Hi folks,
I am heartbroken. I literally have not seen a TV program, gone out to eat or even seen friends for six months. I studied every waking moment I could. I read every page in every CFA book and did their two mock tests (on which I scored 77%).
I got to this test and was just perplexed. On the afternoon session, at the end, there were 14 questions I simply didn’t know and 37 that I had slated as “review” meaning I wasn’t sure of the answer completely.
I’m starting to wonder now if I am kidding myself. I have a liberal arts education and have never had an econ or accounting class but figured if I studied hard, I would make it. But every single person I have met taking this test has studied Bus Admin, or Finance or Econ or has an MBA or two of those things just listed.
I scored Band 8 after my first attempt a year and half ago. I had studied hard but nothing like this time. My greatest fear is that I get Band 8 again after literally having studied, conservatively, 1200 - 1500 hours.
I am a smart guy - I grew up poor and severely disadvantaged but made it to one of the country’s best universities on nearly a full-scholarship and have done well professionally.
But I am just devastated by this. I think I did well on FRA and Ethics (probably got above 70%) but was blown away by Econ and Quants. Fixed Income went really well in the morning (I think I only had one answer wrong) but then in the afternoon, I was thrown and got a lot wrong.
Could you folks give me an honest answer as to what percentage of the curriculum you have seen before in your studies? EVERY SINGLE thing is new for me and it’s a steep mountain to climb.
Nevertheless, what has me really concerned, is I don’t see what I could have done differently. I really, really prepared a lot and I did well on the mock tests.
But there were quite a few questions, I thought, that required more knowledge - or at least experience - than is just in the books. I remembered quite a few questions and got home and went through the books and even with them open, I was having trouble answering ~10 questions.
Many thanks.
PS Please don’t post any sarcastic remarks about how you breezed through this or that I am an idiot. I am engaging in plenty of self-flaggelation. Don’t need any help in that regard. Instead, either some constructive feedback or simply hearing from others that they thought this was pretty difficult too (only getting two hours of sleep didn’t help. I was horribly nervous)