CFAI - why the exam was made so tricky?

I am not sure what is CFAI trying to achieve by making questions tricky. If the sole purpose of CFA exams is to ground you in basics of valuation then this makes no sense to me to be cunning and try to trip us. Agreed, you have to test on some concepts indirectly but the way two exams were written, IMO it was deceiving, deceitful and unclear. CFAI has violated its own ethics standard - by being deceiving, deceitful, not communicating in clear language on the june 09 exam.

Agree 100%. They can make the test hard enough on the material alone. BS

I hate when they make you calculate stuff using the “alternative” method which omits certain information you would always have in real life. For example, if we’re trying to calculate the price on a forward Treasury bond, when would we ever not have the interest rate to plug into the calculation?

Agree 100%. IMO there were questions that in no way test candidates knowledge of finance, valuations.

agree.

I love how it didn’t even touch on some of the more major concepts. I would have rather dont another 3 hour exam on that stuff. I would of at least brought my average up a bit.

it is very stupid I agree. THey didnt test many of the major concepts, which really are the basis of waht should be known, and tested mostly a lot of very obscure stuff, and had some very tricky question related to the major stuff to try and trip up candidates. I guess there are so many people doing the test this year they had to make it harder

I guess they knew that people would learn the main topics anyway. By testing the alternative stuff, it would differentiate people.

agree

Honestly if CFA raised their passing level to 75%, then none of us would care to take it because it doesn’t differentiate us. Thus they really have to filter the top candidates (top meaning good at studying or having lots of time to study) by making the exam hard. Seriously, I don’t want to see the pass rate ever get improved…

^ +1

A question for you? Considering the difficulty of the exam and the number of retakers each year. If the pass rate is, say, 40% and those 40% is partly retakers, what is your guess about the pass rate for those who take the test for the first time? 25%?

Sometimes I get the feeling that it’s more important learning to avoid tricks than actually knowing the stuff. If they wanted to make it more difficult, they could drop the multiple choice part and just make small 60 essay-questions covering everything

They have always tested the “new” material in the past. I was taking for the 3rd time but still found it hard. By making it harder, you separate the guys who really understand the material to those who are just brushing the top (schweser folk).

thepinkman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agree 100%. They can make the test hard enough on > the material alone. BS +100. Totally agree. People say the tricks were there to differentiate people but like you say, considering the amount of knowledge required for L2, this could have been done easily by testing all the major concepts. Congratulations to the people who nailed the exam however from a CFAI point of view, they should be concerned that their exam is not covering the basics of curriculum, and give so much emphasis on obscure details.

I wasn’t thrilled by the exam, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate. When you consider the nature of analyzing financial statements, there is a bit of trickery going on there too. You really can’t deny that some companies try to mislead analysts. Its their game, so they get to make up the rules, but I would have preferred to see some of the exam-type-trickery in the end of chapter questions. I felt that I knew the material, but really had no practice trying to look for all the linguistic booby-traps.

the cfai mocks and samples had me thinking that that’s what the real exam is like. dumb move on my part. my score in the real exam is going to be down about 25% from my sample/mock scores.

dlpicket Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I wasn’t thrilled by the exam, but I’m going to > play devil’s advocate. > > When you consider the nature of analyzing > financial statements, there is a bit of trickery > going on there too. You really can’t deny that > some companies try to mislead analysts. > > Its their game, so they get to make up the rules, > but I would have preferred to see some of the > exam-type-trickery in the end of chapter > questions. I felt that I knew the material, but > really had no practice trying to look for all the > linguistic booby-traps. I agree. This is my biggest problem with the exam. The testing style was simply unfair because no one expected it based on all of CFAI’s own materials. As I’ve said before if the institute wants to test us in this manner then I have no problem with it. The CFA exams are suppose to be difficult and there is def. a quota to be met on who passes/fails. But, don’t try and play the role of “that professor” that gave you the guidelines for the exam and then nothing he/she tested was on the guidelines. It is extremely misleading and IMO unethical.

Im with SSS… mocks had me not looking for tricks on the real exam… frustrated there, but shame on me… But with dlpicket, devils advocate: Does anyone think they are maybe trying to turn us into analysts? Maybe with a little more analysis, i would have gotten some more problems right… Good for you CFAI, you have taught me a valuable lesson. However, I do think the mocks should include tricks to make us better analysts as well… consider my self like 30% chance i passed

i agree, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make us better at analysis, but it should be done in a fair way - give us samples and mocks that have the same level of difficulty. show us past exams, heck even give us this years exams with answers so we can see what we did wrong. give us more visibility CFAI! actually, i wouldnt be surprised if ppl from CFAI are reading these forums to gather feedback - this is pretty much the biggest forum on the net for cfa discussions. so CFAI if you are reading, please take note!