CFA Level 2 Vignette exam format?!

As hard as I try to find a good reason for the exam format for L2 being what it is, I fail miserably. What do you guys think is the big idea behing the CFA guys forcing us to read a lot of random non-sense or, at best, just some regular short questions, very unpoetically glued together to form an ugly vignette?! Reasons? There are no resons.

Young Padawan - I understand the frustration and I agree vignettes are indeed ugly but they do server an obvious reason(s). Look no closer than the “A” in CFA… You need to be able to master the art of being an Analyst.

yea…think about being on a conference call with management and when they’re reporting a whole bunch of info about their companys performance. You need to be able to identify, dare i say analyze, the important info and throw out the BS

the one thing better than getting help with answers on this forum, is the humor! funny and serious!

I didn’t find the Vignettes to be all that different from single questions when it took it my first try. Since thy don’t ask questions that are predicated on the last, the only difference is that you have to hunt out the data from a paragraph instead of a short questions. The vignettes to me didn’t really add any difficulty to speak of. Practicing individual questions is just fine when preparing. After all the questions on the exam are just that - single questions, its just the information style that’s different If you can pick out the relevant variables from a question stem, the vignette style stem isn’t that much worse, save the opportunity fro CFAI to throw in the odd sneaky twist. My advice - don’t let the vignette scare you. Pound as many questions as possible ESPECIALLY EOC - doing any questions is better than no questions - its not like doing more creates some kind of disadvantage regardless of single question or vignette style…

rolo550 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I didn’t find the Vignettes to be all that > different from single questions when it took it my > first try. Since thy don’t ask questions that are > predicated on the last, the only difference is > that you have to hunt out the data from a > paragraph instead of a short questions. The > vignettes to me didn’t really add any difficulty > to speak of. Practicing individual questions is > just fine when preparing. After all the questions > on the exam are just that - single questions, its > just the information style that’s different > > > If you can pick out the relevant variables from a > question stem, the vignette style stem isn’t that > much worse, save the opportunity fro CFAI to throw > in the odd sneaky twist. > > My advice - don’t let the vignette scare you. > Pound as many questions as possible ESPECIALLY EOC > - doing any questions is better than no questions > - its not like doing more creates some kind of > disadvantage regardless of single question or > vignette style… This is exactly my sentiment. You almost don’t even have to read the vignettes right away or even in the context of other parts of each other. A lot of the questions and corresponding portions of the vignette are very disparate from the other ones. My strategy is usually to read the first 1/3 or 1/2 of the vignette then jump to the first question. You can usually answer 2 or 3 q’s just from reading the first half. Then I read the rest and finish off the q’s. Also, remember that you have 180 minutes to answer 60 questions. You have a lot of time to read everything carefully. As a second-timer, I made the mistake of going too fast the first time (over 30-40 minutes to spare in each session). I had done thousands of questions and scored high on all my practice exams so I thought I was good, but the actual test will contain really deviously tricky $hit on it and I will slow down in answering.

> > My strategy is usually to read the first 1/3 or > 1/2 of the vignette then jump to the first > question. You can usually answer 2 or 3 q’s just > from reading the first half. Then I read the rest > and finish off the q’s. > > i would rather read the questions before looking at the text. that way, you sort of know what you are looking for. it is pointless anyway to scan the text that you are likely to forget by the time hitting the questions.