I think the fear instilled in me and the difficulty of the CFAI mock and the Schweser live mock had me thinking it would have been worse but i was very shocked at how much of the paper i answered fairly confidently. felt much better coming out of the exams than when i did the two mocks, which i got 56 and 65 for. I finished 9/10 sections for the AM paper with 45 mins remaining which i used to check back over questions i was unsure of and do derivatives which i saved for last. the PM paper was more challenging towards the last three topics but i still finished with a little over half an hour of time. I feel i did enough to be safely above 70% but i dont want to prematurely celebrate. is it normal to feel u did well to only fail??
Same here for that Quant Q as it’s fairly impressive that certain inputs didn’t generate result on the list…given it’s on the very beginning of the AM session, so yea, it successfully affected my mood!
Same for the quant and derivative
For that quant Q, could only make a wild guess, based on my calculated result which is closer to the answer on the paper
For derivates, same choice as you guys
I cant believe some of the actual questions that showed up.
They were just downright nonsesne.
There was no chance of zeroing down on them prior to showing up for the exam.
I couldn’t understand what part of it was analysis.
It seemed like it was just an attempt to filter out people with 40% pass rate.
Honestly, I think that is the point of the exam. There is a lot of information on the exam with over 500+ formulas. If candidates knew they had to study for A, B, & C the pass rate would be 100%.There is no way to memorize everything especially for those that are working demanding jobs. However, if you know most of the material/have a good foundation in the principles you should be one of those 40%. I felt like this exam wasn’t meant to trick anyone (the mocks and topic tests did that).
Deviating around this forum, I - level 1 candidate find the same feeling as yours =)) LOL
I walked out from the test room confidently as i thought the test was quite straight forward. I finsished bith AM and PM with less than 2 hours. However, i had to guess some answers.
But when i backed home, i felt not sure about anything. I recheck and found out that i had guessed some answers wrongly. And now i am not sure whether i was got into any trap???
2 months of waiting - 
I cant help thinking ablout the exam. I am afraid that the MPS will be much higher … whether MPS could be higher than 65% as i saw that all candidates were very happy and sure about their performance
I don’t even want to think about it anymore. While I thought I did better than last year, I can’t help but to think of all the possible traps/tricks that I may have fallen for without realizing it. There were questions I simply asked if this was too easy and if there was something to it.
So I agree. I felt like the test was significantly easier than the topic test on the cfa website. I feel fairly confident but I could be surprised. What does surprise me is the number of people saying there were questions on the derivates questions that had no answer. Honestly I felt like the derivatives questions were very stright forward and felt 100% on those. I was lost on the Quant questions you guys are prob referring to but there was an answer but it was just a very odd format I think.
I finished Am+review in 1hour 50 mins and PM+review in 1hour 40mins. The only questions I am not sure I got correct were 3-4 questions in ethics, except that I am sure that I got all other answers correct. So yeah, pretty confident that I’ll pass.
I have been very confident and even told me friend “I would be really surprised if I dont pass this year’”, untill I saw some of you guys’ postings like"there were so many traps…"
I found most of the questions pretty straightfoward, PM was way easier than AM to me, if you could memorize the formulas and know the concept, you should breeze. Made some educated guess between 2 answers for a few times tho.
Surprised to know from so many ppl that Quant had a question with no correct answer. For me, Quant was one of the sections where I felt confident of scoring 6/6. Could get all the answers…
Some of my random thoughts from L2 include:
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I am in the bucket of people who thought the AM was noticeably harder than the PM session.
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I’ve seen several people talk about a Quant problem that threw them off. I’m pretty sure I know which one you’re all referring to and, after several attempts of racking my brain for the formula, arrived at one of the answer choices. I think it was worded somewhat poorly, however.
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Unlike some posters, I definitely saw more than a few “tricks” in the wording of the answer choices, mainly a few red herrings designed to throw people off. But hey, that’s expected, right?
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As much as I try not to, I’m going through my Schweser QuickSheet trying to remember questions and look up mainly qualitative topics I remember. I’m fairly certain I’ll be within a handful of questions to pass or fail, either way.
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Where does this talk about a 64% or 65% MPS come from? Is this all pure speculation? I’m counting on needing at least 80 right to pass.
I diidn’t like the FRA Answer Format in the AM section (more Qualitative)
I too thought the PM section was much easier, I didnt memorize nearly enough formulas and the qualitative nature of the PM section just vibed with me. Realistically, I just got lucky in the sense that the “know if or you dont” qualitative stuff in the afternoon just happened to be things I knew.
As far as the MPS, from what I hear its normally around 63, which means you need 77/120. Those who are strong in ethics may get in with 76/120. an 80/120 seems like a clear pass to me…
Again, this is all speculation soooo nobody knows.
AM was easier. PM was more conceptual and also tiredness has contributed to overall performance.
Do we know if everyone gets the same AM and PM questions, or perhaps do they alternate test books so that you don’t sit next to someone with your same questions in the same order?
It’ s a same examination for all candidates on certain level worldwide.
There are only “traps” for people who don’t know the material. Like a question that asks for the GAAP treatment of an item. They’ll give you the GAAP answer and the IFRS answer in the choices. It’s only a trap if you don’t know the difference. The exam is straightforward but they purposely do things like that to make sure you’re not just getting lucky or to make sure they’re not leading you to the correct answer via the other incorrect choices.
Dont know which Quants question you are talking about. I found the answer to all of them. I studied Quants real hard btw. I thought that unlike Econ, it actually had a logic and continuity. It made more sense to me. Easy points to get on the exam.
It’s impossible to be more specific without violating the exam rules. All I can say is, it was a fairly straight forward calculation question that I’m quite sure I knew how to approach and solve but couldn’t find one of the inputs within the item set. It was probably staring me right in the face but I just couldn’t see it. I’m not broken up about it though. Pretty sure I nailed the rest of the Quant questions.