First mock..Total failure, not even 50%! Plz tell me it is normal:(

Break your weaknesses down by subject.  Then go into Qbank and do problems in that area.

http://www.qc4blog.com/?p=905

Are you doing small practice exams in the Qbank (25-50 questions) after every reading?  This helps….I am only just finishing Book 4 (Schweser) but have been doing all the LO quizzes and reading quizzes along the way, so I am slowly building more knowledge on top of my previous readings.  You have a enough time to go through the reading again and do the quizzes.  This method helped me Pass CAIA Level II so I decided to stick with it.  

As a word of encouragement, you only need to score around 70-75% of the 240 multiple choice questions correctly. This means, in the worst case scenario , you need to answer 0.75*240=180 questions correctly and that you can afford to answer 60 questions incorrectly. That comes out to be 30 questions per session that you can get wrong and still pass. So in a more realistic scenario you could probably answer 33 questions incorrectly per session and still pass…so focus on the biggies : ethics,equities,fra and so on..there is an ethics adjustment so keep that in mind too..there is still time but use it well.

Try not to panic my friend we are in the final stretch. Your results just mean you need to brush up on some formulas and review your strengths that you forgot.

I got like 60% on the first Schweser test. It gets better as you get used to the questions. 

Don’t worry at all. It’s very different knowing the curriculum and knowing how to answer the questions / score well on the exams. The more questions you do the more you’ll recognize what you’re being asked and how to answer them (and get used to understanding “which of these doesn’t change the least when B changes more than C” type mind bogglers).

I found that reading the CFAI EoC summaries then doing the Q’s really helped me ensure I had a good understanding of most areas before I got cracking on the mocks, if I did horribly in a section then I skim read the chapter again. Also it sounds simple but make sure when you’re checking your answers you read those Q’s/Ans you got wrong and understand why. Also if you’re not sure on a question and have to guess then put a mark next to it and read the answer even if you guess right – this stops you missing out studying something you don’t understand fully.

Big tip as well: Read the Schweser quicksheet everyday until you’ve pretty much memorized the whole thing. You will eventually and it will be worth it.

It’s not a great sign but still very commonl. You need to study harder and work a lot of problems. By exam day no problem should look really unique to you if you are prepared well. It should almost be like muscle memory. “ah one of those, sure.”

There’s still a lot of time to improve your current scores.  Try to make a short list of formulas you tend to forget often as you go on with your revision, then ponder briefly on why the formulas are the way they are.  For instance, why is Revenue the numerator in most ratios that involve turnovers but it becomes the denominator in most ratios that involves margins?…Thinking about the formulas this way will help you build a better understanding of how they work and also how they apply to other concepts.  You won’t need to memorize them, you’d just simply understand them.

Does the 50% include guesses?  I found it easier just to leave questions I didn’t know blank.  I felt it gave me a better read on what I actually knew and didn’t know.

Yeah the very important silver lining is that you have 29 days left.  The classic error a lot of people make is waiting till the last minute to actually start testing themselves on problems, instead spending all their time reading study notes.

There’s a guy on the level 2 forum that has failed level 2 five times, I believe. He really knew the curriculum well.  He could explain the tiniest little details.   When we asked him, “How have you been scoring on Mocks?” he responded, “Oh, I’ve never taken one, I never feel ready in time.”  Well, that’s his mistake.  He failed again this year having not taken any mocks. 

You can spend forever trying to memorize the study notes.  This is a bad strategy.  You need to read the study notes and work problems until you are blue in the face.  If you are very practiced at doing all major types of problems on any level curriculum that will translate into much more efficient useage of your time on exam day.  You will be able to guess a lot more accurately.  You will have more time to work on the lengthier problems. The formulas and ratios will be very easy to remember if you have actualy used them dozens of times. 

This does not mean, skip study notes and go straight to the practice exams. It does mean that at some point you need to focus on actually studying questions and not the curriculum. 

Most importantly you need to do problems (they can be any problems not just mock problems) and spend a lot of time after you have done the question understanding the answer.  Just taking the mock is a relatively useless exercise.  The real benefit comes from analyizng each section and each question to understand what you didn’t know and what you needed to do that you didn’t.  This also goes for any good guesses you make.  Practice in will also help you build up a strong intuition for what kind of tricks and things to look out for.  This is very useful in all topics, but especially ethics. 

Dear CFA,

I want to start off by thanking you for taking away the next month of my life. I appreciate it. I enjoy the 11 hour days during the week where I work 8 hours and try to study 3 more after work. I love getting home at 10pm exhausted, mentally & physically, I love it, thank you so much!!! Oh also thank you for the 5 hours of sleep I will be getting every night as I toss and turn in my bed because I am too stressed out from this exam to sleep! Also I appreciate the fact that you keep me fully occupied on the weekends banishing me from a social life and causing my gf to constently resent me for neglecting her because i am too busy studying.

I have read all the schweser books (began reading 8/22/12 finished on 10/31/12).

have spent the last 3 days on Schweser Pro reading LOS a couple times for each topic, then proceed to write a 20-40 question quiz on what I have just read. (seems like a good way to pick this shit up!)

So far I covered Portfolio MGMT, Equity, Derivitatives, Fixed Income, MRKT organization, have done 180 questions, getting 90 correct…an incredible 50%…wow good for me!!! I like how everyone says “oh just take a few quiz’s and you will know where your weaknesses are and focus on those”…well great advice, might as well just say “oh you are probably not going to retain anything you read from schweser, expect to fail every topic you review!!!!”

Panic mode…ENGAGE…

These were also the LAST topics I had read in Schweser, meaning it was the freshest in my memory.

My biggest concern right now is how it seems I have not memorized any of the formulas, any question I get to “calculate” i know what the question is asking but forget what goes where etc…I haven’t felt this shot down since my first junior high dance!

28 days to go….

J.R.Gold wrote:

Dear CFA,

I want to start off by thanking you for taking away the next month of my life. I appreciate it. I enjoy the 11 hour days during the week where I work 8 hours and try to study 3 more after work. I love getting home at 10pm exhausted, mentally & physically, I love it, thank you so much!!! Oh also thank you for the 5 hours of sleep I will be getting every night as I toss and turn in my bed because I am too stressed out from this exam to sleep! Also I appreciate the fact that you keep me fully occupied on the weekends banishing me from a social life and causing my gf to constently resent me for neglecting her because i am too busy studying.

Man, you should freaking happy you only have to work 8 hours a day.  I know people in investment banking or research that work 15 hours a day, then go home to study.