First of all, thanks in advance for reading and giving out any advice that you may have for me after reading through.
Long story short, I failed in 2012 with band 8 and again this year with band 9. I am thinking about just…quitting the program and not bother. But then I have second thoughts about giving it one last shot…
By looking at my scores, I immediately realize that I just didn’t “get” the Individual portfolio mgmt game. If i got those 36 pts in the 51%-70% bucket instead I would’ve prob. made it.
Would you please take a look and point me to the most blunt weaknesses that you see? For what it’s worth, I digged out old exams on CFAI website from even 08 and did all of them. While doing those old exams, I was realizing that I was weak on the individual portoflio mgmt sessions the difference being that I felt pretty good at this year’s exam but apparently that was just faulse confidence.
Mattstonie - I’m in the same boat. I failed band 8 in 2012 and failed band 10 this year. I have been put through the ringer with this exam (in general and as it relates to level 3). I’m not sure I can stomach much more of this process.
yeah i hear ya bro it’s giving me so much unnecessary frustration in life. i mean i didn’t put in an insane amout of time but i put in a decent amount. and i thought i was good at taking standardalized exams… some of my colleagues put in 1/10 of the time and managed to pass…
i still need to digest and contemplate and all, but for now my answer is to give it one last shot.
It’s so discouraging guys. Don’t mean to make this the depression thread, but I suffered for this damn thing. Not finishing in the AM (2 questions unanswered) was my undoing. I failed, its my first attempt, Band 10. I donno if I can or am even willing to go hrough the pain of not having a life again. Thinking of tapping out.
I failed level 3 twice…2011 - band 3 and2012 - band 8…but passed this time. In my opinion the material is not the problem it’s the actual exam. You have to do well on the Portfolio Management to pass. Which makes sense since the entire curriculum is geared toward portfolio management.
I was in similar shoe, i did poorly on individual portfolio management (and i couldn’t figure out why)! i am pretty sure i spent enough time to write down the constraints, time & liquidity… and also damn sure i know how to calculate the required return (seriously, by L3 how can you not?). BUT i also got <50%!!!
HOWEVER, i got over 70% on ethics so i don’t know if that’s why i passed?
anyway, there are certain topics we just aren’t good at, so don’t worry too much, it has to do with luck as well.
if you don’t feel passionate about it, you don’t have to retake next year! take a break and come back to it. People say it’s hard once you take a break, but if you’re burnt out and don’t feel motivated to study, it’s going to be the same thing!
i hear ya nana and appreciate what you are saying.
to be honest, i feel the materials are just simple…and not even comparable to like exams in college. i was a finance/econ major and don’t understand how i could answer the individual portfolio mgmt wrong… the problem is that i run out of ideas as how to study for those because when i look at the answers to the practice exams i am just like ok, fine but i have no idea how my answer would’ve been graded. it’s all just language stuff…very fluffy
Also failed in 2012 and 2013. Both were in Band 3??? It’s quite demoralising especially since I breezed thru the mocks. I seriously have no idea why I bombed individual portfolio in the AM.
From the distribution it seems portfolio management isn’t your thing, and you also failed ethics which is always a no-no (although in your case probably not the deal breaker).
Mock and actual exam can be different! it depends on how you write your mocks but perhaps you breezed through mocks and became cocky? or did you use the mocks in test environment?
Try looking at the AM section when the exam is posted. it may give you some clue?
Essay Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70% 1 Portfolio Management - Individual 20 - - * 2 Portfolio Management - Individual 15 * - - 3 Portfolio Management - Individual 16 * - - 4 Equity Investments 17 - * - 5 Economics 20 - * - 6 Portfolio Management - Institutional 18 * - - 7 Portfolio Management - Institutional 14 * - - 8 Fixed Income Investments 17 * - - 9 Fixed Income Investments 9 * - - 10 Portfolio Management - Risk Management 18 * - - 11 Portfolio Management - Performance Eval. 16 - - * Item Set Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70% - Alternative Investments 36 * - - - Economics 18 - * - - Equity Investments 18 - * - - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 * - - - Fixed Income Investments 18 - * - - Portfolio Management 18 - * - - Portfolio Management - Asset Allocation 18 - - * - Portfolio Management - Risk Management 18 - - * Failed band 5 I could not finsh 2 of the portfolio question in morning. I thought i did well in PM bt ended up with less thn 50 in highly weighted area AI and Ethics. Things i learnt : 1)practice practice practice. I realized during exam that i was writing too much during the early hours of the exam. Most of my time was wasted in formulating answer to the question and ended up not answering two questions even when i knew the answer. 2)i left behavioural finance and dint study well as i found it to be boring and ended up less thn 50. I dont think we should leave any stuff in l3. Everything is imp. 3)GIPS. Had i studied that well i would have got atleast 50-70. GIPS I always tried to avoid… I had mental block towards it. I know failure is hard to digest but if u fail u will study harder and add more to your knowledge…
Below is my score, I failed band 4 just like 2012. I studied much harder this year, spent a lot of time also on global attribution, GIPS etc. and also Individual & Institutional IPS. However due to my bad time management, I left the the entire institutional 18 mark question.
I did EOCs twice, did 3 papers, maybe could’ve done more. Can someone advise looking at my score, what I could do differently? My AM is horrible, even PM is not as good as I thought it was when I took the exam.
We have divided the group of candidates who did not pass into 10 approximately equal score bands. Your score band below shows how your overall score on the exam compares with the overall scores of candidates who did not pass this exam. Your score band: 4