The CMA essay section is gone. Here is exactly what replaced it.
From the September/October 2026 window, candidates in Jordan and across the Middle East no longer write essays. They answer case-based questions — and the IMA has published a real sample that shows precisely what that means.
For as long as most working accountants can remember, the CMA exam ended the same way: three hours of multiple-choice questions, then one hour in front of a blank text box, typing prose against the clock. That second hour is over. The ICMA — the body inside the IMA that governs the CMA program — has replaced the essay section with case-based questions, which the IMA abbreviates to CBQs.
This article sets out what changed, what did not, and what an IMA sample case looks like item by item. Where the IMA has stated something officially we quote it. Where a figure comes from a review provider rather than the IMA, we say so — because several widely repeated numbers about this change do not appear in any IMA document, and you should not plan around them.
The timeline, and where you stand today
The transition ran across three testing windows. If you sit in Jordan, the Gulf, Egypt, or anywhere else in the Middle East, the important thing is that the choice has already closed.
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January / February 2026
Unchanged. Essays, exactly as before.
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May / June 2026
Candidates could choose, per exam part, between essays and case-based questions. The IMA called this “the final testing window where essays are offered for the English exam.” That window has closed.
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September / October 2026 onward — the next window
Case-based questions become the standard format. In the IMA's words, essays “will no longer be available in English for the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa.”
There is no longer a decision to make. If you sit the CMA in an Arab country, the next available window is case-based only. The IMA does not name Jordan specifically — it names the Middle East as a region, and the only places still offering essays are Japan, Mainland China and Taiwan (China).
What a case-based question actually is
A CBQ is a short business scenario followed by a set of questions about it. The IMA describes it as “a case study that contains approximately 250 words followed by a set of questions including drag and drop, fill in the blank, select from a list, and calculation questions.”
Two things about that sentence deserve emphasis, because they are the entire change.
First, the new format removes essay-style written responses. You drag, select, choose from lists, and enter answers into structured fields. There are no essay paragraphs or extended written explanations in the IMA's published sample. The emphasis shifts from composing prose to interpreting the case and selecting or calculating the correct response.
Second, the case does not go away. The scenario is still there, still about the length of a short essay prompt, still carrying exhibits — financial data, tables, charts. What changed is how you respond to it, not how much you have to understand before you can.
The IMA's own landing page says “You will answer two case-based questions in the second part of your CMA exam,” which reads as though only Part 2 changed. It does not. “Second part” means the second section of each exam — the one that follows the multiple choice. The CMA Handbook settles it: the format applies “for each exam part.” Both Part 1 and Part 2 use case-based questions.
The structure of an exam part
Per the CMA Handbook: “Each case-based question (CBQ) exam consists of 100 multiple-choice questions and two CBQ sets. You will have three hours to complete the multiple-choice section and one hour total to complete both CBQs.” The IMA adds that “candidates should plan to allocate approximately 30 minutes per item set.”
Note the wording: the hour is pooled. The IMA recommends allocating about 30 minutes to each case set, but that is time-management guidance rather than a separate enforced timer for each case. You should therefore practise managing the full hour across both case sets.
The gate between the sections survives intact. The Handbook: “The CBQ section only becomes accessible after the multiple-choice section has successfully been completed with the candidate earning a minimum of 50% of points.” And, as before, “once you exit the multiple-choice section, you cannot return to it.”
Inside the IMA's own sample: six real items
The IMA has published a free specimen containing two complete cases — one for Part 1, a heating-and-cooling maintenance company, and one for Part 2, a corn and wheat processor called Buckeye Grain. Each case carries six items. This is the single most useful document available on the change, and it is worth an hour of anyone's study time.
There is a detail buried in the file that tells you a great deal about the IMA's intent. Each sample case is internally labelled “Written from CMA Sample Essay HCS” and “Written from CMA Sample Essay Buckeye Grain.” The IMA built its sample CBQs by converting its own existing sample essays. The scenarios are the same scenarios. Only the answering changed.
Here is what the twelve items actually ask you to do.
“Use your mouse to drag-and-drop the following steps into the correct order.”
One item asks for the five steps of revenue recognition in sequence; another for the six stages of preparing a master budget. You are not explaining the model — you are demonstrating that you hold it in the right order.
Seven statements to be sorted into “flexible budget” versus “static budget.” Characteristics matched to the four stages of the product life cycle.
Watch this one. The categorisation item in the Part 2 case states “Not all options will be used,” and the answer key confirms two of the six options match nothing. You cannot solve these by elimination — a leftover option is not a signal that you have made a mistake.
“Type your answer in the box (numbers only).”
Three of the twelve items work this way: a quarterly operating income figure, a break-even point in units, and an indifference point between a capital-intensive and a labour-intensive production method. No choices to work backwards from, no rounding to the nearest plausible option.
Sentences with blanks, each filled from a list. One item in the sample has six blanks in a single question. These reward precision with terminology in a way an essay grader, reading for overall sense, never quite could.
The sample also contains a plain four-option multiple-choice item and a “Select TWO answers” item with six options — neither of which appears in the IMA's published list of CBQ formats. Treat that list as illustrative rather than exhaustive.
Every one of the twelve sample items is tagged to a specific Content Specification Outline code and Learning Outcome Statement — the same codes that govern the rest of the exam. The Part 1 case spans four different sections of the syllabus in six questions. Read that as a warning against studying topics in isolation: one case can cross the whole part.
How many questions per case?
Six, in the IMA's sample. But the IMA has published no rule, and the review providers disagree: UWorld says five to seven items per case, Becker says six to seven, Gleim says up to seven. Prepare for a range, not a number.
Before and after, side by side
| Essay format (until May/June 2026) | Case-based format (September 2026 on) | |
|---|---|---|
| Second section | Two 30-minute essay scenarios | Two case-based question sets |
| What you produce | Roughly 10–12 written responses or calculations, typed as prose | Selected, dragged, listed and numeric responses. No essay-style writing |
| Case length | Two scenarios describing a business situation | Approximately 250 words each, plus exhibits |
| Time | 3 hours MCQ + 1 hour essays | Unchanged — 3 hours MCQ + 1 hour CBQs |
| Access gate | 50% of the multiple choice required | Unchanged |
| Partial credit | Yes, awarded by human graders | Yes — the IMA confirms CBQs “give partial credit” |
| Language burden | Typing speed and written English affected your day | Reading comprehension only |
That last row is the one we would underline for our own students. For a candidate whose first language is Arabic, the essay hour carried a cost that had nothing to do with management accounting: composing technical argument in a second language, at speed, on a keyboard, while a clock ran. That cost is now gone. What remains is whether you can read a case and do the work.
What has not changed — which is most of it
It is easy to read “the exam is changing” as “everything is changing.” It is not. The IMA is explicit: “The exam price, length, credential name, and content do not change. The topics you study and the skills you demonstrate remain the same.”
- The syllabus. The Content Specification Outline and the Learning Outcome Statements are untouched.
- The difficulty. The IMA: “The case-based questions test the same topics at the same difficulty level as the essays. Only the format is different.”
- The pass mark. Still a scaled score of 360 out of 500.
- The weighting. The IMA states the CBQ section “has the same weight as the essay section.”
- Scoring behaviour. Points for each correct answer, partial credit, and — worth remembering under time pressure — “there is no penalty for wrong answers.”
- The 100 multiple-choice questions, the three hours, the one-way gate, the testing windows and the fees.
You will see the split “75% multiple choice / 25% second section” quoted widely, and it is probably right — the IMA itself used it, with a tilde, in a 2023 candidate webinar, and UWorld and HOCK repeat it. But that figure appears nowhere in the current CMA Handbook or on the IMA's CBQ pages. The IMA's own current position is only that the section carries “the same weight as the essay section.” Treat 75/25 as a well-supported estimate, not a rule.
What it means if you are studying right now
Should you delay?
No, and the IMA says so directly: “There is no reason to wait to start studying. Starting now keeps you moving toward completion, and your learning applies to both formats.” Miles Education put it more bluntly in August 2026: if you were waiting for the dust to settle, it has.
There is a real argument, made by Gleim, for trying to pass before any exam change takes effect — the unknowns of a revised exam can undermine confidence. That argument has now expired for this change. There is no old format left to beat.
Do you need new books?
The IMA's position: “You won't need to purchase new study materials.” The syllabus is identical, so your notes, your textbook and your question bank all still teach the right content.
What ages is not your material but your rehearsal. Practising by writing essay answers is now practising a skill the exam no longer tests. The underlying work — reading a case, extracting the numbers, computing the answer — is exactly the same and still worth every hour.
Is it easier?
Nobody credible is claiming so, and we would not either. The honest summary from across the review industry is different, not easier. Two forces pull in opposite directions:
- In your favour: no writing, no typing speed, no grader's interpretation of your prose, and no penalty for a wrong answer.
- Against you: numeric-entry items give you less room to demonstrate your reasoning inside the response field. Under essays, showing correct workings could sometimes earn credit even when the final figure was wrong. In a structured numeric item, the accuracy of the final number therefore matters more.
That trade is the substance of the change. Arithmetic accuracy matters more than it used to. Expression matters less than it ever has.
How your preparation should change
- Work the IMA's specimen until it is boring. Two cases, twelve items, free, and written by the people who write your exam. Nothing a review provider has produced carries the same authority.
- Stop rehearsing prose; start rehearsing extraction. Take any essay scenario in your existing materials and ask, for each sub-question: what would this look like as a drag-and-drop, a drop-down, or a number in a box? That converts your old bank into new practice.
- Drill sequences and classifications explicitly. The five steps of revenue recognition, the order of the master budget, flexible versus static, the product life-cycle stages. These used to be things you referred to inside an argument. Now they are answers in their own right.
- Practise computing to a final number, cleanly. Break-even in units. Indifference points. Operating income for a quarter. No options to check yourself against — get comfortable committing to a figure.
- Rehearse the clock. One hour, two cases, pooled. Sit both together and learn what 30 minutes of case work feels like, because the exam will not warn you when the first half is gone.
- Keep the multiple-choice section sacred. The 50% gate is unchanged, and it is still the only thing standing between you and a wasted sitting. Nothing in this change makes the first three hours less important.
What the IMA has not said
Some claims circulating about this change are not sourced to the IMA at all. We would rather tell you what is unknown than repeat something confident and wrong.
- Faster results. You will read that scores now arrive in one to two weeks instead of six, on the logic that machine-scored items need no human grader. It is plausible. The IMA has published nothing about it. Plan around the timetable you already know.
- Pass rates. One provider attributes to the IMA a statement that expected pass rates will not change. We could not find the IMA saying anything at all about pass rates in connection with this change.
- A fixed item count per case. Six is what the sample shows. It is not a published rule, and the providers quote four different ranges.
- How the 50% gate is measured. The IMA describes it two ways in two places — “50% of points” in the Handbook's CBQ paragraph, “50% of the multiple-choice questions correctly” on its CBQ page. In practice, aim comfortably above half either way.
The CMA is testing the same knowledge, at the same difficulty, for the same pass mark, in the same four hours. What has changed is the response format: essay-style answers have been replaced by structured case-based items. If you were already studying, keep studying — and spend one evening with the IMA's sample cases so that the format holds no surprises on exam day.
Sources
- IMA — CMA Handbook (revision of 25 March 2026): imanet.org/ima-certifications/cma-certification/cma-handbook
- IMA — “The CMA Exam Format is Evolving” and the case-based questions FAQ: imanet.org/cma-case-based-questions
- IMA/ICMA — official case-based question sample cases (Part 1 and Part 2), linked from the page above
- Becker — “CMA exam changes: what's changing about the 2026 CMA exam,” 23 March 2026
- Gleim, UWorld, HOCK International and Miles Education — provider commentary, consulted for the figures explicitly attributed to them above