several people have commented that they felt they did better on the a.m. then the results showed. I am one of those as well I thought that I did at least 70% on the morning session but when I got my results I had 5 topics that were less than or equal to 50 this completely blows my mind. I then can only estimate that it had to be due to either poor handwriting or not writing out the formula using words.
Did anyone else notice something that I did not regarding the a.m. session. Were there many questions with tricks? Did you have to list keywords? Etc. etc.
I don’t recall any “tricks” in the morning session, but to be fair, I don’t remember much about the morning exam at all. It’s like I blacked out for 3 hours. I think adrenaline kicked in and I was in some kind of “performance mode”. I was just writing. But, I didn’t write out any formulas, words or variables, except for one (which I don’t think helped me anyway). If it asked for a calculation I performed the calculation and stated and circled the answer.
I can only guess here, but you may have written answers without actually answering the question, which means you didn’t get certain words or statements of understanding into your answers. For me, the ability to do this quickly and concisely came with practice.
I’m hoping to get my hands on the 2016 exam somehow once it’s released as I do want to see it again to fill in some blanks heh.
For reference, my AM matrix was 1 / 2 / 7, which was a lot better than I was expecting to be honest.
I didn’t remember any tricks per se, but I will say I tried to use keywords from the CFAI text/curriculum. Something I did which I feel really helped me was to, after I did a practive exam, really study the answer key. Read over it and get a feel for how the CFAI writes their answers. I then tried to answer my exam questions in their style/format. I hope this helps.
To be honest I don’t really remember that much about each question except maybe a couple, but I just remember feeling confident after the AM which I have NEVER felt confident after any portion of a CFA exam. Thank you so much for your insight!
The only AM question that shocked me is the third one: Portfolio Management- Performance Evaluation…To be honest, I expected this one > 70% because I knew every formula and concept it tested, turned out it was just <50%…No idea what’s going on, for the rest of AM questions, some seemed been graded unforgiving but the matrix is not farfetched although lower than I expected(Some questions I expected >70% is 51%-70%)
Yes and the painful thing is knowing grading is up to the subjectivity of graders. Was I too brief and didn’t elaborate enough to get full points? I feel like concise answers are what they want so that’s what I went for. Really felt I got ~70% but my matrix makes me think i was in the 50s.
Im sure if I could sit down and have a discussion with someone I could argue my answers and justify more points. So frustrating. I really hope some of us take a strong look at the 2017 AM when it’s released in Dec/Jan and we contest some of their answers as not covering everything.
Don’t bother. They won’t “regrade” your paper. All the’ll do is make sure points were summed correctly. Maybe they forgot to include an entire questions points? No idea. But probably a waste. It’s only 100 bucks though. To some it helps peace if mind.
My first thought is you might have a skewed perception of the grading process. Did you get your practice papers graded by a pro or just did it yourself?
Dreamland–one of my <50 sections was that question as well. I thought it was really straight forward (>70) and if you solved it correctly (or at least as i thought), you would have been able to confirm the calculations as the ending answers all would have been needed to be the same
I can’t say I’ve done it myself, but I’ve heard AF Forum people talking it up…one site out there grades your attempts at the past 10 AM papers for like $400 or something. If you think that impartial grading let to a surprise fail it could be a good investment. Good luck!
I like how Arif Irfanullah (IFT) and David Heatherington (Schweser) run you down the point allocation of every question. They give you a picture on how the answers are graded. i.e. 1 point if you define this, another if you write down it’s formula, etc.
It’ll give you an idea what the institute expects from your answers.