I am not happy. I was averaging over 75% on the practice exams, felts confident going in, and was ready rock this test similar to Level 1. Now after the fact, I give myself a 40% probablity of a pass. I felt that the test did not represent the material that I studied. The cards simply didn’t fall in my favor. Many of my strongest points (Time Series, Free Cash Flow) were not even on the exam, which shocked me. I couldn’t believe the amount of questions that were straight from Level 1 (not hard, but I was simply unprepared for them). Several ethics questions caught me off guard as well. The exam wasn’t terribly “challenging” per se, but my performance was severly hurt by it’s choice of random topics to focus on. So much of this exam is mental, and my “mental game” was just not there in the AM which set the tone for the rest of the day. Plus a majority of the questions I was unsure about have proven to be incorrect based on AF’s feedback, which hurts. Overall I’m very dissapointed in both my performance and the questions that the CFAI chose to ask. I KNOW that I can pass, but I doubt it happened on Saturday.
Zombie - you took the words right out of my mouth. Feelign the same circumstances here.
I thought the morning session was tough but doable. I felt i did well on that section, probably above 70%. Afternoon, was the most draining exam i’ve ever written. It was disgusting and tricky. I had no idea what Port.Mgt. was asking. I think there was half a page in the notes on MVF. Overall, very dissapointed in the exam. I did 10 practice exams including CFA mock exams and it was totally different and the topics were not even close to what I saw. I don’t think it was a fair exam at all. All the hard work was for nothing. So many topics did not show up on the exam. No FCF, Options, SML, Investor behaviour, economics theories, Time Series. I felt like they did a good job in screwing people over on sections that are barely mentioned in the notes. I would be very surprised if I passed and I felt I was ready and knew the material inside out.
guys, this was the same feeling i had last year. i thought, “no pensions? no foreign exchange? 15% of the exam dedicated to portfolio management that was not in the schweser books?” i was pissed because i knew everything pretty well. the thing i took from last year was that the CFAI can and will test you on any little minutia detail and will potentially leave out a few core topics. the item set structure makes this probable. sorry to hear that.
This is the unfortunate reality of the CFA exam process for many. Sometimes you get “your” exam and sometimes you don’t and they test a bunch of stuff seemingly from the “corners of the room”, so to speak. I had this experience at L2 in 2002 when I failed. In 2003, I passed as I got “my” exam. I know this doesn’t help, but you are not alone.
Well 2007 wasnt mine…neither was 2008. Maybe mine will come in 2016 when Chicago hosts the Olympics.
i wanna say tat i got quite pissed about the fact they didnt test my stronger area such as time series FCFF derivative! also … i was so sad they ask if correlation is 1 or 2 tail test and about the current account shlts i m not sure if it others think this way too… BUT i think a lot of the questions you can eliminate 3 out of the 4 choices without knowing too deep about the cirriculum! yuck
unless you are a wack job like me a pick 1 tail Chi-Square 
I was kicking myself for that one during the break, what was i thinking???
Must have been Breusch-Pagan…but true, no time series, that was disappointing.