Hi all, So hard is the level III exam compared to the Level II exam. I passed level II this year after failing last year (band 9). All feed back is greatly appreciated.
judging from previous posts here it seems that L2 has the hardest materials but L3 has the hardest Exam…
i personally found L2 most difficult (and failed it once). but that it probably because my weakest areas are financial statements and economics. if you’re the sort of person who struggles with portfolio questions and equity/fixed income valuation, you may well disagree! i also think that L3 has an inherent bias towards people who speak english completely fluently. reading a foreign language and answering A/B/C is surely easier than reading and then writing…
Material is easier IMHO on level III than level II but the format on level III is harder. I had no idea how well I had done on the AM paper despite knowing the material pretty well. Same seems to go for everyone. Make sure you do lots of portfolio management practice before the exam and do the practice exams and the CFA past papers too.
may i ask what the portfolio mgmt questions are about? is it about finding optimal weights?computing portfolio return/variances? or is it less quantitative in nature? thnks!
I would agree with one of the posts above: L2 has the hardest material, L3 is a more challening exam. the format is much more intimidating. you start your day with 3 hours worth of blank pages, where you have to manufacture an answer on your own. if you don’t know it, you don’t know it. no 1 in 3 chance of being right. the essay section is pretty exhausting even from a physical perspective, which I think is something few people think about or prepare for (don’t underestimate the challenges of writing non-stop for 3 hours, given how today we all use keyboards at work). it sounds stupid, but it’s true; your hand will be killing you about halfway through, which adds to the stress. the afternoon is also a bit tougher than past exams, b/c you are fully expected to understand the ins and outs of the material versus simply recognizing concepts and spitting out a formula. the material itself is, i think, much more enjoyable to read (i mean as enjoyable as it can be, i guess). it’s got more “meat” to it, versus having to plow through brutal quant problem sets. if you havent already, you start to tie the material together pretty well. you see how all the concepts work together, and actually notice that the curriculum flows pretty well. so it’s less intimidating from a studying perspective, i guess.
OK. Level 2 in my opinion has the difficult material. Now AFTER taking 3 I thought level 2 was the hardest exam. AFTER receiving my breakdown and passing 3, I think Level 3 is more difficult to pass. I thought I did really well in the AM especially but was surprised by how A"tough" the grading was.
Ditto to the above. I think the fact that there is no way to get consistent feedback as you are preparing for the AM section some of us were unpleasantly surprised by the grading. So, even though I actually liked the Level III materials the best of any level, the test and particularly the morning kicked me in the teeth. Even in areas that I am extremely comfortable with, the CFA graders found that I did not articulate myself well enough to get maximum points. CFA remains the only standardized test that I have ever failed and certainly the only test I’ve ever studied for and done poorly on.
The L3 exam was obviously much harder than it *felt* to me. I felt like I cruised through the AM and PM but did not have the scores to match my perception. The whole L1-L2-L3 progression was like two inverted curves for me. The tests felt progressively easier but my passing results got progessively worse.
LVL III is by far the hardest. Impossible to prepare for what you are going to get.
Level 3 is be the hardest fools
Really really really hard
Level 2 can be gamed, Level 3 games you
Thanks for the feed back.
youre velcome
I’ve heard from several reliable (intelligent and hard working) sources that they struggled with level 3 … I know two guys who dominated level 2 and put equal effort into level 3 just to find out they did HORRIBLY. I think it comes down to the actual exam format being a challenge…Having the ‘essay’ format probably makes it much more difficult…also the material is tested in application, rather than base knowledge… all in all, I think I’m going to start in september with a light read of the schweser books…I hope to do a small run through before christmas, then starting January will hit the CFAI books hard. I know the work commitments are only going to get higher, so I’d really like to finish all the exams asap!!
my totally unoriginal response: Level II: two girls Level III: two girls one cup
MFIN— Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I’ve heard from several reliable (intelligent and > hard working) sources that they struggled with > level 3 … I know two guys who dominated level 2 > and put equal effort into level 3 just to find out > they did HORRIBLY. > > I think it comes down to the actual exam format > being a challenge…Having the ‘essay’ format > probably makes it much more difficult…also the > material is tested in application, rather than > base knowledge… > > all in all, I think I’m going to start in > september with a light read of the schweser > books…I hope to do a small run through before > christmas, then starting January will hit the CFAI > books hard. > > I know the work commitments are only going to get > higher, so I’d really like to finish all the exams > asap!! That would be me. Nothing below 50% on Level II and plenty below on Level III.
That sucks…Did you prepare as hard as you did for level 2?
It appears easy but somehow those stuff just wouldn’t stick.