So the problem I have is that I did very poorly on the AM exam, but I remember feeling like I did really well. I understood what the questions were and felt I knew the answers yet I scored near bottom 10%. I don’t understand how this is possible. Did this happen to anyone else? I am fine with failing, I just can’t understand the terrible score when I knew what they were asking. Is there a way they are looking for you to answer the questions maybe, that i failed to do?
Check out the answers when they’re released in December 2018 or January of next year. Then you’ll know.
#sorry
I mastered the CFA language(jargon) for Private and Individual PM. They keep on writing the same stuff.
Rest of the part are pretty much mathematical, if you are good at doing well PM sections you can nail in AM too.
I was mentally ready for chapters that are going to appear in AM session, and I was 90% accurate. There is a pattern, you can easily figure it out.
Key is past actual papers. I did all of them back to 2007, more important then the actual questions were the CFA guideline answers. They become an amazing revision tool.
Whilst I did feel that 2018 paper felt completely different to the past ones (almost as if a new team had written them) I think somewhere deep in my subconscious I must have known the right key words to target.
Strange though as I left atleast 30 marks blank and found the AM to be very hard but looks like I scored around a 60. Cant really explain that!
Good luck next year dude.
Was a retaker this year (Band 10 Fail to 90th % Pass) and that is exactly how I felt when I failed last year. Left confident but was shocked by actual result. Under old system, I scored 7/2/1 in AM (likely ~40%) despite thinking I got no worse than 60%. Wasted money on a retab. When I reviewed the answers, I noticed that I likely made 2-3 careless errors but still couldn’t rationalize my score.
Turn to this year and I got a 90th% AM score despite virtually no change in prep/strategy (only 150 hours studying) other than writing much larger than last year. Left no marks blank either time. Hard to explain the variability other than perhaps I reduced careless errors.
Please can you share the pattern for chapters that are going to appear in AM session?
I would bet a leg that is was that you didn’t answer stuff in the CFA language even if you knew the content.
In other words
Wrong answer: An endowment has a low risk tolerance because its long time horizon
Correct answer: An endowment has a high risk tolerance because its long time horizon
CFA answer: An endowment has a high risk tolerance because of its long time horizon. This allows asset values to recover following a period of poor returns versus a short time horizon.
The only way I would have known would be from the 3-day crash course I took.
The morning session was tricky because only certain words will receive points. My point is that we need to distinguish between “what you think is correct answer” and the real correct answer. Do the past 10 yrs exam and practice standard words.
I have a friend who got band 1 on the 1st attempt and passed on the 2nd attempt.
What happened was that she wasn’t using the correct material(she thought she was) and she thinks she nailed all the points on her study material but she wasn’t getting what was really tested.
She told me she answered ALL morning questions and the answer sheet was full of writing. But what she realized on the 2nd attempt was that only certain words will receive points.
Where did you find 10 years worth of past papers?
I thought CFAI only makes available 3 years back?
I expected the AM to my strongest, but actually got about 45%. In contrast, I got over 70% in the PM, when I expected low 60s.
I came out of the AM session feeling really positive, having done over 10 years of past papers and managing time well. Clearly I was wrong.
In comparison, my feeling on PM was that it felt easier than the CFA mocks and a schweser mock I did ‘live’. My 60ish scores meant that in the real thing I took my time and was ultra careful, which probably accounts for the above expectations score.
My worry on the AM was the ‘double jepody’ questions that award marks to a conclusion and marks for the justification. When I did practice questions to time I saw that it was easy to screw these up by not reading them properly under time pressure.
Luckily I did okay overall
So are you saying that the CFA is what gets the full points, and not the correct answer
Please can you share the pattern for chapters that are going to appear in AM session?
If you do past exams and check your answer with guideline answers you may realize your mistake. Do past years exams as many as possible. Guideline answers are long but you can rewrite them much shorter. This was my strategy and even though English is my second language and I not consider myself genius I manage essay session above 90th percentile.
Now I cannot reveal the exact details, as the paper is still not made online.
But for example look at ECOn, every year till now they have asked one set in AM and one set in PM. And you will see them coming alternatively, which means one of the chapters appears in AM and the next one will come in PM. There will be a switch next year. But this year they have reduced the weight, hence I think ECO might appear only in one of the sessions wherein Equity might come in both.
Similarly TMR/Port Evauation appear alternatively. Btwn Derivatives and Risk Management there is a switch almost every year
There are few areas where they generally dont like to ask qs in AM, hence suppose they have asked Alt Inv in AM any year, it’s highly unlikely they might ask next year in AM.
There will be one IPS return calculation qs for sure, master it and get full credit. Just open last 7/8 years paper to find the pattern. But all these techniques are useful in last month to solidify your score.
I had to do this because I did not have much time.
Here are my 2 cents!!
I failed last year in band 6 and had the same frustration as I thought I had done all the required studies. For this year I changed the strategy as below.
For 2018, I did most of my studies from the CFAI books. Curriculum is much less for L3 which is relieving. I paid special attention to private and institutional portfolio management. I did poorly in these two subjects in 2017 exam. I started slowly in early November and picked up the speed in January. I also emphasized on EOC and in chapter questions. I think I solved most of them. I also created index cards along the way. I had to spend more time on FI, AA and AI as CFAI changed them completely in 2018
From mid April I started solving previous exams papers (2008 onwards) and reviewing Ethics and GIPS. (Exam was in 3rd week of June so got more than 2 months for revision). These two months were crucial to understand how to solve problems on private/institutional portfolio management (especially calculating before tax/after tax rate of rerun for portfolio) . Spent extra time on the questions that I got wrong in the papers. I also followed the advice from previous Charter holder. You can find it here -
https://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-iii-forum/91360964
I used Mark Meldrum’s videos (I liked them), but I really spent more time on CFAI books. I also used Schweser notes little bit.
Took 1 week off before the exam to revise everything again.
Overall this strategy worked for me. Hope it will be useful to you too (although every individual’s style is different)
Good Luck to you all!!