Just looking around and seeing what we can infer from the results. I discredit the 40/60/80 method as it clearly makes unsupportable assumptions and we see people pass with a 40/60/80 of 64 while someone else failed with a 40/60/80 of 72. I failed with a 40/60/80 of 70. Using their grid, I worked out the absolute minimum correct answers I could have achieved to make each category.This was my grid - 6 top, 3 middle and 1 bottom. Alternative Investments _______ --* Corporate Finance ____________ --* Derivatives __________________ -*- Economics __________________ --* Equity Investments ___________ --* Ethical & Professional Standards _ -*- Financial Reporting & Analysis ___ -*- Fixed Income Investments ______ --* Portfolio Management __________ --* Quantitative Methods __________ *-- So, for the bottom category I assumed zero marks (worst case). For the middle category (51>70%) I assumed half marks + 1 (note it is 51% and up, the bottom category is 50% and below) For the top category I assumed 0.7 x marks available and rounded to the nearest whole number. Again, worst case. Using this, I worked out I must have scored 78/120 = 65% bare minimum. A further 15% (18/120) had to be wrong leaving 20% (24/120) undetermined. So the pass mark MUST be 66% or higher. Even blind luck (1 in 3 random guess) should leave me with 7% on the undetermined score the minimum pass mark would be around 73%. If you extrapolate out my known the marks we know I achieved - 78 right out of 102 to the indeterminate questions I would have gotten a further 15 questions right implying a passing score of 79% From my knowledge of my own breakdown in each section my feeling is the passing score was around 73% Does anyone who failed have better scores than me to revise the mark up? Or, does anyone who just passed want to do the excercise to work out the lowest possible passing score? We know for a fact is it at least 66% or higher.
I said 66% or higher. 70% is higher than 66%. But your analysis is flawed anyway, a <50% in Quants and Derivatives could be zero marks which is not what you have assumed.
chiank123, using my method your guaranteed minimum score is 60.8%. Obviously it is extremely unlikely you achieved 0 correct in 18 questions however if we are to be rigorous we must apply the worst case scenario to each section.
I believe mps 66% is too low. In my case, using 40/60/80 rule, my score comes out to be 65% (Pass). But if I take the most optimistic scenario (50/70/100), I get around 78.5%. So if you average the typical and optimistic cases, it comes to around 72%. I think 72% is closer to what I realistically got because I have been practicing to consistently get at least 4/6 questions correct on each vignette, and to make sure I have some buffer from my strong areas to cover any unexpected losses on some vignettes. So when the grid says a section is in the 50-70% range, I have a higher probability to score in the upper end (since 4/6 ~= 66.67%) but not enough to score in the 70%+ range. This is pretty consistent with what I got for the result (2/5/3). So if you ask me, I would say 66% mps is not likely. My feeling is that the mps is somewhere near 70% (+/-). CFAI probably choose this mps so that Ethics would become the tie breaker.
Please read my post. I am not using the flawed 40/60/80 method. Neither did I say the MPS is 66% I said it is AT LEAST 66% which can be rigorously proved without supposition. When I added my own supposition I figure the real MPS is around 73% Please read and understand my post before commenting on it.
No ethics is not tie breaker i saw a person result who pass got less than 50 in ethics …vs mine >70 in ethics …still he cleared
I think ethics is a tie breaker for people on the borderline between pass and fail. CFA Institute have explicitly stated this is the case at Level 1 and Level 2. If you have a score of overall score of 80% then it doesn’t matter if you have a poor ethics score. If you have an overall score of 72% then your ethics score might suddenly become a whole lot more important.
lol look at this Pass Alternative Investments 18 - - * - Corporate Finance 36 - - * - Derivatives 36 * - - - Economics 18 * - - - Equity Investments 72 - - * - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 * - - - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - - * - Fixed Income Investments 36 - - * - Portfolio Management 18 - * - - Quantitative Methods 18 * - - fail - Alternative Investments 18 - * - - Corporate Finance 36 - - * - Derivatives 36 * - - - Economics 18 - - * - Equity Investments 72 - - * - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 - - * - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - - * - Fixed Income Investments 36 - * - - Portfolio Management 18 - * - - Quantitative Methods 18 * - -
well… also the weightings… maybe some sections are weighted higher, ie ethics. Although there were only 36 questions, maybe it gets weighted higher than some other sections thus effectively disproving your theory. Sorry dude… A person who got >70% in a section, one could have gotten 100%, the other just 70%… that is 30% difference and a total of 21points difference in a 72 question set. Therefore these results are not very comparable.
chiank123 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > lol look at this > > Pass > > Alternative Investments 18 - - * > - Corporate Finance 36 - - * > - Derivatives 36 * - - > - Economics 18 * - - > - Equity Investments 72 - - * > - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 * - - > - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - - * > - Fixed Income Investments 36 - - * > - Portfolio Management 18 - * - > - Quantitative Methods 18 * - - > > > fail > > - Alternative Investments 18 - * - > - Corporate Finance 36 - - * > - Derivatives 36 * - - > - Economics 18 - - * > - Equity Investments 72 - - * > - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 - - * > - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - - * > - Fixed Income Investments 36 - * - > - Portfolio Management 18 - * - > - Quantitative Methods 18 * - - The fail was probably a band 10, i’m assuming …? Looks pretty close…
no chad …thts what piss me …they gave me band 9 …not even 10 …so cmg in band 9 …i will need to have 0 in derivative and quants …which is impossible
anxwaiting, i agree the minimum passing score has to be 79/120 or 65.83% as SRS123 cannot have a score lower than 78 (yours could be 77 according to my calc). but i dont think it is anything over 70% as the CFAI itself says that one needs 70% in order to pass. also if you look at the following pass of mp2438 Item Set Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70% - Alternative Investments 18 - * - - Corporate Finance 36 - - * - Derivatives 36 * - - - Economics 18 - - * - Equity Investments 72 - * - - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 - * - - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - * - - Fixed Income Investments 36 - * - - Portfolio Management 18 * - - - Quantitative Methods 18 - - * the max score he can have is 85 (one above 70%). that is if he scored all 12 questions correctly in corp fin and all six questions in eco. Therefore the highest fail mark is somewhere inbetween and including 78 and 83. My guess is it is 78 or 79.
i am sure it is not 78 or 79 it is close to 83 or 84 I got in ethics,fsa,equity,eco and CP >70 that means even I assume worst and give marks by 71 % I should get ethics — 9 /12 Fsa —18/24 Equity—17/24 CP------9/12 Eco ----5/6 58/78 I got in FI,AI and PM 50-70 … so assuming worst and give marks by 51 % I should get FI—7/12 PM-4/6 AI–4/6 15/24 I got in Quants and Der <50 So assuming worst I should get 7/18 so 58+15+7=80/120 which is 67 mps So it means mps was >70 ? and second question still I got band 9 …not even 10
Great work jaspreet. You are right, my total is 77 not 78, must have been a typo. I checked your analysis of mp2438 and I think his maximum score is 83, not 85 as you say? These are the maximum possible scores he could have got in each section? Alternative Investments 4 Corporate Finance 12 Derivatives 6 Economics 6 Equity Investments 16 Ethical & Professional Standards 8 Financial Reporting & Analysis 16 Fixed Income Investments 6 Portfolio Management 3 Quantitative Methods 6 So, we can definitively say the pass mark is between 79 and 83 (as SRS123’s 78 failed and mp2438’s 83 passed). So the pass mark must be between 65.8% to 69.2% Anyone want to double check my numbers given I got a different total to jaspreet ?
chiank123 PLEASE STOP CLUTTERING UP THIS THREAD. your assumption you got 7/18 is Quants and Deriv’s is meaningless. We are looking for a rigorous proof, not guesstimates on what you thought you might have got. In order not to let people miss this, so far we have proved The pass mark is between 79 and 83 (as SRS123’s 78 failed and mp2438’s 83 passed). So the pass mark must be between 65.8% to 69.2%
chiank, one band will not hold more than 2-3 questions. A band nine could be 76-77 in case the minimum pass mark is 80/81. I keep telling people although bands are a good thing to understand where a person is vis-a-vis others but one should not feel that he/she is too far behind the band 10 if he/she is at band 7/8/9. MPS cant be above 70% for two reasons 1. CFAI is quite categorical on this cutoff in various communications. 2. as mentioned earlier mp2438 could not have passed if the mps was above 85/120. the max he could have got is 85 marks. I understand the pain that you people are feeling. it is a disgusting empty feeling and especially if you have never experienced it before in any form. hold on to it and translate to great marks next year. one could see that resolve in people like bannisja, cfaboston et al. i believe once in this course it is bound to happen to most people. had done some analysis last year when i failed at level 2. am reproducing it here. hope you find it helpful. Assuming that the level 2 population forms the normal distribution in its performance on the test, and given the facts that the pass %age was 46%, band 10 forms the population ranging from p values of 0.486 and 0.540, band 9 forms p values from 0.432 to 0.486 and so on. Assuming a MPS of 66.67%, std dev of 14 (i.e 66% of the people scored between 52% and 82% ;fair?); the following are the conclusions. Passing score of 66.67%=>80 questions correct out of 120 Band 10 ; between 78 and 79 correct. Band 9; Between 76 and 77 correct. Band 8; Between 73, 74 and 75 correct.
anxwaiting, fixed income max possible is 8 instead of 6 assumed by you.
Thanks… now I am starting to see why I failed, with all these sloppy mistakes 
Updated conclusion The pass mark is between 79 and 85 (as SRS123’s 78 failed and mp2438’s 85 passed). So the pass mark must be between 65.8% to 70.8%. Given that the CFA Institute has said 70% is a pass (source?) we can revise this to the pass mark is between 65.8% and 70%
I think the MPS as stated here by a lot of folks between 65% and 69% seems very reasonable- by hard min score facts as well as folks who were realistic about the q’s they got right/wrong and where they fell. I think something like 79-82 q’s correct would’ve put you right on the line. looking at the *'s is stupid. you can’t compare anyone’s score vs another score with those. the ranges are too big. those who logically here are saying min possible score are the ones realistically guessing MPS best. we’ll never know, but I’m fairly confident it wasn’t over 70%. learn from your mistakes and crush it next year. your results won’t get overturned. just take it again and pass it and don’t even make it close.