Please post your Essay score (% obtained) and PM score (% obtained). It will provide good analysis of what combinations have passed the MPS and what has not. Also how many of you think that the AM portion score you received was way lower than what you expected.
I received about (47%-49%) on the AM which is way lower than my expectations. I did miss about 20-25 points because of time however felt confident about what I wrote for the remaining portion. I feel that the AM was graded very strictly perhaps. On the PM I am close to the 90 percentile (around 80% correct). The PM is in line with my expectations.
My overall score seems to be around 63%-65% and looks 4%-5% higher than the MPS line. I did pass the exam however I feel very lucky to have passed. I changed 6 of my answers in PM section (caught some errors after re-reading the questions). I feel these 6 questions are what have helped me pass.
Posting the am and pm break up will help future candidates how to target their preparations and during exams. I am also curious to know everyone’s thoughts on if AM was graded very strictly
~71% in the essays, ~72% in item sets. Both rough estimates, but am a bit over 70% in both and a bit higher in item sets than I was in essays. This was consistent with my mock exams; I was worried grading myself in the 70s on mock essays but it seems I was grading in line with actual graders.
I will say the item sets were a bit lower than my mocks, but I was expecting that. There’s always some level of variance due to who’s writing the exam.
Also, I learned in Level 2 not to rely on Ethics for points (usually in the 80-90% range on mocks for Ethics, <50% on exam day); if I hadn’t put in extra hours in FRA (my weakest subject) to hedge myself I might have had to take Level 2 again. With lesson learned, I treated Ethics more as bonus points than a subject to rely on. Even with Level 3 I got what looks to be 58% which means I missed 2 questions that I thought I got right.
On the AM, my suggestions are:
treat the AM exam format as an LOS because it’s basically a hidden one. Handling the format is something every Level 3 candidate needs to understand.
Realize that the time constraint is very noticeable in the L3 AM. This was the only section across all levels I’ve taken where I was still writing beyond the last 30 minute mark (and I actually was writing into the last minute). As others have suggested, time yourself on each question and be strict with yourself on that timing.
Practice a lot. I went back to 2012 with my AM practice, and many would tell you that’s on the low end. Questions do become irrelevant which is annoying, so you’ll have to use your best judgment. I usually still attempted the problem to simulate exam conditions and the time spent, but it’s up to you.
Grade harshly. This was easy for me because I used to grade University exams, but the trick is to take the emotion out of it. Even if I think my answer was right, if it’s not in the guideline I 0’d it. On the “calculate the return needed” type problems, I usually assigned points for key steps, similar to what you see in Schweser mock exams. If it’s a question that asks you to circle a choice and explain it, if I circle the wrong one I 0 the entire problem, regardless of explanation. If it’s one where you circle the right answer but explain why the others are wrong, I do still award credit for correctly assessing why the wrong one actually was wrong.
Thanks a lot for your tips wlfgngpck. In awe of your Essay score. Your advice should be of great help to future candidates. Were you on the 90th Percentile on your overall score as well (that is 90% percentile on the MPS chart)
My turn then! Retaking Level 3 this year, in 2017 I also did poorly on the AM. This year I was well above the 90th percentile on AM (below in PM). While I guess people can give large explanations about how to do it, etc… at the end I believe the trick is simple to explain.
Practicing extensively for PM format (there is a LOT of material available) will provide you the knowledge of the curriculum. So do and re-do those PM format exams (CFAI mocks, Qbanks, Schweser…) as they are quick to practice as opposed to the AM ones. I did that and managed to build an understanding of most topics.
I then moved onto AM, once I felt I knew the curriculum rather well to know most of the answers of AM mocks. Doing EOC also helps as they make you write a lot, a good practice to the AM format. However, this is where it becomes paramount to package your knowledge into a few words. I actually wrote very short answers in the AM this year, as opposed to much larger ones last year. I guess I had practiced to be able to summarize and synthesize answers in very short phrases. This is I believe what exam supervisors might be looking for - finding the key words or answer right away. In my opinion if you start “developing” an answer it can become misleading quite quickly without you realising it, or it can become an approximate answer. And that could be why points are lost easily…
Great insights sadar. Helped me understand some possible reasons why I did not do that well on the Essay. So did you score more than 70% in both Essay and Item Set ?
I got perhaps 52% in the AM and 71% in the PM. This is after skipping two sub questions in the AM (maybe 12 points or so can’t remember). Was quite surprised by the AM paper as I was getting 70s in the mocks/past papers…some of the questions in the paper completely threw me!
I was a tad above the MPS…guessing it is high 50/very low 60s this year.
My best guess is ~ 58% on the Essay and ~72% on the Item Set.
I was mocking slightly better on both the essay and item set right before the exam. I may have been grading myself too easily which could have been the issue, but this resulted in a pass for 2018.
The line seems to be on 69% for the morning essay (90th percentile seems to be at 66%?). On the item set it seems to be at 73%, the 90th percentile sitting probably at 80% or more.
So roughly yes 70% ish.
To put in into context with the previous year, AM I got 6 / 2 / 2 and PM 2 / 4 / 3. So I think PM I did quite similarly, but I completely missed the AM one. Therefore, in my case honing the Essay is was as put me through the exam. I really thing it comes down to writing a short concise answer. And for that, it has helped me doing a lot of PM practice (again, faster than AM mocks) to build up knowledge, and only then AM-type mocks to learn how to wrap the answer in short words.
I am actually the kind of person what would start deviating and giving a approximate answer (my logic was if its not wrong then it has to be correct… wrong reasoning of course!). So yeah, it’s all come down to that essay exam.
Genuinely, I do believe that most candidates know the topics and probably can give an answer. But IMO the gap is at short answer & accuracy level… again, just my opinion!
Tough luck. I happened to catch some of my errors in PM and that helped me go from 70% to 80%. That’s what got me above the line. I guess the lesson is to to really nail the PM, because AM is not that well in your control. In PM there is ample time to revisit questions and make sure one is not making any silly errors.
First try L3, passed with ± 65% AM and ± 71-72% PM. I had a really good feeling about the AM, so 65% seems low to me, but it’s around 85th percentile so that’s actually not that bad. I had a bad feeling about PM, 71-72% is a pleasant surprise. I thought my PM might be a reason for a fail, so I never expected a standalone passing score for PM. Especially in ethics I had numerous questions which seemed to have two possible answers (at least to me), but I scored well above 70% there. I wrote the AM almost completely but for fixed income I basically only wrote down some terms which I knew would grant me 1 or even 2 points here and there. It shows on my scoresheet because FI is my only <50% category (I think around 25th percentile). Main factors which lead me to pass mainly focus on AM: 1) Find a chart that shows all previous exam questions that are still relevant (there are some around online). Print out all old exams and label relevant and cross out non relevant questions. In the final month of studying, do as many as you can including 1 or 2 timed. Just count the points you get for all relevant questions and set the timer accordingly for the total time you would have gotten if the exam was X out of 180 points. I felt quite comfortable about the keywords and that I was using the right CFA language. Don’t worry about crappy sentencing or English, I didn’t either. Quite to the contrary: Be very concise but always to the point! (Extra tip: Force yourself to write the essay in bullet points where you can). I only graded myself and used the official answer keys. The past 10 weeks I wished I had used an external grader. In the end it wasn’t necessary for me, but I can imagine you would want to do this. 2) Tell yourself a dozen times to focus on time management and then tell yourself a few times more! As a University student I would always be done with exams as one of the first people, sometimes finishing 3 hour exams in 1 hour. This time I had to really work hard to be done somewhere between 0-5 minutes to 12 and remember what I said about not completely writing all the FI questions. Some tips: I would not do the AM in a specific order. I started at Q 1A but along the way I skipped any question that I did not immediately know how to solve. I wrote up a list with any Q I skipped on one of my note sheets like 1B, 2D, 2E, 5C, etc and reviewed them when I was at the end. Some I could solve now, some I could solve investing some extra time than was actually alotted purely from a minute per point perspective and for some I only filled in some to the point remarks which was no solving but should get like 1 or maybe 2 points. This way I knew that I would always get to solve any question and would first be solving all questions I actually knew what to do. I also kept tabs on all the points I cleared and used that for reference when checking my watch. basically if I did 3 questions worth 60 points (and skipped for example another 20 points) I knew I was still alright as long as 60 minutes had not yet past. Gave me a lot of peace of mind knowing I was on track. I would not have known this otherwise because of the skipping of questions and not all questions being the same length.
I used only Schweser for L1 & and L2 but this time I also bought Mark Meldrum’s videos and was extremely happy with them. I listened (playing the video but not looking at the screen) to all of them during commute and I watched the ones for which during repetition in the last month I was still pretty weak. Helped me a ton! (If you read this Mark, thanks!! ;-))
Treat PM the same as L2. Because besides the content: it 100% is. Don’t forget writing PM mocks while doing practising AM. I agree with Sadar that you should do PM mocks to build op knowledge and AM mocks just to get comfortable with AM portion. I don’t see value in doing AM mocks in early stages of your study schedule.
Use CFAI question bank. Very nice way to test yourself per topic. I used this way too little (only in the end). Best of luck next year y’all!
Essay seems to be mid-50’s maybe? Item Set is slightly below 70%.
Overall was above MPS so I’m guessing with everyone else that it must be high-50’s/low-60’s for MPW raw percentage.
Echoing what everyone else says for prep. Use a good provider if possible to clarify topics that are unclear - there are truly no shortcuts to this thing - and practice, practice, practice. Good luck all
AM: ~72%. This is somewhat below my average of 76% on AM mocks going into the exam. But I’d say the score is about what I expected, the AM this year was tough as everyone who took it knows. Left nothing blank, except one question that while not blank I just jotted something down fast. Best tip: use a digital watch while doing your mocks and get really good at keeping track of your time as you progress. I took about 12 practice essay mocks
PM: ~80+%. This is about my average of PM mocks going into the exam, and was actually better than I expected because here again, I didn’t exactly find the PM to be a total softball. I took about 11 PM mocks.
My tip for incoming L3 candidates: really practice writing the AM section early to build confidence and time management skills. You might know the material really well, but don’t underestimate exam day nerves. My nerves in the AM session were unlike any CFA experience in the past.
My turn : AM ~ 72 % (the bottom of the bold blue line is just above the top of the bold grey line representing 70 %)
PM ~ 85 % (il the 90% percentile = 80 %, and considering the bottom of the blue square touches the 90% percentile line).
On PM, rather a good result compared to mock (where I score 75%-85%). The questions did not seem that difficult but I had several hesitations (around 10 questions), so that’s why i did not necessarily expect more than 80 %.
On AM, this is better than my mock (but I did only two, and not in real conditions - i always got bored and ended up just mentally answering the qualitative questions on IPS for instance rather than actually writing them down - very bad idea - but I also “read” questions and answers of pass essay exams over the last 4 years ) and much better than what I expected, considering i think i left blank at least 2 full item sets (among which the First 1) and several other blank questions.
I regreted not using the CFAI material (but did not have time anyway) because I felt some questions did not fit any material that I had studied/practiced…
PM: Just over 70% (significantly below 90th percentile)
The combination put me just above the 90th percentile overall. Leaving the exam, I did not feel confident about passing, but honestly, it’s hard to feel good leaving an exam when you didn’t know how to respond to 30% of it…
At the time of taking the exam, I felt like I could have used an additional week to study. I had gone over the last three years’ AM exams. I didn’t actually mock them as I was running out of time / was lazy – I just read the question, thought about how I would answer the question (assuming I had any clue) and then read over and copied down the responses as I would write them on the test (i.e. a lot more to the point than the answers provided). I think this was good enough practice to give me an idea of what kind of questions to expect and what kind of responses the graders are looking for.
On the actual exam, I made a point of not stopping. I would read the question, respond to it if I generally had an answer (made sure to leave space in case I needed to cross anything out), or skip it if I didn’t. Basically, I did not want to run out of time and end up having not responded to any question I could have gotten correct. I completed the portion of the AM that I did know with about 45 minutes left to spare, and then just went back and wrote anything that came to mind for the remaining questions, even if they were undoubtedly incorrect.
For the PM, I just did the mock exams provided by the CFAI and the questions in the question bank on the website. I was getting about 65% or so on these.
For this level, I did not use any 3rd party study materials
The counterpoint to this is that if you look at the essay vs. item set results, the 10th to 90th percentile range is much wider on the essay than the item set. This means that candidates have more ability to differentiate and/or improve on the essay than the essays than the item set. So, from a cost (time)/benefit (improvement) standpoint, doing well on the essay would seem a better strategy.
Also, the absolute scores on the essay are much, much lower than on the item set. This means two things:
To do ‘well’ (on a relative basis) on the essay, you don’t need to know the material any better, you just need to know how to write answers in a way that CFAI will give you maximum points. Of course, the CFAI materials are incomplete in helping you learn how to do this - they give you ‘perfect’ answers that no candidate would be able to write (nor would they have time) and very little or no indication of what points a realistic answer would get. I think that’s why prep providers are so valuable for level 3 and candidates who are retakers should consider getting individual grading by someone who knows the process. (and no, I’m not plugging any individual prep provider; I’m sure there are good ones out there for candidates to find)
The amount you can improve on the essay is higher than the amount you can improve on the item set because you are starting from a lower absolute point and no one can get above 100%.
I got 2 questions for the folks who gave L3 this year.
What does 6/2/2 and 2/4/3 mean? ( I understand this is probably a noob question lol)
Do you folks know of any prep providers who provide essay grading services? I read somewhere here that S2000magician provides some essay grading services, can someone confirm that?