The Total Cost of a CMA

Becoming a CMA® (Certified Management Accountant) can significantly impact your career and earning potential—but it doesn’t come quickly or cheaply. Here are the actual costs of passing the CMA exam in terms of time and money.

First, the CMA Exam & Its Parts

To become a CMA, candidates must meet the professional requirements set by the U.S.-based Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and pass the two-part CMA exam. You’ll also need to pay all applicable exam and membership fees, which are covered later in this post.

Part 1 of the CMA exam focuses on financial reporting, planning, performance and internal control. Its weighting and focus breakdown looks like this:

1. External Financial Reporting Decisions (15%)
2. Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting (20%)
3. Performance Management (20%)
4. Cost Management (15%)
5. Internal Controls (15%)
6. Technology and Analytics (15%)

Part 2 of the CMA exam focuses more on financial analysis and decision-making than Part 1. It’s also broken into six sections:

1. Financial Statement Analysis (20%)
2. Corporate Finance (20%)
3. Business Decision Analysis (25%)
4. Enterprise Risk Management (10%)
5. Capital Investment Decisions (10%)
6. Professional Ethics (15%)

You can take the CMA exam in any order you wish. However, because of its composition and higher pass rates, many candidates—especially those with a CPA license—elect to take Part 2 of the CMA exam first.

Minimum Study Time Required

As you can see, the CMA exam covers a lot of ground. IMA has compiled its CMA program curriculum around 650 Learning Outcome Statements. Mastering this large amount of information will obviously require a good deal of study time.

How much time exactly? Well, it depends on the student and their current knowledge of management accounting. However, we can give you a rough guideline for the minimum time you should spend preparing for the CMA exam.

Our UWorld CMA Review Course covers 100% of the CMA program’s Learning Outcome Statements, and makes a *rough* count of the time it would take a candidate to complete all of the lessons, readings, practice questions and exams in the courses.

Part 1: 72 – 100 study hours

Part 2: 72 – 100 study hours

If you break that out into 12 weeks, it would amount to at least 8 hours of studying per week. Most people attempt to condense their studying into much tighter timelines.

Suppose you were to pass both parts of the exam in consecutive testing windows (January/February, May/June, September/October). In that case, you can expect to spend 6 to 8 months devoted to preparing for and passing the CMA exam. The more time you dedicate to studying, the higher your likelihood of passing.

Exam Fees & Costs

All figures are up-to-date and accurate as of 2024. 

Cost of Study Materials

Your performance on the CMA exam directly correlates to the quality of the study materials you use in preparation. You should rely on study materials that map directly to the CMA curriculum and its Learning Outcome Statements for the absolute best performance and your best chance of passing the exam on your first try.

Only the UWorld CMA Review Course covers all 650 Learning Outcome Statements. You can certainly find lesser and/or less expensive study options, but none will fully prepare you for the CMA exam. If you have to retake one of the exam parts, you’ll quickly see your “savings” vanish.

Review Course Cost: $1,299

Total True Costs of the CMA Exam

Time: 6 months/ 200 hours study time — *minimum*

Money: $2,500-2,900

And there you have it.