Performance on 2016/2015/2014 CFAI Mocks (AM)

Anyone else struggling mightily with the recent CFAI AM mocks? I’m sure it’s buried somewhere on this forum, but for the people that have taken and passed L3, what’s the general gauge on the AM score needed to pass this exam (suspending PM performance for a moment)? 50 / 60 / 70?

Only taken 2014 from CFAI so far out of those. That one was a dream for those candidates I assume. I have done Schweser Practice test 1 & 2 also. 2 is worded so poorly.

Also, wondering what the avg passing score for AM would be.

From what i’ve gathered, a 60% performance in AM is on average equivalent to 80% performance in PM…

72/77/69 on AM.

just curious to know how you guys are grading the AM mocks? I’m not giving myself any partial credit so at this rate I’m failing for sure. I’ve only attempted the 2016 AM Mock from CFAI so far and will finish the other two from CFAI next weekend.

I thought I read somewhere in schweser materials that they had a schweser scoring guide for available CFA AM previous year tests but I can’t find it.

2016 was rough compared to others took it today got a 72% but was shakey on a lot of stuff. FI/EQ/TMR wrecked my day, did really well on Institutional & individual

I did 2015 today (was saving 15 and 16 to closer to the exam date) and scored myself with a 71%. I felt like I was conservative in the grading like I tend to be, deducting marks when I’m not hitting the important points in an answer. I actually found myself wishing this was our exam heh. There were some real softballs in there, although I bombed question 7. I just couldn’t get my head around how to approach it. I also made a few stupid mistakes (hello when you’re in a loss position in a derivatives contract there is zero credit risk … hello? brain? anybody home?).

Grading is the real wildcard though. My goal is to just apply common sense when formulating an answer (like don’t write 4 words on a question worth 6 points) and hope for the best.

Also, try to improve on recognizing important information in the case facts. After doing the 2008-2015 AM exams, I’ve found that it’s rare that a sentence is written that doesn’t have some relevance to one of the answer responses in the question. Being able to pick those out can help guide you towards what they’re looking for in an answer. If you look the exams over enough times you can find patterns, and realize that sometimes they’re almost spoon feeding the answer to you (or more importantly, what they want to hear from you as rationalization in an answer).

I did well on 2014 and 2015 mock (above 75%), but poorly on the 2016 mock (61%). 2016 was quite challenging, and I was not surprised as I failed the real thing last year.

Scoring on average 70% for AM CFA exams (have done 2013 to 2016 - Still 2011 and 2012 to go). I find them a lot easier than Schweser’s (more straight to the point).

Wow. Haven’t attempted 2016 yet, but scoring around 50-55% on the rest. If I compare my self to the median/average AF candidate I am definitely going to fail.

Well… It is highly speculated that the average AF candidate is an above-average candidate out of all the candidates out there… IMO, 55% would be a fair score on AM, if you can score 75% in the PM… :wink:

Median candidate is a poor benchmark. It’s not investable. Lol!

I hope so. I have scored 55% AM and 75% PM in last 2 mocks, hopefully these will improve. Its just frustrating because I was scoring consistently 80%+ in both level 1 and level 2 mocks and here I am in level 3, haven’t even touched 70% yet.

All AM Mock Scores to date:

Schweser Avg - 70% to 78% (Volumes 1 &2)

2013 - TBD

2014 - 88%

2015 - 73%

2016 - TBD

2014 mock seems like the outlier for sure in terms of difficulty.

Joe- you know it’s not an open-book exam…

In all seriousness, you’re being too generous in grading yourself. How I can tell? Go back and look at “RESULTS” matrices from 2013-2016. How many of those AM sessions look like they could’ve been 70%+?

#ThatsMyPoint

Just finished 2014 last night, and I found it the easiest of the 3, with 2016 (my only real CFA exam failure :frowning: ) being the most challenging.

2014: 79%

2015: 72%

2016: 70%

I pray I don’t have a hiccup on the real thing…

Ssshhh! You should avoid posting your very good scores here. It’ll scare some people off!

Btw, nice scores though! :wink:

Taken 10 years past cfa exams (am only) and three Kaplan full exams. Averaging 65-66 on cfa and 68-71 on Kaplan am’s. Averaging Kaplan am and pm leaves me with a 73-75 average combined. Cfa actual exams and topic test seem much more difficult than Kaplan. Really going to depend on topics tested but I don’t see scoring less than 62am and 70 pm. Hopefully a 65 will pass this

Never Sure when people say CFA AM Mocks if they are referring to the AM Essay Mocks or AM Multiple Choice Mocks.

Ive scored in the 80+% on all 3 CFA AM Essay style Mocks, but I am a L3 retaker from last years - Band 10.