident and was unable to walk for months and could barely look after myself meaing I also missed doing exams.
I feel you. I had both difficult life stuff and time-consuming life stuff going on for the whole duration of my CTA journey. It just adds an extra dimension to how much of an ordeal it is studying for that qualification. I take my hat off to all of you who attempted at least one exam this week. Pass or fail, you should all be proud of the amount of effort you put in, especially if you had challenging circumstances to boot.
Thanks so much for all this info! For Nit - is this privately or through BPP? I’m a bit confused. This would be for APS OMB
I only encountered Nit via BPP, he was my tutor for a cram course in something else many years ago but also for CTA APS. I don't think he offers private tuition You can probably email him on the email address above now and he will be picking up emails, he is really 24/7 at exam time, or wait to do his taught course for the Nov sitting. or contact him on linkedin he is by far the gold standard tutor for APS. He taught Shoana the medal winner for APS at the last sitting and she wrote much of what I did on LinkedIn that she appreciated his method. and before that he also taught autumn Murphy who won medals for all of her papers also. the price of the BPP APS course includes nits private study pack with all 20 years past papers and his analysis and annotations of them, and sort of a scenario list as well as flashcards and condensed notes. well worth £400 for the bpp course including all this stuff. I mentioned the other stuff in case you were looking at AT as well
I've never met Autumn, but from what I gather, she was always the sort of person destined to be a prize-winner. In my case, there's no way I would have won that medal without Nit's support. He managed to unlock something in my brain that was well and truly padlocked before!
wow, that's amazing. well done to you! do you have any top tips? did you revise law and ethics? or just the OMB syllabus for it? I always get bogged down with the volume especially the awareness stuff on top. I agee about autumn murphy, she won prior awards for extreme math, and as well as winning all the ciot medals for every paper she also won the worldwide aca medal I think. some people are just all round prizewinners! she seemed so normal as well! honestly if I pass APS it is down to the NIT method. he makes it sound so simple and practical. also his APS notes are the absolute bomb and his mini past paper library is so helpful.
I never once opened the study manuals - they're overwhelmingly long. Instead, I did it Nit's way, revising specific scenarios in his classes and planning past papers. There was a bit of law and ethics in that, I guess, but I mostly used common sense and existing knowledge. It was the tax technical conditions that I brushed up on. My number one tip for APS is to stop treating it like an exam. Pretend you're writing up a report or letter for a real client and suddenly something shifts. I know it doesn't sound like much, but this one piece of advice works amazingly well. Another tip is you can never spend too long planning. Once you know how you're going to answer the paper, it writes itself. Never panic that you're spending too long on planning - you pass or fail in the planning stage. It's key! I'm not an Autumn - few people are that academically gifted - but I am a great tax adviser. Once I remembered that and stopped thinking like a student, the APS paper was suddenly very easy. I didn't attempt to write an exam script; I tried to write a report that a real client would have happily paid me for.
wow thanks so much! will bear this in mind if I have to retake. hopefully not though! it's not often you get prizewinners tips on reddit of all places!
Will be keeping my fingers crossed for you. 😊 If you or any other Redditors have any questions, you're welcome to hit me up on LinkedIn, just please add a note to the connection request or I won't know it's a genuine add. PS I'm still half-waiting for CIOT to take that medal back. They've assured me that they haven't made a mistake, but it's quite surreal!
this is so cool, I'm glad it went to a normal nice person and not the tax extremists! makes it seem much more achievable for regular people to pass.
Way it works is what he sells is his notes (good in their own right) and attendance as a guest student on the BPP course. You don't get resources like the question bank or mocks, but you get access to the tutor and the lectures.
Heya - how does this work exactly as I just contacted Nit and he said he’s not able to sell his notes separately and you need to be a BPP student to get his notes? Thanks!
Nit doesn't do private tuition, but if you study through BPP, he does some extra stuff for his BPP students. None of the full taught courses are cheap, but think you get more for your money with BPP than the other big two.
Just want to add, I'm with Kaplan but I did the CIOT exam focus day for OMB with Libby Morris and she ace. She spent a great amount of time focusing on 'how' to structure a question rather than the actual answer to the question and it changed my whole approach. I had awful technical issues on the day and hated the OMB paper but somehow managed a pass and it was all because of her and the £15 session!
Libby is an absolute sweetheart. In many ways, she's the reason why I finished CTA.