2008 Level 3 Pass Rate

According to the Law of Mean Reversion, my guess is that we are going to see a pass rate in the 60’s this year! This is our year to make it people! The average pass rates for level 3 are as follows: - Since inception (1963-2007) is 67% - The last 20 years (1988-2007) is 68% - The last 10 years (1998-2007) is 63.6% - The last 5 years (1988-2007) is 62.6% Considering last year’s shocking pass rate of 50%, my hope is that we will see a pass a pass rate of at least 60% this year. Any thoughts?

There’s an error in my message, The last 5 years supposed to read “(2003-2007)” but the percentage of 62.7% is correct

Yes but remember the 50% that didnt pass last year are now seasoned veterans and will help increase the pass rate, but that doesn’t mean you have any better of a chance of an ‘easier’ test…

Focus on studying the material…if you are prepared, everything else are all noise.

I don’t by any means think that the test will be easier but I am hoping that the MPS will decrease or the marking process will be less stringent than last year when everyone did miserably in the morning paper

It’s still higher than 38%-39% of L1 and L2 Nothing like a bunch of statistics to lure you into a false sense of security

I’m buying 65.

put or call…

verbatim from a 2005 L3er. “L2 was significantly harder than L3 but be careful to not waste too much time writing out the essay responses, keep it short.”

bigwilly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > put or call… Calls.

Yes but how short is too short :slight_smile:

I would bet that the pass rate would be back up to 65% or so this year. CFA institute likely failed more people last year to justify requiring every candidate to purchase its texts. Now that they are padding their pockets and justifying it by saying that more people were failing because they werent using the required texts, pasing rates will have to go up for them to prove their point

I wrote L3 last year (unsuccessfully). I thought it was the hardest one by far. This year I am pissed off and I am coming back with a vangeance. I imagine there are a lot of people who share my sentiment. That alone should inflate the pass rate.

AIC I like the way u think… you’re spot on! This is the year that CFAI are going to market their own books and encourage candidates to use their books going forward. I predict a pass rate in the mid t 60’s…

AIC I like the way u think… you’re spot on! This is the year that CFAI are going to market their own books and encourage candidates to use their books going forward. I predict a pass rate in the mid 60’s…

madman, What was it you found particularly hard about the L3 exam last year? Was it just the different nature of the exam compared to L1&2? Was it more detail and minitua oriented than you thought it would be? Essay questions too ambiguous? Are you changing anything about how you are preparing for the second go-round? BTW, best of luck this year!

Holy crap, if madman is approaching the exam this way, understandably, and I thought I was working hard (1st time sitting this exam). Not sure which quartile I sit in!

Patacon in response to your question: L3 is a completely different animal. Whereas in the first two levels my focus was on learning the content and understanding it, in L3 it becomes much more important to know how to answer the question. My strategy for L1 and L2 was to learn the material by studying, reviewing, taking notes and doing practice problems. In L3 the strategy changes - doing PRACTICE EXAMS is the most important. Do as many as you can. QBank won’t help you much as the exam questions will have a different format. You have to get really comfortable in answering the essay questions briefly and quickly. In addition you have to get comfortable with item sets that feature material from multiple study sessions. Hope that helps.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The low pass rate could be a consequence of a great number of non-native English speaking candidates. As the number of international candidates has increased over the last couple of years, it is possible that we are now seeing these non-native speakers making up a greater proportion of the Level 3 exam. While accounting concepts, FSA, bond analysis, derivatives, FX etc are very mathematical and translate relatively easily in most languages, some of the Level 3 text is pretty tough to follow, especially for Swahili speakers like myself. Perhaps the candidates in India, China, the Middle East, Eastern Europe could be at a slight disadvantage to people who have grown up speaking English. But then again, if you want to work in Finance, or be an astrophysicist, you may want to bone up on your english language skills. Or perhaps 50% of the candidates really didn’t study enough last year.

88fiveo… for your info India has best English speaking population… in fact better then rest of the world