Partial credit

CFA Level III
#1

Hi everyone,

I have a question please, If for example, an exam question asked to choose the best alternative and justify with 3 reasons, and the candidate chose the right alternative but stated the reasons in short phrases rather than complete justification. Will he/she get partial credit? I read here from some members that the candidate may get 0 credit which is very harm IMO! Any idea? Thanks

#2

I’m not sure what you see as the difference between stating the reasons and justifying with the reasons.

Can you give us an example of what you’re thinking?

#3

i dont see any difference between the two .

#4

Sorry my question was not clear…I currently don’t have any material to refer to but if due to time constraint a candidate wrote short bullet points like:

  • long time horizon as a justification of high risk tolerance Or - flat oscillating market as a reason for choosing BH strategy Or - high information cost as a reason for not choosing direct RE investing The question whether the candidate can get partial points for right but not enough justification.
#5

The candidate properly receives partial credit for short answers.

#6

If it is straight to the point and correct, i dont see why you should get partial credit and not the whole credit. Also remember that a long answer may get partial credit because you do not precise what they’re asking for…

Just my opinion.

#7

This is how I understand it:

_ State why ltj has an increased ability to take risk:_

  • He has a long-term time horizon

_ Justify why ltj has an increased ability to take risk:_

  • He has a long-term time horizon enabling his portfolio to recover from negative performance (or something to this effect)

So would the first bullet be given full credit to the second question? I thought no.

#8

I studied with Elan and it seemed from the teacher Darren Whatshisface that you are correct. State was simply choosing the correct answer and justify was to essentially support your answer. It is my belief that stating instead of justifying would result in point deductions.

#9

I believe that you’d get full credit for either answer.

#10

Would depend on the alloted time. If such a question was for a total of 4minutes, I reckon the short answers would get full credit. Contrast with if the question was for a total of 7minutes, then the short answers might only get partial credit.

#11

BUMP*

Do we have any definitive answer on this - specifically Itj’s comment?

I wouldn’t want to write too little, even when I know the full justification, because that’s all I think is needed.

And, I wouldn’t want to write too much and lose time when the extra justification was unnecessary!

Is this something we could reach out to CFAI about?

#12

S2k (or anyone else) was curious about partial credit for calculation questions. For a question about the required return for an individual investor say and its an 8pt questions that says show calculations. If you were to correctly get the asset base, the first year cash flow, divide them and forgot to add/multiply in the inflation so your ending answer was wrong showing this work would you get any partial credit and is there any way to kind of estimate it?

Obviously the correct answer is just to not forgot inflation next time, but would like to get an idea of how partial credit works

#13

bump