Just got a 68 in AM and 65 in PM and feeling super discouraged.
I got 44% (8/18) in FRA and i consider it to be one of my strongest subjects!
Ethics was also an absolute killer!
How is everyone else scoring and what sections were you surprised about?
exactly the same numbers. Those two sections that you mentioned were also my weakest within the overall score.
I am going to read ethics from the curriculum (at least the topics that aren’t >90% clear).
Just keep practicing FRA; don’t be discouraged, I think that with a =66% we are in great shape. Just improve ethics!
I felt the exact same way. I spent a few days thoroughly going over FRA to the point where I felt really confident in it. Then tried my first TT and got 33%. I couldn’t believe it and felt so discouraged. Then I looked at the answers and realized that 3 of the 4 I got wrong were ones where I put the right answer and crossed it out to put a different one. I realized I was over-thinking it and just to stick to how I know to do it. I was thinking they were trying to trick me so changed from my right answer because I felt I came to that answer too easily. Did another after and got 83%.
What helped me understand was doing the EOC Qs then going back to the material to see exactly why we did the things we did. This leads to this, which causes this, which leads to this, etc. Then when you get a question that’s not fully straight forward you know the ins/outs of what everything is so you can solve it. FRA went from one of my weakest to one of my most confident and boosted up several other topics too because it does have a lot of overlay, way more than the 15-20% weighting it is said to have. FRA is the most important topic because I’ve seen even on some Eq TT they ask questions about where certain stuff goes and impacts IS/BS that you’ll only know if you understand FRA.
I just finished the mock and had 60% morning and 53% afternoon, I feel really discouraged 
I was doing ok on Schweser mocks, scoring around 60-65%.
I just finished both sessions of the CFAI Mock Exam. Scored 70% on the morning and 68% on the afternoon. I logged on here right after finishing to see if anyone else was discussing their thoughts, cause I found it very difficult. I was actually surprised I scored as high as I did (not that I really crushed it or anything).
I’ll be going through and reviewing the results a bit this evening and tomorrow to see where I need to improve. But I definitely struggled with the FRA and Derivatives. I knew I would struggle with derivatives since I haven’t worked as hard on getting everything down out of that section. Good news is that my score was a likely “pass”, but much too close for comfort. But I’m telling myself that’s despite the fact the mock had the max weight for derivatives (my weakest area) which gives me reason for optimism.
Here’s hoping that the real thing doesn’t have 3 derivatives item sets. How did you guys feel as you were taking it?
The mocks really highlighted that there is scope for your favourite topics to only come up in a few questions when you’d hoped for more.
Maybe I’ll get lucky in the real exam!
AM: 65% , PM 53%
I had mixed feelings about the AM and PM exams. While i was taking the AM exam i felt really discouraged and felt i was guessing on too many questions. On the PM I felt more confident and that I would have around the same if not a higher score than on the AM exam and I was wrong. The score of 53% really hit me but i still feel im in a much better position than last year to pass this test (band level 9 in 2016).
Equity has been my weakness despite last year being one of my strengths (top bracket 70%+ on the exam). Im trying to just focus on the heavy weight topics, EOC’s, and TT’s.
Good luck everyone, we’re almost there.
65% avg on the CFAI mock
63% AM
67% PM
super discouraging
58 for both AM and PM. I found FRA to be especially hard more in they way they were asking the questions and not so much the steps required to solve them. When’s the last time we’ve been given a problem with 3 different pension plans and had to figure out something? It was definitely a “duh” answer when I reviewed it, but there was definitely more obfuscation than the typical CFA item set IMHO.
68 on AM and 78 on PM. Had a really hard time with ethics and FRA on the AM.
57% both am and pm…really starting to getting discouraged
55 AM and 63 PM, going through it now and have found 4 mistakes in the AM alone that were just stupid.
>70 in Derivatives, Quant, Corp, and AI. Aka the non important ones
Both D and CF could be upto 15% of the exam each, so I wouldn’t discount them that much. Quant is too much effort for the 5-10%. And AI like level 1 is an after-thought.
Anyone find any value in re-taking any of the mocks? Or are they a once and review kind of thing?
I completely agree about Quant. I never got my head around it at all and at this point can’t really be bothered to. I would say though is know the ins/outs of Reading 9 because I’ve seen ANOVA tables come up in Equity sections and others before. Just knowing definitions should help you get 50% at least. I’ve done 3 Quant TT for an average of 72% and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about anything in topic 10 or 11 or 12 for that matter. With basic knowledge you can make pretty good educated guesses.
Also agree on quant. Just knowing how to interpret ANOVA table data, DW, calculate basic things like correlation and maybe knowing the inference impact/limitations of Heteroskedasticity and Multicollinearity as an extra. Basic overview: R-square: goodness of fit. The higher R-squared or adjusted R-squared for multi regression, the more of the dependent variable is explained by your independent variable(s).
Coefficients: Used to calculate prediction using given data.
Significance/P-Value: If below test value, the statistic is significant and vice versa.
F-Statistic: Explains overall significance of Regression.
Durbin Watson: The stronger the deviation from 2 the worse.
Correlation: r = Cov(X,Y) / (Sx * Sy), where S is the Std Dev.
Heteroskedasticity: Incorrect std errors --> unreliable significances
Multicollinearity: High R-squared and low t-statistics
Did the AM part today, got out a 75%, although Fixed Income was a mess with 2/6 right. Guess I`ll have to go back to bootstrapping spot rates and stuff. Gosh I hate these.
PM results out tomorrow.
Just took it, 60/55. Not what I had hoped for but I don’t feel terrible about it since I wasn’t really guessing on any of them. A lot of questions where I missed some stupid nuance and they purposely put in the answer selections what the answer is if you miss said nuance. Should be able to clean up those mistakes over this last week.
Would really be a confidence booster if someone who passed level 2 last year would pop in and say they passed with a solid score on the real test and a failing CFAI mock.
Just took it. 76.67% for AM. 83.33% for PM.
beastly. i wanna be there. Im mid-high 60s on schweser and mid 60s on TTs (taken all TTs) I feel i know a little bit about everything now, and frankly 2 out of 3 is a pretty clear pass. but its so hard to be confident. each question has so many levels of nuance that they could ask about