How much time (# minutes) should you assume you have to complete the IPS essay questions? I’m practicing now and want to get an idea as to whether I’m on track time-wise. Thanks?
it varies if you look at past exams. I would say a half hour is average. sometimes on the exam they’ll break it up into chunks though.
30 min for each one? including the reading, interpretation and writing out of the answer?
the Individual IPS question last year was 36 minutes. My strategy was to come back to it at the end after I got my confidence but ran out of time, and didn’t get any points.
Thanks L3BeatIt. I had a similar problem. I missed an entire IPS (the institutional one) I think that’s pretty much a deal-breaker. I mean you miss one of those and you’ve got a very small chance of passing. It won’t happen again! Thanks for your response. Anyone else care to verify or chip in?
Also, does anyone have an opinion on what the odds are of seeing anything other than a DB Pension Institutional IPS problem? In other words what are the odds of having to do an IPS for a bank or insurance company?
just want to clarify: strategy was to work the non-IPS essays first and then come back to them once you completed everything else? this was actually a suggestions someone made to me (he passed). though it is too risky, in my mind…
it’s possible that in a “normal” am session that strategy may work, but last year was brutal timewise (I at least felt immense pressure and rushed the whole morning session)
I would not recommend leaving the IPS questions until the end. If you screw them up, you are toast. The individual and institutional IPS questions can end up being almost half the morning. They usually end up taking at least as much time as is allocated to them. There are usually a lot of parts to them and they each require different trains of thought. I would recommend starting with them and then moving to the other easy essay questions.
Agree with doing the IPS first. They are guaranteed to be on the exam, you have access to several past exams to see how the questions should be approached and answered, and they are worth a bunch of points. In 2008, the individual and institutional were both worth 36 points, or 72 in total, which is 20% of the exam. In short, studying the hell out of those topics WILL be worth your time. I got 70+ in both and without those, I don’t pass. If you decide starting somewhere else, you risk getting bogged down in question that’s only worth 9 points.
Do IPS first. The questions itself simply takes lot of time to read.
The average of the last 14 years is 41 minutes. No Joke.
41 minutes on taken by a candidate on average to complete each of the IPS questions? Is that ideal or (as I think) way too much time to spend on them?
I have no clue if that is ideal. Just what the average minutes allotted.
I think people waste the most time calculating the return requirement . Hopefully this year it is not connected to the following Q’s so that we can just move on if we are not 100% sure .
the bottom line is that it is intimidating at first looking at the IPS question- 1) because it’s the first problem when opening up the book and 2) because of the amount of verbage.