May be a stupid question - but what happens to the exam papers CFA collects? Are they destroyed eventually or reviewed for some purposes? I can imagine it gives a lot of insight in the most common mistakes people make
I was also thinking about it while they were taking away all those papers…144k people wrote the exam. Wondering if they keep them in some big warehouse for 7 years before being destroyed 
I will voice my complaint in this thread about how damn small the bubbles are. I also want to voice my extreme displeasure in the lack of effing white space available on the test to try and work out calculations.
Also, they need to force these test centers to just make regular desks available without tablecloths over the top of them. I’m having to shuffle my paper on and off my booklet in order to fill in the bubble because the soft table cloth would cause my pencil to rip through the paper. Those are precious seconds wasted shuffling paper around.
Why this immensely rich organization hasn’t found a way to administer this test electronically I will never know.
Electronically is difficult as you’d need to find giant electronic testing centers. Most electronic tests are done multiple times a year so its easier for them.
Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with doing a paper exam, stop being a whiny b***
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I can’t honestly imagine how the whitespace would be all that innadequate @KSTHANE. I think they do a good job of avoiding a lot of long form questions?
It must not be standard throughout all testing centers because the tables in my center did not have tablecloths. I like smaller answer bubbles. Less space means it takes less time to fill in the bubbles.
Now if only I could fill in those bubbles with the right answers…
My tables were so tall it was impossible to write. I will also become another supporter of the bigger bubbles, because the ones on the exam are too damm small. Made me waste at least 3 minutes in AM & PM because i would fill outside the bubble and had to erase and re-fill carefully.
Why this immensely rich organization hasn’t found a way to administer this test electronically I will never know.
The CFAI is a stone-age bureacracy, there are NO pencil/paper exams left except the Bar exam, which is not MC format. ALL major MC-format exams are now electronic-- GRE, GMAT, CPA, etc. The last paper/pencil CPA exam was in 2000, FOURTEEN YEARS AGO. CFA should adminstered electronically through test centers like Prometric. The whole CFA testing process is anachronistic. Screw the Angioff method as well, only reason for that is CFAI is too incompetent to write a statistically valid set of test questions.
Guessing this has to do with the (self-imposed) requirement of the CFAI to hold all exams on the same day under strict supervision. Standardized tests (i.e. GMAT) lend themselves well to this, given their inherrant narrow focus. Knowledge based exams (CFA, portions of the GRE Subject tests - notably mathematics) are best performed using paper. Test centers are not feasible for single day, written exams with candidate pools this large.
its ok if u fill a lil outside…
I fully agree on a limited space to write. Pages behind are totally useless - you will loose 3 seconds flipping every time. And some vignettes are almost fully filled in with data and text.
having done the cfai sample exams, I really hope they don’t go electronic!
+1