Mocks

Hi everyone,

Has anyone started doing mocks? If so, how is it going? I just did 2 Schweser mocks over the past 2 weekends and got 84.5% on the first one and 81.03% on the second. I will complete the first of three CFAI mocks this coming weekend.

Planning to take my first Schweser mock this weekend. Does the CFA give three mocks for free or did you pay for those?

They give them for free. Go to your candidate resources website, under “tools” click on practice and tests. The question bank will then load and on the left side you’ll see “tests.” They are online mocks but I was able to print them a while back.

Wow very good scores! First time you will take the exam?

Yes first time but I have a business/finance background so it makes is easier. I am not putting much weight on these scores since they are Schweser mocks but this weekend I’ll do a CFA Mock to see where I stand.

Do you know of mock exams can be shared?

They are available on your CFA candidate portal. They are free.

Is there a way to get those exams as an app? so you can solve them on the road?

Took the Wiley Mock Exam A.

Got 72% AM and 78% PM and a total of 75%.

Quite satisfied considering I’ve barely read through Ethics and haven’t reviewed FRA and Quant as much as the other topics (and haven’t read Derivs and AI even once).

Just a bit worried that the Wiley mock exams are significantly easier than the actual CFA exam. Would anyone know how inflated/deflated the difficulty is for Wiley? I know Schweser is easier than the actual exam but not sure about Wiley.


Score breakdown:

  • Ethics - 78%
  • Quant - 68%
  • Econ - 75%
  • FRA - 69%
  • Corp Fin - 94%
  • PM - 82%
  • Equity - 79%
  • FI - 88%
  • Derivs - 50%
  • AI - 60%

Thanks!

I have done 2 CFAI mocks and scored 63% and 65% I have some work to do!

When you say Wiley mocks, are you speaking about the official CFAI mocks?

A lot of people seem to think that mocks are harder than the real thing. But again, some people who have done extremely well on mocks have done poorly on the exam. Some who have done poorly on mocks, have done pretty well on the exam. So it’s hard to tell. If you get consistently above 70% you have a pretty good chance to pass, though.

No I mean the mocks provided by Wiley, not the ones provided by CFAI.

The Wiley mocks I’d say are actually harder than the CFAI mocks. And not in a good way. A lot of just poor wording of questions, and in some instances they test knowledge that I don’t even think is in the CBOK anymore. Scores higher than 70+ on the Wiley mock predict 80+ scores on the CFAI mock I would say from having done both so far.

Took Wiley Mock B and got slightly lower. Did poorly in Ethics and FRA (which I expected as I haven’t done a full review yet) but surprisingly did bad in Equity and Fixed Income as well.

73% AM; 66% PM; 70% Total

Score breakdown:

  • Ethics - 64%
  • Quant - 86%
  • Econ - 68%
  • FRA - 59%
  • Corp Fin - 84%
  • PM - 92%
  • Equity - 68%
  • FI - 66%
  • Derivs - 60%
  • AI - 57%

Hopefully this applies to me too.

I am scoring between 65-75% on CFAI/Schweser mocks

according to the Schweser performance tracker avg. score is 67%, seems pretty high to me

are mocks harder than the actual exam?

This will be my first time taking the exam, but from all my meta-studying I gather that the mocks are a pretty fair comparison to the real thing. Most people either report it being slightly easier or slightly tougher, but the small differences are probably to do with whether the material on the real exam hit their strong or weak areas. There is a bit of luck involved obviously.

I have a feeling the averages on the Schweser mocks will start going down a bit as the least prepared people only start doing them in the final weeks. The averages so far are purely from people proactive enough to have started doing them already. Most of the people I know who have completed Level I only started mocking in their final two weeks, and usually started with scores of high 50s / low 60s, brought it up close to the 70s for exam day and passed.

I will probably print out my mocks because the CFA online mocks time you which means I didn’t even get to three sections… I clearly need to re-read ethics. I thought I was very good in Ethics, but completely bombed it on the mocks…

I also find Ethics tricky, I am consistently scoring around 70% on the CFAI mocks but I feel there is too much variation in my grade. I guess I will have to re-read the CFAI book again before the exam just to make sure I know the details.