I feel like there’s a lot of emphasis here on the AM section, and rightously so.
So far I think the AM for me isn’t as bad. I’ve been getting low 60’s in the Schweser PM though. Any thoughts on this? And how accurate is the Schweser Mock PM relative to the real exam?
Mainly struggling in Fixed Income and Derivatives.
I think the consensus here is Past CFAI AM mocks > Schweser Mocks. I would tend to agree
also if you can kill the AM section!
you would be able to destroy the PM section…
its logically…the questions are not that different?
I just did the CFAI PM mock “1” and felt it was incredibly easy scoring 80% in under 2 hours (rushing/ little effort) and there was very little in terms of calculations… but clearly a false sense of security.
if you look at all the topic tests online… some item sets “better” than others… my goal is just to try master as many buzzwords/ concepts as possible… anything can come up…
You would think, but not necessarily. I did better on the AM than PM in 2014. Could have had something to do with the warm mayo sub I had at lunch though and resulting splitting headache.
Hey danv0330, is the CFAI pm mock easier than the topic tests? I’ve done topic tests but not the PM mock, just curious to know what you think as you’ve done both… thanks.
yeah that would be helpful for sure
^^^ CFAI has two multiple choice mock exams- named (AM and PM) – my previous post referred to the wrong test… AM is easier!
PM has some multistep calculations, obscure concepts and ambiguously worded questions.
The two mocks basically appear to be a set of 10 random item sets that could very well be individual topic tests… some are easy some are hard and some of the questions are “good” in that they force you to understand multiple concepts at once.
My take is that you need to aim high for the PM section like 80%+, at level 2 it is very difficult to score 80% but possible at level 3 item sets, this means the curve is higher.
I find it funny at level 3 that people are still asking how representative the mocks supplied by the CFAI are of the real exam… Level 1 and 2 mocks were pretty representative of the real exam…
CFAI states that actual results on AM are similar to the results on PM. I think PM is generally conceptually harder while AM includes many easy ones like IPS etc. but you drop points on missing explanations and/or not enough time etc.
I’m also aiming for 80%+ on PM but find it very hard to get there, don’t think it’s easier than L2.
I found L2 & 2 mocks are much harder than the real exams. On real exams questions were more straightforward and required less calculations.
I can only speak to level 2, but I noticed that certain topics where much harder in the mocks than the real exam but others were very representatiive. I’d also say that if you did all those hard mocks and learned from them then obvioulsy you would find the real exam easier.
Overall, the mocks are very representative in my opinion with some topics harder on the mock and others of equal difficult.