I just graded my morning session on the CFA mock and scored a 61% Pretty disappointed I did so poorly on the Ethics questions. I felt they were much wordier and less straightforward than what I’ve encountered in the Schweser Mocks I’ve taken so far. I’ve been scoring solid mid 60’s on those but after spending so much time reviewing this weekend I was hoping to at least stay at or near the high 60’s. I will spend the rest of tonight reviewing the morning session and take the afternoon tomorrow. Really curious to see the reasoning behind the Ethics answers. Seems like a few others are in this scoring range as well. I suppose we’re in striking distance so just need to keep our feet on the gas this last week. I’ve kept a pretty close log of my hours and I’m right around 250 hours.
Yea i think it is self-selection bias. I was a bit worried like you too, but I have taken a lot of the Schweser mocks and they post other CFA candidate scores and they all seemed to converge around the mid to upper 60’s.
Also, to my understanding the CFA mock is equilivant in difficulty to the real deal and the rumors are is you have a really good shot at passing if you score > 70. Given this scores in the mid to upper 70s for CFAs are probably above average but unfortually that doesn’t gaurntee anything. The only thing you can do is give it your all and hope for the best.
Probably the ones who are not scoring well may not want to share their scores
I didn’t score so well, 60% in both am and pm of the CFA mocks. Did them both last Saturday to replicate the exam experience. Completely drained me. Did worst in equities, FRA and Economics. Plan this week to go through each of these readings/ end of chapter questions again. Also need to do more memorizing. Made a lot of silly mistakes, that cost me about 20 points in each.
I got 68% overall in the CFA mock, but I got 77% in the ethics part so it’s basically a pass.
I’ll spend today going over the stuff i got wrong in the afternoon session, tomorrow on half a schweser mock. And then the final 2 days before going through the secret sauce and doing Qbank questions for any things I come across that I cannot remember as I go through it.
Yesterday i made an examen from Schweser (only morning sesion) and score 67.5%…very bad at ethics and alternative investments…the exam was similiar to the mocks I made from 2012 / 2013…don’t know if it’s that I’m tired but my scores are going down…=S
I have just finished both Mock Exams, so here are the results. Interpret them as you like. First AM Score, then PM Score, then Total Score Ethics AM 77,8% PM 83,3% Total 80,55% Quants AM 78,57% PM 35,7% Total 57,14% Econ AM 75% PM 45,45% Total 58,33% FRA AM 45,84% PM 54% Total 47,92% Corp Finance AM 50% PM 70% Total 60% Equity AM 58,3% PM 66,67% Total 62,5% Derivs AM 66% PM 83,3% Total 75% FI AM 66% PM 66,67% Total 66,67% Alt. Inv AM 83% PM 87,5% Total 83,33% Port AM 33,33% PM 100% Total 66,67% AM Total 62% PM Total 65%
First post: it’s my second time taking level I. I hate coming on this site because it’s usually a bunch of people who are clearly prepared asking for validation of their scores. That being said, I thought I might be able to provide some context.
In the past 10 months or so I’ve been studying, I’ve studied with and talked to a lot of people who have taken the exam. Scoring in the 60’s on the CFAI mock is good and the people I know who passed last June and December scored from 64 - 72% on the CFA mock.
On Schweser mock exams, they were scoring from 65’s to 81’s before the exam.
If you want an analysis vs. anecdotal evidence, I always reference this post…
I think it’s better to overprepare than to underprepare. Reading that peopls with 60’s in CFAI mocks also clear made me a bit complacent tbh. You don’t want to do that while preparing for an exam. I’m sure its far worse being a band 10 fail than over working and clearing the exam.
After going through the morning session answers this afternoon, there were probably a solid 15 questions I absolutely should have gotten right. I either read the question wrong and missed 1 key word (specifically on the wordy ethics questions) or had something referred to a different way than I’ve seen Schweser use. There were also 3 plug and chug math problems I botched by fat fingering the calculator. This makes me feel slightly more optimistic but I know it’s easy to make those kinds of mistakes on the big day. The only good thing was I seem to finish with 30 minutes to spare. Hopefully I can keep track of questions I’m not sure on and use any leftover time to pick up a point or two.
For those of you who misread questions, you should read the question first, which is usually the last two sentences of the paragraph, without looking at the choices. This is especially true for ethics. For example, it could ask you “which of these standards did so and so least likely violated?” Then while you’re reading the scenario, you can keep that in mind. If you have an answer while reading it, and your answer is one of the choices, then more than likely that would be right.
Well said. But just wait until you sit for Level II and Level III – they’re different animals (i.e., beasts).
I don’t know about you all, but the AM session of the CFAI 2013 mock was rough. I did very well on the afternoon session (for a strange reason I began with it), but through grading 90 questions on the AM session I ripped up the exam in frustration and punched the wall last night. This ethics section is the most frustrating topic I’ve ever studied. I know 14-15 out of 18 is a good score (I took an 11/18 on the AM '13 CFAI mock) but no matter how hard I study I can’t do any better than 15/18 in ethics b/c it just seems like there’s a lot of grey area on these questions and you’re always left guessing between 2 answers on 4 or 5 questions. It’s very frustrating. I hate pop music, but somehow this new Taylor Swift song cheered me up.
Good luck studying to all.
Just got done with online schweser mock and got 73% (the average score from 1068 candidates being 58%). Was a good confidence boost considering the 62% on the CFA Mock. But definitely the difficulty was much much simpler.
Some feedback to my own post above. After doing two of the three Elans, I just did the CFAI mock. Whew, that was a hard one, especially compared to the Elans. Still I am super happy to have achieved a 78% AM and 79% PM result.
Ethics AM were really, really hard. I did the “read the question first” thing, but in some questions I did not get the very single, very one word that would have made the difference. (only 66% AM, the 83% PM saved me) Although I scored slightly better in the PM, I found the PM mock being much harder than the AM mock. Especially FRA was challenging, followed by ECO
72 on CFAI mock and Im not happy with ethics (66.67) , FSA (70%) and Eco (about 60%)
Hi guys,
I have just completed CFA mocks 1 & 2. Got 70% in the morning paper and 65% in the afternoon paper. Am worried about my scores. Is it too bad when compared to relative performances? Since am new to this forum, I am not aware about earlier discussions.
Took the BSAS exams earlier this month, 67% on AM/PM. Took CFAI online mocks yesterday and today, 66% on AM and 68% on PM. Found PM very tough… blew up on economics completely, not much better on FRA. Got 100% on PM ethics, so that felt good.
I think part of the reason for the 40% pass rate is all the folks taking the exam for whom English is not a first language. I saw a guy studying in my city taking notes in his language. Can’t help when you have to translate everything before you can really mull it over. And then there’s all the people in industry who register and don’t have time to study.
took the cfai mock like 3-4 days ago and scored a 73%. what i’m worried about is i’ve been getting around 70-75% more or less on my schweser practice exams, which i should be getting higher than my cfai, from popular opinion on this website. so i wonder if there are any topics where i’m just shite at but i dont realize i am…?
also, i pray i do well in ethics. i did well in ethics (somehow) on the mock, getting 14 and 15 i think, and from what i’ve seen my ethics scores are pretty much within 2% of my actual total score. maybe its just the big man upstairs checking to see if im a good, ethical human being…
I agree. I guess the only negative comment I have about the CFA is that it is so US-centric. If only they offered it in other languages, it would be a level playing field.