Well…Hopefully this thread will bring me more luck. Re-taking the test on Monday (August 31st) in person. For the past 4 months all I have done is essentially memorize every question on Uppermark’s qbank! Will update the thread after with “ethic compliant” thoughts…and then in 60+ days RESULTS!
1 Like
Good luck on Monday!
Thank you Chad!
Well test went better then last time! CIT’s still tripped me up but I am under the assumption if I got better than 15/30 on essays I should pass. I think this test session will beneficially impacted by more test takers (aka. grading curve). Saw the testing window is until October 2nd or 3rd so not getting results until Thanksgiving will be torture.
My approach was master multiple choice, get a near perfect score on ethics, and hope for 5-8 points total on the other two essay sections. Praying that it was enough.
2 Likes
anyone else who recently took the level II?
1 Like
Took mine yesterday. I feel “at peace” lol, not because I feel I did well (I don’t), but because I really feel I gave it all and left no stones unturned in my preparation, but it simply wasn’t enough for the type of exam I encountered. Wow!
I knew there would be trouble when I saw that March L2 had highest passing rate in history (81%). Is it because of the CFA ppl, is it because CAIA needed extra membership fees in that moment lol, whatever the reason, I could already imagine the CAIA ppl saying “we can’t let that happen again, bad for reputation, we need to make the next one harder and bring back down the passing rate”. This was no easy exam, and unless everyone else sucked big time and CAIA is forced to lower the curve by a lot, there is no way I passed.
Little background…used Kaplan for L1 and passed with no issues, so kept using them for L2. From what I am reading here, probably a mistake, because everyone prefers UP. Lesson learned I guess. Keep in mind, I got 81% in my Kaplan practice exam. Pretty hilarious in hindsight.
The real exam: without going into specifics of course, the MP section will have a few super easy questions that make you feel like “hey, this is actually going great!”, then a bunch of confusing ones (where two of the four answers look like they could be the correct one), but most importantly, way, way more complex math questions than I expected (definitely way more than the ones on the Kaplan practice exams). And they are not straight forward, they will ask you to reverse engineer them, which is a pain, especially when time is of the essence. So definitely way more math than expected (overkill in my opinion). Felt more than 30%, but I am probably wrong, but definitely at least the full 30%.
Essay part… ethics easy peasy, 2nd one not bad, but the 3rd one…the random one, oh boy oh boy, no matter how long I stared at it, I was not able to recall anything. Way too random of a topic, and way too specific the questions (and once again, lots of math! Why not lol) . I would be in shock if anyone got that part right.
So yeah, I really left the place feeling at peace, because it’s not like I did not study enough, cause God knows I really did study a lot for this thing, but this exam was full of curve balls and unnecessarily complex questions. With time I’ll decide if I will give it another shot with UP, but given that all of this costs money and, most importantly, valuable time taken from someone’s life lol, I might just end up saying F this. The thing is, sadly, even if I miraclously do end up passing, I wouldn’t recommend going through CAIA to anyone. Truth is, there are only some key concepts in alts that anyone needs to understand, but all of those can be googled in 5 mins (by the way, how crazy is it that CAIA doesn’t even go over the debate of IRR and MOIC??? I mean, really???). Anyways, CAIA makes the whole alts world look super complex, mixing in formulas that no one will ever use in real world scenarios, just to make the exam hard, trying to compete with the CFA. Does it make you an alts specialist? Nope, 90% is useless theory. So, unless you are absolutely required to take it, stay clear and focus your time on other designations.
1 Like
I’m a CFA charterholder and this was my first go at level 2 after having my exam pushed back in March because of Covid. I walked away from the exam confused because of the random specific questions rather than the testing of the broad concepts which they should test.
I’ve heard from co-workers and others in the industry taking the exam that if they don’t pass, they won’t go for it again because of the change in curriculum the next go around. I’m in the same boat. I definitely learned a good bit from the exam and that’s why I went for it but to me the letters behind my name aren’t worth another try due to the randomness of the exam and the change in curriculum. Plus I feel guilty making my employer pay ~$400 a year for me to use the CAIA letters.
1 Like
Hi, is anyone around here who took the exam online? Any tips about white board? Also how did you the computation using the whiteboard?
1 Like
I took the exam at home, using the online proctoring. I used my own calculator (I think the software has a calculator build into that you can use?) and used the popup scratch pad to type in the calculations I wasn’t done with. I didn’t bother trying to use the electronic whiteboard.
1 Like
Felt relatively confident going in having scored a 74 on the MC portion for Uppermark’s final prep exam and an 80 on the official CAIA mock MC. That said, the MC portion of the actual exam still tripped me up as there were several random questions on topics tangential to the core concepts of the curriculum.
Part two was moderately better but I still don’t feel anywhere near as confident as I did walking out of L1.
1 Like
Looks like the results should be available the week of November 2nd. I took L2 in fall of 2019 and did not pass, so based on my previous experience and knowing they took 6 weeks to release the results, I feel very confident that is when we should know.
1 Like
The result was out yesterday
2 Likes
I am looking for CAIA level 2 fourth edition notes, uppermark or curriculum. Please let me know if anyone would like to share.
Thank you,
1 Like