Thank you - I had this in my first post on this thread and deleted it because I wanted to see what the consensus was before I made that statement. It was almost anticlimactic for me - I was expecting a much more challenging exam on par with the mock exam. I’m not saying it was easy. I think the exam was well-written and most of the questions were “know it or you don’t” and maybe I lucked out, but I felt like I “knew it” for 107 of the questions (save for 12 ethics questions and that damn derivatives formula). However, this makes me very nervous, because I hear all the talk about all the tricks CFAI likes to include, and DID include in the mock, and fear that I fell victim to them. But then I think about the vignettes and they were so concise when compared to the mocks that there were so few places that nuances could be hidden that eluded me.
As far as the portfolio management section: it was challenging as it tested a couple of formulas that I reviewed JUST enough to be able to apply comfortably on test day and I would be disappointed if I fell below the 70+ range on that section.
Overall, I feel good, but not as good as I did last June.
Side note: Accounting, seriously…couldn’t even be compared to the difficulty presented in the mock!
Why is everyone saying quant was tricky? It was incredibly straightforward. Fixed income and derivs were wacky and not representative, ill give you that.
It’s interesting reading through the comments and seeing that people found the test very easy. The consensus from my test centre was that the morning was reasonably straight forward - certainly could have been worse - and the afternoon session was tough. Overall I think it was a well constructed paper, the real thing is certainly more straight forward than the mock of 3rd party exams, that doesn’t necassarily make it easier but the feel of the exam is different. I really hope the MPS isn’t as high as has been suggested on this thread.
I feel like I nailed ethics. It seemed less ambigious than last year but that perception may be down to the fact that I was much better prepared this time round.
FRA was straight forward although I am slightly worried that there may have been some tricks/advanced concepts that I missed completely. vs last year FRA, this was a breeze.
I thought equity was quite tricky, maybe i was complacent with this section during my preparation and didn’t do enough problems.
Regarding that derivs question, i wasn’t surprised that it came up, if schweser tell you not to learn something (of if they leave it out completely) it probably increases the likelihood of it coming up in the exam. Having said that, I still didn’t learn the forumula and probably didn’t get the mark.
2nd year in a row I’ve walked into the exam thinking that Fixed Income was a strong topic for me and have walked back out thinking I may have got <50%.
I’m glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one that got blindsided by the last 3 questions in pm.
Biggest learning points:
It’s a mistake to take the wording of a LOS too literally or to blindly follow the bullet points schweser put in italics eg, candidates are no longer required to perform this calculation
don’t assume the number of item sets per topic or the order of the item sets
FRA definitely had tricks for people too anxious to plug and chug. RTFQ, really easy traps that I fell into as well, before I reread the vignettes after my first run through. Fixed Income and Derivs. are always incredibly wacky, and I work in Fixed Income! That question was dirty, especially towards the very end of the whole test, way to rock my world cfai.
Equity wasn’t really as straightforward as last year or the year before, and there were huge portions that didn’t get tested at all. Equity is normally a gimme >70, but they made you work a little by using some obscure formulas.
Definitely found AM to be easier than PM, partly because my brain stopped fully functioning after lunch and having slept something like 0.3 hours the night before. Overall I thought the exam was easier than the mock, with Deriv, FI, and AI being the toughest.
With that said, I was somewhat surprised at how a bunch of answers just magically matched with the number that my calculator spat out. During the exam I was glad about this, but after the exam I kept wondering if I just got baited by trap answers. Some questions almost seemed TOO straightforward. I know that if FRA or Equity had trick questions or trap answers to them I probably fell for most of them.
I had to re-calculate my answers a few times because I felt the questions were to easy for this exam. Overall, I made educated guesses on about 10 questions per paper and had to outright guess on a few. I thought derivatives in the PM section were tricky but that could be because it was my last item set.
I know that I missed the two absolute easiest equity questions in the morning. It was my first real item set after ethics and I was too amped up and they were too easy. I didn’t give myself time to think about the really easy one so got it wrong (I thought about it in my head walking out of the first half and realized just how wrong I was), the other was among the first equations given in Schweser in equity and I hadn’t looked at it in so long that I couldn’t remember if it was addiditve or not. If I fail and it’s because of those two questions I will be extremely disappointed.
Same as you, I had significant problem with two PM questions. However, when I went home I saw the example in the books and derived the right answer for each. I just can’t remember what I put on the exam. My brain is mush at this point and I’m second guessing everything (thinking everything was a trick).
Last year in FRA i missed something critical in a vignette and probably got 0 or 1/6 in that item set. This year I read and re-read all FRA vignettes with a fine tooth comb but couldn’t see many tricks. Same goes for adjustments that needed to be made unless the question specifically asked for them. I’m starting to worry that I missed something again. One item set i was scratching my head about a bullet point on accounts receivable.
that derivs question was dirty, but last year the whole dervis section was dirty.
Same as you guys, I think Am session was straight-forward but PM was a bit confusing. I got to educated-guess some questions. Both ethics were killing me and of course I was ambused by that derivs.
I wonder if you guys really made it > 70% overall. Were they that easy?
I feel the best word to describe the exam is ‘Fair’, any anyone who has toroughly read the CFAI test books and EOC problems would have found the exam quite easy. The CFAI specifically call for the candidates to read through the sample problems and EOC problems and says questions will be based on the material plus these exercises and problems. They literally stuck to it. There were some easy problems as well as tough ones, but I guess that can only be expected in an exam like this where you really need to throw in a few tough ones for differentiation.
Completely understand that many of us will not get the time to read the test books completely and would neeed to depend on third party prep providers , that is risky is what I guess this test proves.
As far as my experience, I found the test really easy, save ethics. CFAI books is the only material I relied upon and did not do even a single timed mock. Did solve the CFAI mock in separate sessions though. I really was worried how the exam will go after reading how many mock were done by many guys here, but in the end I nw realize that if i had done some mocks early , it would only have created un necessary pressure. By not doing any mocks i was able to approach the exam very fresh. Its a 6 hour exam, and you can give your all on that one day, too many tests will I guess exaust us too much. I think it may be even more important to do as many problems as you can, not necessarily in timed mock sessions. But anyway thats only my openion!
Of course with my strategy the risk was that if the exam pattern deviated too much from CFAI EOC, i would have been surprised. But that did not happen and I really feel might not have happened ever. Maybe someone with experience can corroborate.
In the end I will be really surprised if I dont pass, after reading the entire material more than once and doing all the sample problems and EOC problems!!
At the least, I am glad that I’m done with this shit for now.
Actually, I could someone’s advice now. I got tickets to the Heat-Pacers tonight and I invited both of my friends. Problem is that they want to bring their friends as well. I only have a certain amount of tickets so should I distribute the extra ones to my friends evenly or base it on how much they have in their wallet? (Hey beers are expensive…)