bsas vs schweser live mock

hi, people who taken both the bsas mock and schweser live mock can please suggest me which one is better to purchase?

The tutorials that go with the Schweser “22 May” live mock aren’t too bad actually, someone has put some effort into trying to do a decent job of explaining each question and draw your attention to the “right” part of the curriculum. That is to say there is a video with every answer, walking you through the steps. Also it seems the questions are chosen so as to test you on the core concepts (hence also to review the core concepts through these videos). Or maybe just wishful thinking? I didn’t score as well as I had hoped but there’s still a few more days and, at least, no concepts are so difficult to grasp that I can’t follow what’s going on when I see the correct answer. I have not seen the BSAS mock, but would suppose it’s just paper based (no live tutorials).

Based on my experience last year (I failed band 8 and only used schweser to study), BSAS is much more reflective of the difficulty of the exam and the way in which questions are asked. I took all three schweser practice exams last year and scored well above 70 (closer to 80). I got last year’s bsas last minute and scored a 65 and remember that the test itself was much more like that… Not sure how the live schweser mock compares to their volume 1 practice exams though. And to each their own. That’s just my take away from last year! I have only done this year’s BSAS and the CFA mock (which is easier than the real test) and I feel more prepared than last year.

I like the way Schweser seem to have geared their exam toward the probabilities of what subjects are to come up, and force you to really walk through the core problems (like typical FCFE calculations, which will have a high probability of coming up). It would indeed be more difficult (=lower score) if they’d asked about something really obscure, like some detail re VERs (economics), but that wouldn’t help much in preparing during the final week - if I missed some remote detail on a mock. CFAI might indeed throw in something very obscure but I don’t see the need for having the mock exactly mimic the true exam, It’s too late now to focus on unlikely topics, it’s enough if it helps me reinforce the most probable ones…

I also thought the BSAS was pretty spot on in terms of exam format. I’m not sure about difficulty though, as I thought the BSAS was pretty straightforward this year. It didn’t leave me with that cramped up brain feeling afterwards.