CFA Institute online practice question difficulty

CFA Level II
#1

Is anyone else finding the online practice tests and quizzes provided by CFA Institute INCREDIBLY difficult compared to the EOCs? The poor layout, bad presentation, as well as the vagueness of important details does not particularly help either…

I suppose many of you have not yet made it to the online content yet but it seems like they are throwing in every single miniscule and granular detail to trick you up while ignoring the big picture concepts. Many of the questions also do not just test knowledge of once concept but require extremely intimate and detailed knowledge of three or four concepts (as well as every special circumstance or exception)… They are also testing concepts that are only mentioned one or two times in the MASSIVE amount of curriculum.

I am an struggling to break out of the 60% range (covering all subject areas overall). The other 40% seems to be testing my ability to remember two paragraphs and a footnote that was tucked away in some corner of the thousands of pages of curriculum.

I wrote LII last year and I remember the item sets on the actual exam being much more straightforward (more similar to the EOCs).

Is anyone else feel noticing this?

1 Like
#2

Everyone notices it and agrees that they are significantly harder than the EOCs. They are like this every year. So far, my average score for FR&A is about 47%…

#3

Too low.

Good news, you have more than sufficient time to nail those over 70 %. FRA is heavily weighted on L2.

#4

I took level two in 2016. I used practice problems, then called topic tests extensively. I also thought that many of those problems were very difficult. And yes, they did often combine multiple concepts.

I remember one where I said to myself “that was awful”. I got it right but it was an amazing combination of different concepts. I said to myself “they would never put anything this hard on the actual exam”.

However, I got to the actual exam. And lo and behold there was what seemed like a similar problem both in difficulty and scope.

Those practice problems from the Institute are very good practice for the actual exam. It is my opinion that they have rather similar length, difficulty and scope to the actual exam problems. Get used to it.

#5

By the end of February, I’m expecting to be finished with all of my readings so I can do TTs and mocks until June 23…That’s almost 4 full months of practice questions and mock exams

#6

The questions are meant to be extremely difficult. It tells you whether youve fully grasped the concepts and can apply what you’ve been taught. It isn’t like Level 1 where its more simplistic and just calculate the information. This level is all about analysis. I have only taken 1 of the subjects (Quant), but tested quite well. Out of the 30 questions, I got 25 of them right (83%). According to the CFAI based on just this set of questions, I tested into the “Advanced” category and fell into the 78th percentile.

I’m sure the other topic tests / questions will be more difficult as Quant is a bit easier for me to understand, but don’t get discouraged if you are getting lower scores. Keep working at it. Look at your weak spots, review the material and then go back to those questions. The questions online will be significantly more difficult than EOC questions because it is merging all the EOC readings into one series of questions.

One thing that I have done to make things easier when reading a vignette is to break it down into sub sections. I often read the first question and then read the paragraph. I stop when I get to the point where I have all info related to the question. Be mindful that they may provide more information below the main section of the question, but typically all information is provided together from what I’ve seen thus far. I wouldn’t recommend fully stopping after each paragraph or when you think the information is fully provided, but if you know the concepts well enough, you can guage if a paragraph gave you all information or if you need more to make a decision on an answer choice.

Hope all goes well moving forward and that I will continue to do well on the vignette’s in the other subject area. I may have lower scores in the other areas. Good luck!

#7

Yes, they tend to be more difficult than anything you’ll see elsewhere. On the whole, they’re still good practice though. Also, keep in mind that the Mock exam that they provide are questions pulled from their database of Topic Test questions, just topic weighted similar to the actual exam, so doing the Topic Tests is roughly equivalent to 4-5 additional mock exams. For Level II, practice is absolutely key to increasing the chances of success, and the Topic Tests do offer a good practice opportunity.

#8

At both Level 2 and 3, I probably would have been better prepared with more topic tests/practice problems and fewer Schweser mocks. However, only in the last year can you compare performance to others on the CFA practice problems.

Oh, and I would much rather to a timed pile of CFA practice problems under exam conditions than do the Boston exam.

#9

Maybe someone who repeated a level can answer this question. Are the CFA Institute’s mock and practice problems completely new each year? Do they reuse material?

#10

Reused. If you come across past year’s mock exams you’ll find that they are entirely composed of current year Topic Test questions. So yeah they basically recycle them. I don’t know how often they add/remove cases, but probably when they have major topic revisions, so there will be some changes over time but probably now too much.

#11

Yeah man, I feel exactly the same. It is so discouraging.

Even though I have a good grasp of the concepts (at least thats what I believe), I find the pracctise questions extremely difficult.

LOL I just realized I replied to someone 3 years later :stuck_out_tongue: sorry guys new here.