Ambiguous wording in the Mock?

A swap question mentioned that “The swaption has a semiannual exercise rate of 2.75%”

How do we know if we are supposed to divide this by 2 to get the rate, or just use it as its given.

intuitively, I assumed that the rate was annualized, and needed to be divided. How do we know?

I thought rates were alaways given as annual in the questions. Isn’t this true anymore?

I would have to assume 2.75 180/360…then see if that worked in the calcs…It would be disdappointing to see an answer for both interpretations of the rate given.

I might have encountered such a thing before, where I knew the concept and formula, just couldn’t work out what they were asking…

Yes, I’ve encountered this on a couple (not many) CFA mock questions. Just ones where I no matter how thoroughly I read it I thought it could be interpreted in more than 1 way. I don’t remember ever having this on the level 1 real exam though, so hopefully they just put more effort into the actual exam Q’s so that theirs no ambiguity.

Yeah, in the mock they used the rate as it was, no dividing by 2 to get the semi annual rate.

These sorta questions make you waste a fair bit of time and through you off from the flow of the exam…!