[original post removed]
Are you kidding, monk’s three posts have been the most entertaining posts I’ve seen on here in a while. The only sad part is that he probably thinks he’s serious with all his foreign grader conspiracy ideas.
Wow monk, you totally ruined my dreams of becoming an exam grader.
Honestly good entertainment for me 
Monk, read DoubleDip’s post, then dean99, and finally fill in the gap with Crazyman’s second post. They are each correct. If you were really as smart as you think you are, you would have just killed it so hard 5-6 questions wouldn’t have mattered instead of wasting time over the past three years on this topic.
On a related note, I was talking to a girl once who knew I was in finance but I hadn’t mentioned the CFA. She started bragging about how her brother had taken some crazy intensive exam in finance called the CFA with like 7 different levels. So, I was like “Wow, that’s a lot, are you sure it wasn’t the actuarial exams? I thought the CFA was only 3 exams.” She goes on to say, no, it was definitely six or seven, she remembers because each year he’d have to study for another one and it took him that long. I just nodded, but kinda laughed because the whole time this guy was failling these things and telling his family he passed and was studying for level 5. lol
I read Monk’s first line where he said bchad: " who describes himself as a CFA Charterholder and a BoardMember " and I knew this was another b*tch thread.
I have no idea why monk is even on here, since he doesn’t even believe the status that people post
its called evidence-it goes like this-i have no proof apart from what you say-so the best i can say is “he/she says he is a charteholder”
which brings me to you-you claimed that i threatened you by disputing your charter-so you are a charterholder-not just passed L3?
I told you already. My name is BATMAN BIN SUPARMAN, what part of that don’t you get?
QQQBBBEEE is back! after he graduated with a degree in ESL.
If I were to contest the grading, I would look for a different angle. Even if we grant that graders make no mistakes, those who make the questions do make mistakes. You could argue that if a question was not valid, it should be void. This happens in other mass exams I have taken part:
-
if a question is badly formulated (which is shown by looking at the distribution of answers, i.e. answers deviate too much making the question a random one)
-
question cannot be answered based on the material (in case of CFA exams, question demands more than is required in LOS).
In both cases, it is very probable that if you are in band 10, you most likely failed a question that was badly formulated or out of LOS scope. Voiding that question would increase your percentage of correct answers.
I give you an example of this year’s Level 3 exam (without revealing the contents to stay in line with forum policies):
- there was a question which required you to perform calculations. LOS said ‘explain’, i.e. does not require calculation. As a result, the question required more than agreed in advance => it should be voided.
Whether CFAI is responsive to this argument is another matter but this is what I would argue for (had I not passed).
Shootingstar, I totally agree with you. Except, CFAI defines “explain” as “to make clear the meaning of” e.g. “explain the interest rate parity.” If you can explain the interest rate parity, you should also be able to calculate it. Basically, I think anything in the text (other than the optional sections) is fair game. I think it’s dangerous to try to read too much into command words.
http://www.cfainstitute.org/Documents/cfa_and_cipm_los_command_words.pdf
I don’t quite agree. I can explain Black&Scholes formula; option price depends positively on volatility, time to expiration etc. but that does not mean that I would remember each term in the formula to perform a calculation. I think 99% of us (candidates in any level) never memorized B&S formula because none of the LOS required that.
Now if CFAI would throw us a question with the key parameters and asked to calculate option price, I think only a few people (most of whom probably learned the formula for some other purpose than the exam) could answer correctly. Would that be fair or follow the spirit of the exam? I don’t think so. Command words are all we got. If they cannot be trusted, then what’s the point in the exam?
You’re probably right, but I still think “explain” is one of those words that require judgement, and I don’t think calculation is unreasonable, depending on the subject. If I ask you to explain to me how the Taylor Rule works, if you don’t know the formula, you can’t explain it. I agree there are topics that you can ‘explain’ without calculations, which is why it really depends on the topic.