honestly, if you thought the AM was easier than the PM, you simply didnt know the material in a very detailed, intimate way. you didn’t go through every blue box, you didn’t do every EOC, you didn’t review all the recent AM sections, and you aren’t capable of opening up any section of the books, looking at the most important concept, understanding it, and knowing how it is connected to everything else in the rest of the books.
when you do that, you’ll pass. and when you do that, you know the AM is more difficult than the PM due to time constraints.
I agree with your comments. I was comparing the perceived difficulty between AM vs PM moments after the exam. Clearly if my results were poor then I am not as smart as I thought!
The other lesson I learnt based on other comments (plus yours) was relying solely on Scheswer. It worked for me in Levels 1 and 2, but you are in a world of pain if you do it for 3.
For me, I don’t think it was about thoroughly understanding the connection between the topics and the material in detail. I may not be answering the essay section the way CFA wants me to answer them. I guess I need to figure that out before next June. Who knows.
I’ve made this commnet before about the matrices–some people are looking too much into it.
For example, somebody said they had “good performance” in the first few questions (50-70%), but that’s quite a range. You could’ve easily just got around 50%, which is essentially being in the worst column, whose range is even wider (if you scored there, you could’ve got something really low like 10-20%).
While I do recommend doing blue boxes and EOCs, a lot of the questions on the exam were different where you actually had to go through the readings. (Yes, if you read the Schweser Notes well, you would HAVE got through).
AM was tough and just practice it. I will say, though, that the past exams didn’t really help me for this year’s exam. (That’s just ME, although many others will disagree.)
AM…
-use bullet points
-don’t worry about grammar; be succint, even to the point where it’s an incomplete sentence. As long as you address the question, you’ll get credit
-if the question says list, say, “two reasons,” then list two reasons–that’s it. if you think one of the reasons might not be the answer, well, just move on and go back to it later. This is why I recommend writing in pencil; I wrote in pencil and passed.
-it’s easy to get carried away with writing on the topics you know well–I fell into this trap, too. Just remember no bonus points are rewarded.
people keep saying im suprised I did this badly and what not. You do have to realise that it is marked by humans and it is subjective. You might have intepret it differently. Another key point that I would like to stress, write bullet forms and in plain simple english. It is not an english exam.
Yes, I do agree how poor the way CFA organise their morning exam and could have been way better but this is how the game is played. You want the designition you have to play by their rules.
Have any of you with bizarre results in the morning session been succesful with retabing or found out the reason for the bad peformance by reviewing last year CFA 2012 essay exams?
If you can read English, you can follow the format. I have very little sympathy for people who screw up because they didn’t read the instructions (that happened to me on a test in 7th grade, and I learned my lesson - an adult in finance, where details count, has no excuses).
I run a popular job website, and SO OFTEN people will submit a CV and cover letter that obviously took some effort, but they use “Apply Now” rather than the email/portal explicitly indicated under “Application Method,” so in many cases their materials are never received by the job/recruiter. At the beginning I would let people know, but now I feel I’m just saving the employer from having to consider an applicant who can’t follow directions.