Did anyone else find this hard? I just finished scoring my exam. The results were completely uncorrelated to the Boston Society Exam. I wad taking it close to the exam date as a confidence booster and review tool. It’s had the opposite effect. Is this what the exam will be like on test day?
From what I’ve been told from my friends in the past (level II candidates) is that they found the mock exam very challenging, and ended up finding the real exam somewhat easier…The mock is still indicative of your grasp of the material… To give some confidence to you though, the mock exam is meant to be difficult in order to make you feel the pressure and focus hard before the real exam… ----Think about it, if CFAI provided a relatively “easy” mock exam, it would give a false sense of hope and would be detrimental to everyone’s studying (over-confidence is a killer)…What was your performance like? I really hope having a 65-70% overall (morning and afternoon combined) will lead to a pass on the real thing!!! That’s where I’m at right now… wish me luck…still a week or so to go…and best of luck to you too.
Supposedly if you score a 65%+ on the mock you are in good shape… But who knows…just keep your head down till the 5th I’d say… Good luck!
That’s exactly where I am… I got a 63 and a 72 on the Mock halves… I only started studying 2 weeks ago for level I, so the time crunch is stressful!!! Don’t get me wrong, the actual amount of hours studied is ridiculous, since I’ve been in the Master of Finance program (almost done) with the program based entirely on CFA curriculum of levels I, II, and III…Can’t wait for June 5th haha
I doubt the mock is significantly different in difficulty to the actual test. From https://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprogram/resources/Pages/sample_and_mock_exams_overview.aspx: “# Realistic − Reflect actual CFA exam question formats, topics, and level of difficulty” Anecdotally, I sat for Level 1 in Dec 08 and I think I remember the mocks were pretty challenging. On exam day I thought the test was a joke—nearly the easiest possible way to test each important LOS. I scored 70%+ in every area. I registered for Level 2 June 09. Again, I remember the mocks (and mainly the last few Schweser practice tests) being pretty challenging. But I kept thinking about the Level 1 test, and didn’t get too stressed out about it. Level 2 last year was an absolute nightmare of a test, and I ended up with a 9-band. The one thing I’m sure I know now that I didn’t know a year ago is that—compared to Level 1—this is the test that really wants to kill us. So I would caution everyone reading this to not take hope in sub-70 scores (in any section, really) on these practice tests, believing that on exam day you’ll be given some kind of gift. I don’t think it’s going to happen. With the record number of you who passed Level 1 last June (record number taking, I think maybe record high pass rate as well?) I would guess several of you are going to be in for a surprise. Has anyone taken the (paid) samples from CFAI? Did you find them useful? Any easier or harder than the mocks?
I haven’t taken the mock yet - actually, I haven’t finished studying everything yet :)) - but I did one useful thing today: I dowwnloaded ALL the mocks, and I just wanted to remind everyone to do this. I know it seems obvious that you would download the mocks for levels II and III as well, but I just read a Level II thread and a lot of the guys there did not have the 2009 mock, I guess they forgot to save it last year.
Andreea! GREAT CALL!
i did that too, but i wasn’t sure if that was ethical or not. i can put an end to my nightmares of the CFAI knocking on my door now.
@Beatthecfa, thanks 
@gartsy, they say you get the books and one mock exam PER LEVEL when you register, so that’s three mocks. No worries about that. I have nightmares on being band 10 this June… I did take the sample exams, were useful for me, but as I have said before, I’m not sure how useful they would be to someone who finished studying some time ago and has been reviewing these past weeks. From what I’ve heard, they are easier than the mock.
I managed a 69% in morning and 68% in afternoon. This is right around my average in the Schweser tests.
I thought the morning was very easy but the afternoon was alot tougher. Scored 80 and 71 on them…My schweser was a bit below, heck I did the worst on the Schweser Mock 69 and 68 when compared to Elan and CFAI
its weird how we each have different perceptions of which ones were harder or easier. I thought the CFA mock was the most difficult. I got a 75 and 71 on the AM and PM respectively. The PM was much harder in my opinion. I am pretty happy scoring above 70 on it though. From people’s post on the forums it seems the consensus is that the CFA mock has been brutal. I thought Elan’s were just a bit tougher than Schweser but not close to the CFA mock. I would have to say that going through the 240 CFA Mock questions as thoroughly as possible is probably going to be my game plan for the next few days.
I also think that is there is some luck to do with this. It felt all the areas where I was strong, the cfa mock asked. So the questions seemed easier. I also did the CFA mock after schweser’s mock and vol 1 mocks. That helped a lot to identify my weak areas.
I wrote the exam in December and I found it WAY easier than last year’s mock exam. Don’t bank on that though. Also make sure you get enough sleep before test day as you will find that you lose concentration which will cause you to answer question half heartedly somewhere in the middle of the paper