Passing is possible even if you fail AM!

Hi all,

Congratulations to those who passed! I’d like to take this opportunity to share what I had learnt from completing the CFA exams. I hope this would be useful to some of you who might be in similar shoes in the future…

I recall leaving the AM session feeling as if all were lost - I had left 35 marks of questions blank , and I weren’t sure of 1/3 of the questions that I had answered. I’ve never had good handwriting and I remember not being able to read some of the answers I scribbled when I took a last look at my paper before submitting it.

On the other hand, the PM paper was surprisingly manageable in my opinion. I actually felt I had a 50/50 chance of passing when I left the exam hall.

In the days after, I got increasingly demoralized from reading the forum, as most people found the AM session much easier instead (I almost thought I took a different paper). Many of the posts I came across were by people who left 5-15 marks blank at most, while others mentioned that they had previously failed because of leaving 20-30 marks unanswered. There were also those who advised to aim for at least 50% correct in the AM session to secure a pass. This was when I was 100% sure I would fail the AM paper.

I was so convinced I had failed, and was very surprised when I saw my results. Although as expected, I was in the bottom 35-40% for the AM session , my overall score cleared the MPS with the bottom of the band slightly touching the line.

I hope this would boost the confidence of those who aren’t the fastest writers or the most confident in the essay section. Don’t give up even if the AM session is brutal!

The core of your post is valid. Don’t give up after a poor performance in the AM session.

However, one cannot “fail” the AM paper.

From Pg. 3 of the result form: “See how you performed (your percentage of available points) on the item set and essay portions of the exam. Note, there is no minimum passing score by item type. Item type scores are offered as a guide for assessing your performance.”

In an alternative defintion of “fail”, one could use standard grading conventions (less than 60% is a fail), but considering the 10th percentile of AM scores was below 70% of available points on the AM paper, this approach doesn’t seem practical either.

Scored ~40% on the AM session and ~95% on the PM session and passed.

Left 40points worth of blanks and had several weak answers here and there.

To keep your sanity, never, ever languish on this forum after the exams. Live your life.

Thanks for clarifying, though I think it’s quite clear that by “failing” I meant scoring below 50% of the raw score.