Boston Mock Level III

So totally bombed the Boston mock, anyone else think it was garbage or is my confirmation bias kicking in…?
Scored 36% for the AM, marking it I feel as though I totally missed the boat with the question wording
Scored 55% for the PM, so turns out I’m not so Ethical…

Less that two weeks before the exam and these scores are terrible, have run through all the previous CFA AM mocks and have been in much better shape - although I have reviewed multiple times…

I am hating life, spunked 600+ hours of it now with this exam (thank you cancellations) and my banter these days is disgracefully boring…

Ranting aside, genuinely curious for your opinion on the mock.

Cheers and best of luck!

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Mock 2020 or 2021?

2021

I was saving it for the last week hoping it would be the most straight forward and representative of what to expect going into the exam. But now I’m worried, don’t want to go into the exam with a major confidence killer if it isn’t up to par

It’s not a good exam.

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The fact that it came out so late makes me think it was thrown together after people complained and no one properly reviewed it or gave commentary of the compatibility to the actual exam.

This makes me feel a touch better, certainly gives the motivation a boost! Cheers all

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Mr. Magician, what do you mean its not a good exam? the 2021 mock exam or the CBT Lv3?

I read a post from you saying the mock exam is very lengthy and 132 mins given isn’t realistic

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AM:

  • Individual PM section was very real life oriented, like don’t you know that client needed to consider this and this (even thought they were not mentioned in the curriculum). I guess only financial advisors can nail it 100%
  • Got surprised that you can squeeze several biases just from one sentence: “Client X works at and follows technology sector”.

PM:

  • Ridiculous wording in Currency Management section (p.s. I created separate discussion topic regarding this)

I also love the super open questions like… recommend 3 additional actions on the portfolio… ohh but exclude everything you suggested in part A that was also an open ended question of recommending additional insurance products… really no direction at all… and open to so much subjectivity not written well. The scoring is also out of whack with a bunch of 2 or 3 pointers for multi stage questions.

I mean that the 2020 and 2021 CFA Institute / Boston Society mock exams are not particularly good exams. There are generic questions (i.e., those that you can answer without reading the vignette), outdated questions, vague questions, a reference in one question to the answers in another, a computation that is impossible (because the author confused buying bonds with buying bond futures), repetitious questions (do this same calculation four times), and utterly unrealistic marks assigned (I estimated that the 2020 exam was 270 minutes (180 according to them) and the 2021 exam is 202 minutes (132 according to them)), none of which will appear on the real exam.

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you are referring only to AMs or also PMs ??

Where are the 2020 mock exams? I can only see the 2021 Boston Society exam on the CFAI website?
Thanks.

I saw only the AM exam. After that, I hadn’t the stomach to look at the PM exam.

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I have no idea. I got it from a candidate who asked me to mark their answers.

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what i hate more is in order to study for this exam i missed the opportunity to invest in dogecoin.

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haha it is genuinely frustrating not having the time to play the markets although I did find time to pick up a Monero which has doubled in value in <3 months. Obviously going to ride that position all the way to retirement.

i scored around 57% AM today, not able to manage get it done within 132 mins, finish the last two within another 20mins

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That’s a decent score I think. When marking there were a few big mark questions I should have gotten right but didn’t have the formula memorised. Had I it would have taken me to the 55% mark. I think it’s a decent score because I did the CFA 2018 AM & PM yesterday and scored 72% & 77% so much happier given its (hopefully) a better representation of exam day.

I managed to get it ‘finished’ although there were a couple Q’s I just skipped knowing I’d flop them. A useful tip I’ve picked up is to mark the time you should be done with each section in the first sheet so that you can move on to the next question when you’ve passed the mark. It saved me from getting sucked into a question I thought I could answer but didn’t know straight away.

Anyone willing to share the 2021 boston exam? I have the 2020 boston test and tons of old actual cfa tests to trade.