hi, I’m just curious what do you guys think regarding the CFA practice questions. I’ve found them much harder than the schweser mocks I’ve been doing. I haven’t done the CFA mocks yet though, so cant say anything about those. Do you think schweser is close to how the actual thing will be?
yes Topic tests are tough and yes i have done Schweser Vol 1 and 2 and Topic Test is a little bit more tough
Though i would recommend starting with the official mock as you haven’t tried any of them and sticking to CFAI material for the last 7 days, yes schweser was a good source to practice from but for me i wouldn’t use it now
I was thinking doing the CFA mock exams and schweser mocks for the final practice.
The topic tests just seemed really tough to me, and if the actual exam is anything like those practice tests, than I’m failing this.
There is NO way that CFAI is the actual author of those questions, or the mocks.
why not?
I’m not going to say. But you’ll see in about 7 days what I mean. Every mock exam score needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
wait are you talking about Schweser mocks? Or CFAI mocks?
Yeah CFAI stuff. I bet it’s all outsourced.
if you are implying the real exam is harder then I think that is objectively false. I took it last year lol
lol so would you say the topic tests are NOT an actual representation of the exam? schweser mocks, though not easy, are definitely do-able as opposed to these CFA practice questions
Look, all I am gonna say is…If you averaged 70 percent or higher on CFAI mock A and B. Two full length tests, and did not cheat, did them within the required time limit and started them reasonably early in the morning with the two hour break (not past 10 am your local time), you are going to pass.
If you don’t pass, then you let nerves get the best of you on exam day. Which I still think would not happen.
Dude, no way. The exact OPPOSITE.
Look. Did you do CFAI mock B? It had SIX questions for Quant - of which, few of them touched on things that the CFAI would need to collect data on regarding someones scores to determine if the candidate has an understanding of that material. How is asking three drilled down, closely related questions to one another, going to help the grader determine if the candidate understands the 300+ pages of that topic? Which is why I don’t think they’re the ones writing these mock exams.
Nathan Ronnen describes this as the 60/30/10 rule. 60% of the exam questions are questions they’ll expect everyone to get right. 30% of the questions they think most people should get right and are important for determining that candidates understanding, and that last 10% they’ll expect few to get right. And it’s some of these mocks that I find focus too much on that 10%, which is categorically the least helpful in evaluating someones understanding of a concept.
Ok hahah just making sure. Yes I got 5/6 of those quant questions right. But tbh, I am going to absolutely destroy quant next Saturday. FinQuiz gave me their “most hard quant questions for candidates” and I score 83 percent on 12 of them.
I took this exam last year and I didn’t respect it. Due to CFAI confidentiality, I will say that looking back on some of the pension accounting questions that I was asked, I was an idiot for not being able to answer them. They were a joke in terms of the level of difficulty. Like literally, if you couldn’t answer them correctly, you should not show up to the test center.
The questions are very straight forward. The institute knows that 5 figures plus of ppl are sitting for the exam. If it’s too hard for ppl with kids, families, working 80 hours a week, etc. They will have pass rates in the high 20s low 30s.
I love how a lot of the talk this close to the exam is about mocks, which mock is better than which, and which subjects are likely to be tested!
Lol well VaR for instance wasn’t tested ONCE in the mocks but I could have answered any question given on it, so I feel good where I am at. It’s great that you guys are averaging 80 across two full length mocks. But the reality is most of us aren’t. However that is gonna be a ok for us! I’m not gonna let my foot off the gas pedal even though I could probably still pass if the test was tomorrow instead of next Saturday
Yes… The mocks will only test “core” material repeatedly. The mocks wil also throw in a few random stuff that isn’t core… I expect the buck of the real exam to be “core” with a few random stuff thrown in… But in 120 questions, I dont think more than 10-15 items will be non-core.
The thing for me is, I have covered the ENTIRE curriculum. and I mean ENTIRE, to where I do not EVER get a question to where I am like “Oh what? regulatory capture, arbitrage heeh?” lol. It is more so the WAY that questions are worded and making me search through a fricken 3 page vignette to find this and that which trips me up. I have reviewed my mid to low 70s and even the 82 percent result I had on Mock Exam A AM and found many, at least 5-6 questions where if I didn’t have to go from point A to B to C to D, I would have got right.
I don’t think the real exam is like that. In fact, I may know a thing or two considering I have sat for it before 
On D day, it’s either you know it or you don’t. None of this, you may or may not know it, but even if you do know it, you will have to search here and here and here to get the info you need lol.
You guys still think CFAI wrote those mocks? There wasn’t even a derivatives item set.
I would have to tactfully disagree and argue that mocks are too repetitive.
There was a derivative Item Set. And it was on a topic I am strong, yet I still missed half of the questions. (options strategies). What is the point you are trying to get at CEO 10K?
Sure there was only one Dervs case and the real exam will probably test you more, but even so, what are you getting at?
The one redit thread with the CFA guy said, the exam writers are different than the mock writers… different teams! hehe
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFA/comments/8qv1bi/i_am_peter_mackey_developer_of_the_cfa_exam_ask/