Difficulty of Schweser practice exam and more...

Hi all,

Was searching about Schweser practice exam and google brings me here.

I know this question has been asked many times, but i been seeing different answers, some say schweser practice exam is harder, some say is much easier, relative to the actual exam…I wonder could anyone share their experience?

I have been revising with the volume one practice exam, i think its not extremely hard or terribly easy, but achieving 70% in timed condition would definitly not be easy. I cant really have a good idea because i study the question one by one and when i dont know how to do i go straight for the answer, and so of course i didnt do it under exam condition.

and the other thing i notice is that schweser ask a lot of conceptual question in their practice exam, ie. no math involve but more like understanding and memoring stuff. i would say the ratio is like 70% concept and 30% math or 60% concept and 40% math, depending on the topics. i also wonder how it compares in the actual exam, i afraid i settle too much on these conceptual questions and underestimate the amount of calculations work…

any comment?? thanks a lot!!

Hello,

From my own experience I can tell that CFA mocks are harder, but schweser mocks are always helpful so keep doing them anyway. Doing more CFA mocks is preferable cause you get an actual exposure to exam-like questions. I have done like 6-7 Scwheser mocs and I intend to do CFA mocks during last week. I recommend you to do both, but CFA mocks results should be your benchmark.

Regards,

David.

thanks a lot david!

i will give a go at the official mock when i get time. Sadly i only managed to take leave for the last 3 days before the exam, and I am lagging behind quite a bit in Financial reporting. hope i ll be able to get enough time for revision.

you seem to be doing pretty well having done 6 schweser practice exams! good luck to u!

I am working on exam #3 (am) of volume 2 schweser mocks…not sure if it’s just this exam or what but am finding it quite difficult, and based on what i’ve checked my answers for, I will be scoring less than 70%. but it is good practice

Yeah thats unfortunate and work really is a huge predicament. Anyway don’t stress too much FRA is hard and almost everyone does lag in that area. I do mediocre on that area aswell, but there is always room to improve. And an additional note from my experience its not the number of mocks you do that matters, its how effectively you review and work on your weaknesses. I scored around 65-68 in my first 3 mocks, cause I focused on the number rather than review. If your score dosen’t increase you are probably doing poor review.

Hope this was helpful.

Regards,

David.

i just had a go on some parts on the volume2 of schweser practice exam

i just did the equity investment part…does any body find volume 2 much much more difficult!!!

i mean not every question, but half of the questions are very difficult for me…

really losing confidence sigh

How quickly is everyone completing the Schweser mocks? I have only completed V1 Exam 1 and finished the AM and PM test in 2 hours and 15 minutes and 2 hours and 20 minutes, respectively. I felt comfortable with my speed and did not feel as if I was rushing. (For the CFA veterans) What kind of speed target for the mock exams translate to a reasonable expectation of speed under exam conditions?

i found schweser to be harder than cfai practice exams, if i had to estimate i would say i did 5% better on cfai tests compared to schweser. at this point you should switch to solely cfai material. don’t underestimate the amount of mechanical questions on the exam, i would say at least 40% of questions you find on the exam will plug and chug questions requiring you to know any applicable formulas.

I just scored 81% on a 6 hour Schweser exam. I will now be moving my focus to CFAI mocks.

The styles are very different. Schweser seems a lot more wordy and the layout of the pages are completely different which, although there’s no content difference, can take time to adapt to.

do u feel any differene between schweser practice exam volume1 and volume 2, with respect to the level of difficulty?

i am working on the practice questions by topics on the CFA website, i found that they have some really easy qestions as well as some difficult questions with a lot of steps involved.

And the cfai pracice is different from the mock they provie right? All I see is a AM mock, PM mock and a full mock AM + PM