Anyone have experience being in band 10 camp?
Less than 50 % Ethics, FRA, Port. Mgmt
Between 50-70% Alts, Corp, economics, Equity, Quant
Over 70% Derivatives, Fixed income
I think it would be foolish of me to spend ALL the time simply just re-reading all the books. If I failed FRA then that means I answered no less than 12 questions incorrectly (which could have sunk me). Has anyone been in band 10 before? should I just focus on ethics & FRA and commit to practice exams?
Hi CEO,
I am really sorry to hear you didn’t make it. I followed your posts over the months and I know you put in a lot of work.
From your matrix you have not performed strongly in some big hitting areas. In FRA and Ethics alone 30% of the exam put you under. It seems you managed to make up for it probably by scoring very well with full marks or 5/6 on Derivs and FI and mid to high 60’s in all other areas.
For next year you should hammer FRA and Equity cold. FRA went from my worst subject first time around (band 5) to my best subject this time around (+70 and I think almost full marks on every item set). I think FRA is an area for high scoring if you follow the blue boxes. The EOC questions are pretty lousy for FRA, but the BB are excellent.
You just needed slightly more luck. Mock till you drop and practice tons of questions. I would recommend just watching the IFT videos now on fast forward (he talks very slowly so its still easily understandable) to gain quick exposure to the curriculum again and then crack on with mocks. I did 11 this time around and it was really helpful.
Good luck to you mate.
back to back band 10s for me. Painful to be that close 2x, but may have to give it another go since I’ve already invested so much time and effort. My plan is to reread Wiley 11th hour to just refresh my memory on everything. Then start doing CFAI EOC questions, maybe sprinkle some IFT or Mark Meldrum videos on topics I didn’t do well on (Derivs) - I’ve never used these videos, but people seem to love them. Then complete as many mocks I can get my hands on.
Being so close, I don’t think my time is well spent just rereading the curriculum or schweser notes and will be better served doing more EOC, Topic Test, and Mocks…just my 2 cents. Side note, anyone have any thoughts on Bloomberg prep?
Gentleman - thanks for your replies. I think I will follow your advice Rex and sign up for IFT.
Here’s my biggest recommendation for L2 (I repeated this process for L3 but don’t know if I passed or not yet, so no basis there yet): Hammer the formulas before you start doing mocks or practice questions. If you don’t know the formulas, you’re wasting your time on at least half the questions.
I created a 2 column table in word that I would use. The first column had the name of the formula, the second column had a blank space. I then had a duplicate copy where the second column contained the actual formula definition.
Put the first copy (with the blank spaces on it) in one of these dry erase sleeves from Amazon, use a dry erase marker and practice the formulas over and over. https://www.amazon.com/C-Line-Reusable-Pockets-Assorted-40630/dp/B007RJ3GSK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501082964&sr=8-1&keywords=dry+erase+sleeve
Read curriculum, consolidate all your formulas. Spend a week or so reviewing all formulas multiple times (I had probably close to 100 I chose to focus on). Then begin EOC questions while continuing the formula practice. By the time you do Mocks, you’ll probably be so comfortable with 50% of the formulas that you don’t need daily review anymore. By test time, you should have 90+% of them memorized really well.
The reason I think this works is you basically isolate the formula memorization first. Then, when you do EOC and practice you’re focusing more on applying the formulas rather than trying to memorize and apply at the same time.
Everyone learns different so I can only say what worked for me. FRA was one of my worst subjects going in so I made an extra effort to work on it. Going in my average TT score was 57% for FRA and mocks it was 52% but I ended up getting >70% but my most recent 5 TT were >67% because of my extra effort.
Do EOC questions, then go back and read the answers and the questions again to see why that answer is correct. I would write down the answers and say because this happened it caused this and would go back into the curriculum to find the supporting reason why. For example FX changes on an account payable I would find the sentence in the material that said exactly how it should be handled so I would mix that in with the answer they give to kinda get an overall, well supported view of the answer and thus that topic.
TT was very useful because of how difficult they were. They basically were the exam but harder and mixed several steps into. I would sit at the TT for hours trying to figure it out using no notes or anything. Then after I would use my EOC question notes with the TT answers to see why they were correct, fix my mistakes, learn the material about that question to ensure I don’t make that mistake again.
I did this a lot and then focused heavily on the still weak areas in FRA which for me was pension stuff. After all that I felt like FRA was one of my strongest topics. I learned to love it because before it was a beast I couldn’t tame and hated it for that.
The good thing about taking it again is that you know exactly where your holes are and what to expect come exam day. Review everything and focus heavier on your holes and you’ll pass with a very strong overall understanding which will have you prepped for a good level 3.
Good to hear mate.
Pensions & intercorporate investments & multinational ops were my strong FRA points. I honestly sucked at the evaluation of fin statements & integration parts. I know I may have ZERO ground to stand on to say this, but I was well prepared for anything pension related.
Band 10 in 2013, Passed in 2014.
I started studying again in March. I reviewed my notes and formulas very well and focused on practicing a lot.
I didn’t read the materials all over again. Whenever I feel there is a topic I don’t remember I just revisit it in the materials.
The key for Level II is to practice questions as much as you can and memorizing the formulas.
I had a band 10 last year and a comfortable pass this year. FRA was <=50 last year >71 this year. What definitely worked for me were the mocks, BBs,EOCs. I studied little less (last 2-2.5 months) but focused on practising more.
6 Schweser + 1 CFAI + 2 IFT + Portal Vignettes
I totally agree with @rex… I did buy one of the IFT products for L3 and believe me they were amazing. I am sure Arif’s L2 videos should be equally good/better.
I’m surprised that matrix is band 10… I’d say make sure to really “master” individual concepts/formulas… make a list of all the one that are likely to come up on exam and start crossing them off as you go through them and pray they come up on the exam
Be surprised no more. R.I.P me. Probably logical to assume I was just ‘slightly’ below 50% on those.
I’d say you were on the edge too. Had you ended up in the 51-70% camp for FRA, you might’ve gotten by.
Is what it is! 
little bummed, but I can’t change it. I’m going to sign off for the next few months and just enjoy summer! Best of luck to all of you in level 3 next year! I’ll get there eventually.
*I’m still popping the bottle of Veuve I bought, why the hell not?*
It’s shattering and you question how you could have done more…sometimes it is just a question of time to learn the stuff. I also tell myself that the idea is to ace the exam not scrape through and if there are people getting >70 in all areas they deserved to pass.
Oh hey I did not mean to come off that way. I totally understand CFAI will only pass people who truly ‘deserve’ to pass. I don’t question that and I’m not sitting here in disbelief. Under 50% in my eyes is a fail for that topic - and I failed three sections.
Haha, enjoy, way to keep your spirits up. Next year will be better.
Don’t down tools and you have a massive advantage over 90pc of your competition next year - if you can keep motivated.
I have not yet had the misfortune of failing one of these exams *knock on wood* but if I were in that position, I actually probably WOULD re-study everything. Here’s why. The danger when you barely fail an exam is the thinking that the same approach + a little bit more will be enough to pass. I saw a lot of my friends in graduate school continually fail their qualifying exams because they refused to adjust their approach. The ones that succeeded were the ones that treated it as if they failed badly and just dug in and re-did everything. With the CFA exams, being relentless is probably the only thing that works, and I think that’s what I would do if I were in this situation.
As an aside, I’m really sorry this happened. It has to be really frustrating to fail so close to passing.