Hi all, just wondering what your thoughts are on the exam this September? Did you find it more, less or same difficulty as the mock exam, Uppermark and Kaplan?
Having studied on Uppermark, exam questions were pretty much in line with what I expected. Maybe too many questions involving options, but probably it is only a feeling of mine… I also found first 100 questions overall a bit more difficult than the second 100 (i don’t know if order is the same for all candidates). We’ll see…
I mirror the view on all the option-related questions. Tons of volume on those, but i feel like i did fairly well there. Dropped the ball on some layup formulas…couldn’t muster the energy to memorize each one following LIII. Also felt that the wording of some questions was a bit wonky.
However, felt the exam was fair representation of what the CAIAA mock purveyed. Definitely think the Schweser mocks were FAR too easy relative to the actual level of difficulty of exam. Also, i noticed that the Ethics questions seemed to be a matter of the most ridiculous, far-fetched type situations that they could muster, instead of CFAI method of giving realistic scenarios…just my two cents.
I actually went through Schweser and UpperMark QBanks, in addition to CAIA mock, Found Schweser to have easier questions and UpperMark was more thorough in its set of questions covering a lot more breadth of calculations and knowledgebase. I also found UpperMark to have a few (handful) of outdated questions (specifically in the last few sections of the curricullum (due diligence and tail events etc.). Found Afternoon to have more kinks than in the morning and thought the CAIA mocks could be executed lot faster than the actual exam which had a buffer of 20 mins to each session for validating in my case… Being electronic though, it is very possible that the mix of questions faced by the candidates in each session can be easily re-ordered for different candidates.
I agree with the comments above, curious to know what the pass rate will be.
Hi all, thanks for the good answers. I do agree with everyone. The ethics part was too far fetched and more difficult than the practice questions. A lot on options related questions as well. I have scored always above 80% on all Uppermark mock exams (did 4 of them), but feel a bit unease about the real exam. I feel that I did good on the math questions though. In my view, the first 100 were more difficult than the second round.
Is it correct that in order to guarantee a pass you need to have at least 140 correct questions (70%), which shows a 60 questions as a buffer? Or they calculate the score differently? (Of course as we know, they always scale it down a little, based on performance).
Additionally I did have on both session about 15-20 minutes to review the questions, which was pretty good.
Curious, does CAIA publish the pass rates ?
Yes they do. You can also see the historical pass rates on Wikipedia: --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_Alternative_Investment_Analyst#Historical_pass_rates
Thanks. Noticed that over the weekend… it is not that easy to find the same information on the caia site, if it exists. most of the information there is spread out between FAQs or other areas.
I used Schweser and I thought the mock exams were much easier than the actual exam. The exams and QBank were very nit-picky and detailed (based on memorization), whereas the actual exam questions were more general/problem-solving. I did not feel prepared for the actual exam using Schweser. I read the official CAIA book once. I should have read it again or in tandem with Schweser notes and focused more on the book than Schweser notes. I saw at least 2-3 questions from the actual exam that were taken directly from the CAIA book. One question was verbatim from the CAIA book, but not covered at all in Schweser notes!
Simple
Hi, do you have the question bank for the level I exam… Could I ask you to share it with me if possible.
Regards,
Hi, is uppermark qbank sorted by chapter?
yes
is it printable so that I can keep for future use?
yes again