Your One-Page Primer for Results Day Tomorrow

#1 - When Is It?

For Level I and II, it’s tomorrow, in case you didn’t know. After 9am ET on the 24th of July, results will be emailed to your registered email address with the CFA Institute. Equivalent times in major timezones:

• US PST: 6AM
• UK: 2PM
• Europe: 3PM
• India, Pakistan: 6.30PM
• China, Singapore: 9PM

Emails may take several hours from this time to land in your inbox - remember, there are thousands of emails being sent. If you’re at work you may want to set up auto-forwarding, or for more bombastic alternatives check calvol’s auto-forward solution in this thread.

#2 - How will results look like?

The formats vary from year to year. Last year the email templates began with ‘Congratulations’ for pass emails and ‘I’m sorry’ for fail emails, but this obviously doesn’t mean this year it would be the same. The generic gist of it will be as follows:
 

Dear So and So,
Congratulations / I’m sorry to inform you….
Your results for the June 2012 Level I/II CFA exam are below. The pass rate for June 2012 Level I/II was XX%. If you have questions or comments, please contact us.
Level I/II: Pass/Fail
The table below illustrates your subject matter strengths and weaknesses. The three columns on the right are marked with asterisks to indicate your performance on each question or topic area.

This will then be followed with your exam breakdown, which leads us to #3…

#3 - How are the results presented? Do I get a breakdown?

In your exam email you should receive a matrix in which the rows are various topics tested in your particular CFA level as well as the maximum points allocated to each topic. The columns are 3 points categories - 0-50%, 51-70%, 71-100%.

This obviously means you don’t get a full breakdown of your performance. If you want to dissect your results further, use this calculator.

#4 - I passed/failed! What are the next steps?

Firstly, if you passed, congratulations! Registration will be open the day after results day (i.e. 25th July for this year) so you can register yourself as a candidate for the next level then! As for partying, I’m sure you need no pointers from me.

If you failed, don’t give up! More than 70% of you indicated that you would retake the exam immediately - I completely agree with this frame of mind. Failing is simply an indication that you should change your methods, or put in more effort - don’t give up on the dream! 
 

#5 - I can’t have failed! I want a retabulation.

If you failed and wish to ask for a retabulation, by all means do so. I wouldn’t recommend it in most cases - it costs $100 and I have not heard of any successes (i.e. fail to pass) with retabulation so far.

My advice is to only consider it if you were honestly super-confident about your results, and you got piss-poor results (as shown by the categories and your 40/60/80 scores etc).

All the best for results day - my fingers will be crossed for all of you!

I write weekly about the CFA exams at 300 Hours.