Greetings all, Been browsing this forum for the last few months. Great site. Just registered. Anyway, I have taken 1 Kaplan mock so far, yesterday and scored a 64%. My goal was to read all of the texts a second time, followed by in-depth secret-sauce reading and making flash cards for everything. However, I soon realized I don’t have enough time for any of that. I’ve reviewed Accounting, Ethics, Quant and Econ twice, everything else once. Flash cards for difficult concepts I got wrong on concept-checkers and first mock. Basically here’s how I fared. (I finished the mock in under 4 hours. I just wanted to get a score under my belt, so I figured if I had taken an extra hour to hour and 30 I may have scored a few % higher.) Mock Exam: 64% Ethics - 22/36 - 61% Quant - 21/28 - 75% Accounting - 31/48 - 64.5% Economics - 14/24 - 58% Corp. Finance - 12/20 - 60% PM - 8/12 - 67% Equity - 13/24 - 54% Fixed Income - 15/28 - 53.5% Derivatives - 9/12 - 75% Alt. Inv. - 5/8 - 62.5% Strong areas: Accounting, Quant, Econ (score was aberation) Weak Areas: Equities, Fixed Income - - - I reviewed ethics pretty hard today. That should be an easy 13/15% I just hadn’t reviewed it since March when I took the mock. I’ve put the most time into Accounting, Quant and Econ. I imagine I will score around high 70s to low 80s on those sections. Corporate Finance will be an easy review for me. Hadn’t looked at that since March before my mock either. Fixed Income and Equities are obviously my two weak spots which I need to bring up to pass this test. Problem areas there include: -BEY conversions -WCM -pure play vs. other methods -DDM --> equity cost of capital -market efficiency/EMH -2 stage DDM -duration / i-risk, convexity -credit spreads/yields -ZVS/OAS -theoretical spots/forwards -net cost (stock/put) -option volatility That’s about it. Any suggestions on where the spend the majority of my time? Looking to grab most of the “low hanging” fruit and avoid long concepts that may or may not even have 1 question. I have Monday and Wednesday off from work, so I have another 30-40 hours of study time I can put in. Am I better off just taking mocks or re-reading concepts I’ve missed, note-cards, etc? I do pretty well learning from mocks but open to ideas. Thanks everyone and good luck on your exams, John
Maybe you shd do the CFAI mock asap, also the online mock from Elan… also maybe take consecutive days off. I notice I’m doing better after a longer period dedicated only to this exam, without overwhelming my brain with other stuffs.
I’m finding that going back and rereading material is not as effective as repeatedly taking practice exams and tightening forgotten information. That being said, everyone learns differently so I’ll just explain what i did as my first mock exam score was similar to yours (worse actually): Morning of May 21st: Took first comprehensive mock exam (ever) at Stalla’s test center and received a 62% after running out of time at question 103. Of the questions I did answer, I completed 74% correctly. Afternoon: After recovering from a mild heart attack (obviously kidding, but I was seriously worried) I retreated to my cave and spent 6 hours reviewing the exam answers. I went line by line and looked up every multiple choice answer and made notes on why it was right or wrong; meaning for every A, B, and C choice, I looked up or wrote down why it was a wrong choice and what words to change to produce a correct answer. Morning of May 22nd: Took the second Stalla mock exam. This time I read each question as fast as possible and answered on instinct. I finished with 20 minutes still on the timer and 83% correct. Afternoon: I repeated the procedure from the afternoon of May 21st, less the heart attack. Also I started to go back over the calculation questions and determine the fastest keystroke combination to obtain each answer. I drilled this over and over. May 23rd-27th: Flipped through these forums and attempted to answer other people’s questions since I figured the process of explaining and teaching something would cement principles better. Evening of May 27th: Created a sample exam on Stalla’s Passmaster software and finished with an hour left on the timer and 88% correct. Morning of May 28th: Took the CFA Institute provided mock exam morning session and scored 89%. I was filling in the last bubble (on a question that was intentionally skipped) as the timer went off. Now I am choosing to speed drill both calculator inputs as well as rote memorization material from the heavy-weight sections. I find that the test seems to be designed more around instant recall than complex permutations of theory. The faster I read the question, the less chance I have to sabotage myself. To each his own though….
rmswins Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I retreated to my cave and spent 6 hours > reviewing the exam answers. I went line by line > and looked up every multiple choice answer and > made notes on why it was right or wrong; meaning > for every A, B, and C choice, I looked up or wrote > down why it was a wrong choice and what words to > change to produce a correct answer. THIS is how you review a mock exam after you’ve taken it. ~L3 candidate
builders Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > rmswins Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > I retreated to my cave and spent 6 hours > > reviewing the exam answers. I went line by line > > and looked up every multiple choice answer and > > made notes on why it was right or wrong; > meaning > > for every A, B, and C choice, I looked up or > wrote > > down why it was a wrong choice and what words > to > > change to produce a correct answer. > > THIS is how you review a mock exam after you’ve > taken it. > > ~L3 candidate This is what I did for my mock. Takes considerably longer then the test itself but seems to be well worth the effort.
Yeah, it takes me almost 3 times longer to review. Considering how many times you’ve reviewed the material (I’ve only read the material once, but I have a 2" thick stack of note-cards with formulas and key points that I keep with me at all times), it’s now all about discovering the many different ways they can ask the same question.
This makes me wonder how people say that only 250 hours of study is enough for CFA level 1. I am taking on an average 9 hours or more including the time spent on reviewing and posting the question on the forum and answering at the same time. If you go by calculation, 15 hours for each mock, and if you are planning to take 7 mocks at least, some people are taking more, then you would have spent at least 105 hours on the mocks itself which is around 40% of the time. Now, do you think people are able to complete rest of the study, revision and questions in the rest of the 50% time?
Well I just finished Kaplan Mock 2 and saw some improvement, but I must say, I thought it was much harder. Improved from 151/240 (63%) to 160/240 (66.7%). Ethics jumped from 22/36 (61%) to 28/36 (78%). Big improvement. Quant dropped from 21/28 (75%) to 17/28 (60.7%). Lot less calculations, a lot more conceptual, and 3 questions on hypothesis testing. I like calculations, not concepts. Econ improved from 14/24 (58.3%) to 17/24 (71%). I will have that up to 75-80% by test time. Accounting was phenomenal! Up from 31/48 (64.5%) to 38/48 (79.2%)!!! Corp. Finance was similar from 12/20 (60%) to 13/20 (65%). PM dropped from 8/12 (67%) to 4/12 (33%). Don’t know what to make of those results. Equity was virtually no improvement from 13/24 (54%) to 14/24 (58%). Fixed Income saw a minor improvement from 15/28 (53.5%) to 18/28 (64.3%). Derivatives and Alt. Investments both dropped from 9/12 (75%) and 5/8 (62.5%) to 6/12 (50%) and 4/8 (50%) respectively. - - - - - - - - Any thoughts on what to take away from this? I thought the second exam was considerably more difficult, specifically quant, PM, equity, fixed income, derivatives and alt. investments. But it is promising I still improved overall. However, scoring a 58% on the morning session and 74% on the afternoon session doesn’t make sense to me at all. A 16% difference shouldn’t happen between 2 sessions of the same test. I don’t know what to take from that. Do you guys think I can tighten up in a few areas and pass this with 5-6 days to go?