from my past experience, im going for pencil this year. i had to scratch a lot of answers last year and my paper looked horrible. what are you going to use? (quite scared about using an erasable pen)…
That is good!
I’m going to use black or blue pen because the CFAI says to use black or blue pen.
I tried out a few erasable pens last year and found a pretty decent option: Pilot Frixion Point. I used a big pink eraser to take care of any mistakes I made. Worked well.
I would stay away from the erasable pens. The writing erases in hot & cold temperatures and you never know how hot or cold it gets in the warehouse/plane cargo where the exams are taken afterwards. I wouldn’t risk it.
I have the Pilot Frixion…test it out you will see the writing erases.
CFA Institute will, apparently, grade it either way.
Use whatever you prefer.
(But if you fail, blame it on the pencil.)
Random question… If we need to “erase” something, and we use pen, do we cross it out and the graders will ignore? If so, how much crossing out is needed (IE- is a single line through sufficient, or do we need to go all out and basically scratch it all out)?
Use a pencil…the fine print in the CFA regs, allows it. They only discourage it because sometimes pencils smudge…
I was going to use an erasable pen, but now the termperature thing is putting me off. I really like erasable pen.
The cargo part of an airplane can’t get that cold if they put dogs down there.
Anybody used erasable pen in the past?
bah … im not risking it anymore; ill go for pen 
This is what the Pilot Frixion Eraseable pen says about it. I wonder if once it’s on paper, then it can’t be frozen/heated off the page.
“Erasable pens are not recommended for use on legal or official documents. Do not expose to extreme temperatures (<14°F; >140°F) If pen is exposed to temperature that reaches 140°F, the ink will be colorless when writing. To restore color, cool to at least 14°F in freezer and the ink will again write in color.”
don’t use erasables.
Just use a regular pen! Why would you risk it with smudging or waste time erasing?
pencil > pen
If you are drawing out a formula and want to change one part of that formula.
Use the pen for formulated answers (i.e. bullet points and sentences).
Use the pencil for calcs so you can easily edit by erasing.
DONE
Nothing against using a combination of both pen & pencil, right?
nvm, see post from igor555 on main page. YOU SHOULD USE PEN!!!
I know this becomes an issue every year. But I just wanted to stop by and give my 2 cents on this…
I took my level 3 last year, and my paper was HORRIBLE. I had to scratch out the page twice on many cases, and scribble my answer in some dark corner. I of course circled everything to ensure the graders go to see the answer. And I passed. My point is - Why risk possibly having your GOOD answers erased at the option of erasing some parts of your messed up answers?
Not only does erasing take time away from being able to write… Because believe me you won’t have MUCH time to do anything. But it may fade away by the time a grader gets to look at your paper! Your answer pages go through a crazy journey before everybody grades your exam.
If I had to give my advice, stop worrying about having a messy exam paper, and just focus on writing the correct answers down.
And seriously, GOOD LUCK everyone. I know this is the time when everybody’s at full alert mode. Don’t worry, even though the pass rate might be low overall, it’s pretty high when you take the population of JUST AF users.