hey guys,
hope studies are coming along well. so regarding the essay, in case we’ve been asked to provide 2 reasons to justify and if I provide 3 instead, would the graders take the two best reasons, assuming my 3rd reason wasn’t too strong to justify ?
Thanks in advance.
They will cross out your third reason and grade only the first two.
What happens when your response is correct in answering thier question but not what they were looking for?
A couple of years ago I had a candidate (one of my tutoring clients) rework the previous year’s morning exam that he had failed. One of his (new) answers didn’t match the guideline answer, but I thought that it was perfectly valid, so I e-mailed CFA Institute to ask them if he would have received credit for that answer. Their reply was that he would have.
So . . . put it out of your mind.
Is there some handbook type document that lists these kinds of rules/pointers for essay answers?
What about if for a question such as ‘‘state which fund, A or B, you would prefer based on the Sharpe Ratio’’, you answer correctly (for example, manager A), but go on (unnecessarily) and show how you erroneously calculated the Sharpe ratio. So basically you wrote down the correct answer but the grader sees that it’s due to luck.
I believe you get no credit for saying fund manager A. You would only get credit if you justified the answer with the correct reasoning / method, based on what was asked. If it says just justify with a ratio, and you stated the SR, then I think you get it right. If it says justifying and show your calculations, then you get it wrong. There’s several points to each question so each part they ask u might get 1-2 points for.
If the question asked you to pick A or B (no justification required) and you chose unwisely, sorry, but I gotta give you 0; if you chose wisely, but did the calc wrong, I think I would still give you the marks, but would shake my head sadly. If you had to do a calc, I might throw you some marks for getting the formula right and plugging in some correct variables. Despite grumblings otherwise, I’m sure the graders have hearts and souls.
There used to be, but I cannot find it on CFA Institute’s website.
You might want to e-mail them (info@cfainstitute.org) and ask.
I thought you would get 1 mark for choosing fund manager A though? i’d imagine it’s a one line, ‘please circle your answer’ kind of thing.
This type of question does not require a high level of cognition: it’s basically a coin flip. You would probably get something more complex to deal with in the actual exam, e.g. one in a series of questions or have some data surrounding A and B, with which you have to calculate something and/or give some justification.
Now where is the real question…
Let’s say there’s a question where your answer is perfectly legit and valid, but they response was not in the material and not in the guideline answer. Basically, you used your own industry experience and knowledge. Would that be marked incorrect?
If it’s not in the curriculum, it’s wrong.
Easy peasy.
Also, can we use shorter versions of longer words? Eg using liabs for liabilities.
is it true, les is better on the essay? I read from some teacher’s website that most the questions can be answered in less than 10 words and they’re simple, and most test takers overthink and over write.
Also, what about bad gammer and spelling typos? As long as the know what u mean, u good to go?
It isn’t so much that less is better, because of you say too little you’ll lose marks.
Say everything that needs to be said, and no more.
To wit?
Another one:
Let’s say the question asks to list the relevant risks… And you put:
“There is a currency risk because the business is transacting with international customers, and the currency could move against the transaction”.
In the above example response, would you not get full credit if you simply said “currency could move against the transaction”… by that, I mean, do you have to say the domestic currency could appreciate which would result in a loss after the exchange rate, thereby that is the currency risk. I would rather just say the currency could move against the transaction rather than explain in detail. The more explanation in detail, the more likely you could mess up and go the wrong direction (for example, saying depreciate instead of appreciate).