Question from lazy person....

Hi guys, Sorry for the stupid question as I am too lazy to do my own research and read older posts… Would someone be kind enough to give me a rough synopsis on the FRM in terms of: -Cost -Study time -Overall pain factor (let’s use CFA as a bmrk) I passed LIII in June of 09 and heard from quite a few people that FRM is a great compliment to the charter. Thanks again for your time.

Hi crablegs, I remember you from the L3 forum last year. - Dunno, but it isn’t expensive - I spent 1 full day of doing practice Q’s. I signed up but regretted it and put in 16 hours of mega effort to get in exam mode. I wouldn’t recommend it, I’ve passed pretty easily based on the quartile results indicator but I haven’t learnt much. - Based on your L3 knowledge you’re all set to go as I commented above. I don’t know anyone who passed L3 and failed this exam.

If mcpass above is serious with having put in so little effort and yet he still passed, then he must be a genius. I studied just as hard for the FRM as I did for each level of the CFA (over 300 hours each), but still felt underprepared at the end. I did get a lot out of it though and do not regret having spend so much time.

I second mcpass - I did studied more than a day, but I think I stuided no more than 50 hours to pass the full exam. Only partial of Market Risk, all of Credit Risk and OpRisk are new, the others are pretty much overlap with CFA cirriculum or trivial. So I am not surprised mcpass passed the exam with 1 day of effort.

Trust me… I’m not a genius. I AM smart enough to know that ;-). Don’t get me wrong. FRM is tough material. I was not prepared well. Did not feel comfortable. But passed with lots of margin. The bar simply cannot have been set very high. That’s why I say it’s easy to PASS. Not to understand. Edit: I want to add that I was enthusiastic about the material but didn’t find the time to study. So now I’m quite disappointed at the designation because having me pass with flying colours (all in quartile 1 but 2) after such minimal effort… that’s a JOKE. I had hoped they would have beefed up the exam to make it selective so that was a disappointment after seeing the results. Tough exam, but very low MPS which makes it too easy to pass.

For everyone who passed the exam, stop expressing how easy it was, but instead build the image that it was a difficult exam, so it seems more valuable. By doing what you are doing, you are making it seem less important.

damn, this exam was so tough, harder than CFA L2 in my opinion

Thx for all the input. I might be wrong, but the concept of easy/difficult probably is somewhat subjective given the topic. mcpass might be very comfortable with derviatives maybe due to his line of work. I, on the other hand, had a tendency to produce a turd in my underwear every time I came accross a question with any option/derviatives on it during all 3 levels, so if that is mostly what the FRM is about, this feels to me like another trip to hell.