Does anyone knows if you can ask for a review of the essay exam?
Thanks in advance.
I called CFA to asked and they said no and I cant have someone discuss anything with me. I got worse marks than I ever imagine on the AM section of the exam. (All under 50 except 1) My writing is not the cleanest and I worry I was penalized significantly for it. When you get under 50 on sections you knew extremely well its very frustrating, and I had 5 categories above 70 in the PM. Really wish CFA exams were computer based. #End Rant
I am exactly in your position
Ditto.
Marginally diff…
AM - 8 under 50, 1 mid and 1 above 70;
PM - 8 Over 70, 2 mid. My AM scores appears to be too bad. I had to write with a pencil and not sure of how it appeared to the evaluator. Guess have to take a gamble with a Retabulation…
ask yourself whether you answered the question and not placing blame on the scoring.
How come other people are scoring higher than you are in the essays? Why is that? A response of “0.5 %” is not going to get you complete marks if you do not explain what it means as that is just a percentage.
Is it an increase, decrease, minimum, maximum return? If I were the grader and I see that, would that convey to me that you answered the question correctly?
If you knew it, why did you not write that? My verdict will be uniform to yours. NOTHING
I understand what you are saying, but there is a point of frustration when you believe you write down everything (Not just final answer). Come out of the exam knowing that you answered all big questions with strong accuracy and in my case get a mark that would suggest I scored <25% on the AM portion of the exam.
I can take blame for my writing skills, but their still a level of frustration realizing that you put in the work, knew the material, wrote down what you felt were passing answers and fail based on what I consider subjective scoring.
Regardless I’ll spend more effort next year working on presenting AM answers than I did this year.
Find someone next year to grade your mocks/prior year answers for you. Scan your handwritten answers and send to them. Either find someone else taking Level III and exchange or pay someone to do it.
I know I would be more than willing to grade mock tests for people to help out now that I’m done.
I find it somewhat inconsistent - I bombed the PM but was bombed on AM - leading to a fail…WTF…is it that I actually knew the materials but didn’t write in a manner the CFA wants or had lucky guesses on the PM.
I wrote in to ask if they would review my Essay questions again.
Waiting for reply.
this is useful. tell that grader to look at the guideline answers and whether your response actually “answers the questions”
Wharoom, I’m in the same position as you. By doing well in the PM session shows that we know the material but then AM killed us. So this means that we did not respond well in the written section. I’ll need to do more practice AM sections which I thought I did.
Wharoom, same boat as you. Not good on AM, decent on PM. Fail. I don’t think they like my writing skills.
I got killed in the AM (8 essays below 50%) and did well in PM (7 at 70% plus) but was shocked to see how badly the morning went for me. It was my first try on level 3 but I was attentive to answering the question asked and also keeping the content tight in bullet format or very short sentences.
Just seems strange to me that I’d bomb 7 in a row when I felt pretty decent about my answers from a content perspective.I ended up in the 8th band overall.
Looking for guidance if people have found themselves in a similar spot after their first level 3 attempt.
Thanks.
Same here. I got under 50 on the last few questions because I was rushing a bit but I felt like I answered the questions very well. They were also my strongest sections on practice exams. I just worry my handwriting wasn’t good enough. Band 10 fail 
Was in the same boat last year - figured out that review does not make sense. I restarted and tried to understand why I received no points: I changed nothing in my learning however on the 02. June this year I watched following video and understood my result and how I need to change my approach:
http://finance.yahoo.com/video/cfa-exam-writer-crazy-recommendation-110000891.html
The important part is not to repeat facts stated in the essay and answer exactly what they ask. Not to try to give more information, rather argue in a simple way to the point.
Last year I answered all questions and received similar scores like you… This year I didn’t manage to finish AM (in fact I left 2 whole questions empty, due to time constr.) however those which I answered I checked twice and managed to focus on what they looked for. Best of luck to you guys.
i’m in the same boat too, dismal performance in the essay portion for the last two years, did well in the PM and have been Band 10 for '16 and '17.
Need a new approach for the essay, does anyone know where we can get feedback for our Essay mocks? Of course i’m willing to pay for this service, i just don’t see it offered in many places. See lots of course providing a mock exam and videos etc, haven’t seen one with feedback.
I found the scheiwser videos helpful. They went over the past few years AM exams in detail. Guesstimating how you would receive marks.
Well, look what it took to get the CBT 