StudyDuo
A CA study group works when its members share a level of India's Chartered Accountancy course (run by ICAI), a group of papers and an exam session. Look for three or four such people in your batch, your articleship office, your ICAI branch or a small Telegram or Discord group. Then give the group one job: timed papers, marked against ICAI's suggested answers.
The CA exams as of November 2026
ICAI, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, runs the course at three levels. Its FAQ on the scheme of education in force since July 1, 2023 sets out the papers and the pass rule:
| Foundation | Intermediate | Final | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papers | 4 | 6, in two groups of 3 | 6, split the same way |
| Questions | Papers 1 and 2 written; Papers 3 and 4 objective | 30% case-scenario MCQs and 70% descriptive in every paper | The same split; Paper 6 is an open-book case study |
| A wrong MCQ answer | Costs 0.25 mark | Costs nothing | Costs nothing |
| To pass | 50% overall and no paper under 40%, in one sitting | 40% in each paper and 50% across the group | Same as Intermediate |
| Held in | January, May and September | January, May and September | May and November |
Sit both groups together, and the 50% can also be reached across all six papers. Score 60% or more in a paper while failing its group, and you're exempt from that paper for the next three exams.
The Final's calendar changed this year. On April 6, 2026, ICAI announced that the Final, then held in January, May and September, would be held twice a year, in May and November, from May 2026 on. The first November Final was scheduled for November 2 to 13, 2026 (ICAI's notice).
The next Intermediate exams are in January 2027: Group I on January 2, 4 and 6, and Group II on January 8, 10 and 12. Foundation papers fall on January 3, 5, 7 and 9. Each Intermediate paper runs from 2 to 5 p.m. India time, after 15 minutes of reading time (ICAI, September 23, 2026).
Pass rates in 2026, group by group
Every result comes with ICAI's own count of who appeared and who passed. These are the figures for the Intermediate exams of January, May and September 2026, and for the Finals of January and May 2026:
| Exam and session | Group I | Group II |
|---|---|---|
| Intermediate, January 2026 | ||
| Intermediate, May 2026 | ||
| Intermediate, September 2026 | ||
| Final, January 2026 | ||
| Final, May 2026 |
Of the candidates who sat both groups in one session, 13.21% passed in the September Intermediate and 14.07% in the May Final. At Foundation, 18.93% passed in September 2026.
Two things here matter to a group. In none of these five sessions did even one candidate in four pass a group. And the rates swing: between January and May, Final Group I fell from 21.03% to 12% while Group II rose from 9.76% to 20.49%. So agree at the start what happens when some members pass and others sit again.
Who belongs in a CA study group
Match on what ICAI's rules make different from one candidate to the next:
- Level. Foundation, Intermediate and Final have separate papers, so a mixed group has nothing to swap.
- Group I, Group II or both. In the September 2026 Intermediate, most candidates sat one group, not two: ICAI counted 100,301 in Group I, 68,400 in Group II and 38,339 in both (result analysis).
- Session. The tax papers follow the session. For January 2027, ICAI's revision test paper in Taxation applies income-tax law as amended by the Finance Act, 2025, with notifications issued up to June 30, 2026. A member sitting a later session may be studying a different cut of the law.
- Free hours. An articled assistant's week is 35 working hours, in offices that generally train between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. (ICAI's directions). Under the two-year articleship, ICAI's FAQ gives 12 days of leave a year and puts the Final at least six months after training ends. Some candidates on the older three-year articleship could sit the November 2026 Final during their last months of training (ICAI's requirements).
- Medium. ICAI lets candidates answer in English or Hindi. You can only mark a script you read easily.
Then keep it to three or four people. Susan Wheelan studied 329 work groups in US organizations (Small Group Research, 2009). Groups of three or four were significantly more productive than groups of five or six on a number of measures. Those were work teams, not exam candidates. What experiments found about group size, memory and effort is in Study Alone or in a Group?
Where to find members
- Your batch and your office. Classmates in your coaching or college batch are usually aiming at the same session. Under the current scheme, articleship starts only after both groups of Intermediate, so the articled assistants who joined with you are headed for the same Final.
- Your ICAI branch. ICAI's Board of Studies runs two series of mock test papers before a session. Students who want to write them in person are told to approach their branch (announcement for January 2027). The people in that hall are sitting your papers in your session. In a 2019 notice, ICAI said its regional councils and branches provide reading rooms across India (ICAI), and its rules for students' associations list study circles among their functions. Ask your branch what it runs now.
- Discord and Reddit. Discord's directory lists a "Chartered Accountants" server, the community server of the subreddit r/CharteredAccountants, with more than 10,000 members when we checked on November 11, 2026 (Discord). The same directory search shows smaller servers that call themselves study servers for CA students. Our comparison of Discord study servers shows what to check before you join one.
- Telegram. Good for finding people, poor as the group itself: the next section explains why.
- A live study room. In StudyDuo's Find Partners, filter people by country and city, then by interest: CA is on the list, next to Accounting and Finance. Message the people you find to ask about their level and session.
Wherever you post, put the match in one line: "CA Inter, Group I, January 2027, English, weekdays 7 to 9 in the evening". People who type "CA Inter study group" or "CA Final study group" into a search box are matching on those same words.
Why a big Telegram channel isn't a group
Telegram's FAQ separates two things that look alike in search. A channel broadcasts: it can have unlimited subscribers, and each post carries the channel's name and photo, not a person's (Telegram FAQ). A group is where members write to each other. The CA results we found on Telegram on November 11, 2026 were mostly channels: notes, lectures and exam updates posted by an admin. That's material, and no channel can mark your answer to an Advanced Accounting question.
So recruit in the big spaces and study in a small one. Post your one line, move the three people who answer into a group of your own, and let in exam news only with an icai.org link. In 2026, ICAI issued three notices (April 17, June 18 and July 6) about false claims on social media, from a new exam authority to a data breach. Each told students not to believe unverified reports.
Before you join strangers
Three habits help. Keep the first messages in the public group and about the syllabus. Share a username, not a phone number: Telegram's FAQ says you can write in groups without your number showing. And never post your registration number and roll number together: ICAI's result site asks for exactly those two to show a candidate's marks (ICAI). Are Online Study Rooms Safe? has a longer checklist.
How to run it: one paper, marked twice
A CA study group earns its hours in one loop, repeated every week:
- Pick the paper a week ahead. ICAI posts question papers, suggested answers and revision test papers for each session, by level. The September 2026 Intermediate answers are already up.
- Write it alone, at the same hour. Give it the real three hours, with the reading time first. Final Paper 6 takes four hours and is open book.
- Swap, then build the marking sheet. Split each question's marks across the points in ICAI's answer, mark the script against that sheet and write the total on the first page.
- Mark your own script as well, before you see your marker's total.
- Log every lost mark in one shared sheet: the paper, the chapter and the reason (didn't know it, misread it, ran out of time).
- Meet for 45 minutes. Discuss only the questions where the two totals disagree or where two members lost the same marks.
Why you mark twice
The second marking, your own, is where the learning showed up in a classroom experiment. In 2006, Philip Sadler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Eddie Good, of a Massachusetts middle school, tested 101 seventh graders in four science classes (Educational Assessment). After a test, one class graded its own papers with a rubric the class had drawn up, two classes graded other students' papers, and one class graded nothing. A week later, all four took the same test again without warning:
| After the first test, the class | Gain |
|---|---|
| Graded nothing | |
| Graded other students' papers | |
| Graded its own papers |
Source: Sadler & Good, 2006 (95 students who took both tests)
Only the self-graders' gain was statistically significant. Peer marks still earned their place: they tracked the teacher's closely (a correlation of 0.905), though they ran 3.3 points lower on average. Self-marks ran 1.9 points higher, and weaker students tended to overrate themselves. So use both: a peer's total keeps yours honest, and your own marking teaches you the answer. These were seventh graders in one teacher's classes, retested on the same questions, so read it as a pattern to try.
ICAI's suggested answers are model answers, a kind of feedback that may do more than students expect. In 2004 and 2005, 183 biology students got personal comments and model answers during their courses. Most wanted both, with a preference for the comments. In the exams, the 155 whose marks were analyzed scored higher on the questions tied to model answers, in both years (Huxham, 2007).
A calendar for a January 2027 Intermediate group
ICAI has already fixed most of the dates. Its two mock series give one paper at a time, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The question paper is posted by 9:30 a.m. and the answer key within 48 hours (Board of Studies, October 14, 2026):
| Dates | ICAI's calendar | The group |
|---|---|---|
| By November 16 | Exam forms close (November 19 with a late fee) | Confirm who sits which group |
| November 19 to 30 | Mock Test Papers, Series I: six papers | Write each paper on its day; mark it when the key is out |
| December 3 to 14 | Series II: six papers | The same loop; compare lost marks with Series I, chapter by chapter |
| December 15 to January 1 | No mock papers | Revision test papers and the chapters in the log |
| January 2 to 12 | The exams, Group I first | No meetings; one message after each paper |
The Board of Studies announced the same two series before the May and November 2026 Finals (its announcements). A group aiming at the May 2027 Final can copy the table once ICAI publishes those dates; none were out on November 11, 2026.
When a group hurts
Working in teams can flatter your marks. Tara Shawver compared two formats of an advanced financial accounting course (Accounting Education, 2020). Students in cooperative teams scored higher on quizzes than students taught by lecture, and lower on the exams. In a first-year financial accounting course with 291 students, those who chose team learning over lectures did better, after controlling for ability and gender (Opdecam and colleagues, 2014). Neither study assigned students at random, and CA papers are closer to the advanced course. The test of your group is each member's solo, timed score.
| Sign | What to change |
|---|---|
| More meetings than papers written | No script, no discussion: a member who didn't write the paper only marks |
| Problems solved together go well, but solo scores don't move | Solve alone and timed first; talk only after marking |
| Two totals for one script are more than 10 marks apart | Mark that question together, line by line against ICAI's answer |
| A member moves to a later session | Split the group: you no longer write the same papers on the same dates |
| A member passes a group | They stay one more session as a second marker, or you recruit |
Meeting online
A CA study group online needs two kinds of room. The review meeting needs sound and a shared screen, so use any video call. The writing needs the opposite: silence, a clock and people who can see you're still at your desk.
StudyDuo's Focus Room is the second kind. It's open 24/7, mics are off, and you can read what each person is working on under their name. Your camera can show your face or only your desk, or stay off. Sessions last 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes, so a three-hour paper is a 120 followed by a 60. A free account includes an hour of video a day: enough for a daily block, not for a whole paper. A new account has no daily limit for its first 14 days.
Between papers, Study Hour gives the group one fixed hour a day that everyone starts together. For a review between two people, a 1:1 session has sound, and both of you need a verified photo. More on how a silent online study group works.
In Canada, the CPA route ends with the Common Final Examination: finding a CFE study partner covers marking each other's cases.
FAQ
Is one CA Final study partner enough, or do I need a group?
A pair can run the whole loop: write, swap, mark, then mark your own. A third or fourth member adds a second opinion when two totals for one script disagree, and keeps the group alive when someone is away.
Does a CA Foundation study group work the same way?
For Papers 1 and 2, yes: they're written papers, so swap and mark them. Papers 3 and 4 are objective, with a quarter mark off for each wrong answer, so check them against the key and compare which questions each of you guessed.
Can members live in different cities?
Yes. ICAI holds each paper on the same dates and at the same hours across India, so your calendars match. Write at the same hour on video and swap scans of the scripts.
How many hours a week should the group take?
About five: one three-hour paper, an hour of marking and a 45-minute meeting. Everything else in your week stays solo.
