Confused with my post exam feeling band 10

Last year I failed band 10 after my AM paper I knew that I will fail the exam as I left many questions blank I think I left around 12-20 points blank in addition of many B.S answer. I was fighting the time till the end I gave up and spend the last 2 min doing nothing since I have no time to answers what left and under that time pressure I couldn’t think right. However, after the PM I felt that i have did ok and I might pass , and I was try to calculate my score under best scenario to see if I had a chance. my best scenario is around 63-64.5%.

this year I scored in the official mock 70am 82pm, I scored in Kaplan live mock 65am 72pm. After the real test I felt I did ok. Am had many twist, but I believed I preformed well. Of course I got some of questions wrong. Also the PM I did well with exception of ethics it was same as mock difficultly.

I said to myself before the test if I felt I did better than last year it should be pass, I believed I did way better this year, but I have the feeling it will be band 10 again.

i

Hang in there.

#PunIntended

I was band 10 last year and based upon what you said, I think you’ll pass. I got a 55 on the PM live Schweser mock exam. I got up to 75 on PM Schweser mocks but you seem to be in good shape. Don’t sweat it.

I feel exactly what you felt last year :frowning_face:. Around 15-20 points blanks, although I think PM is easy. It is impossible of me to pass, the end of the world. :broken_heart:

20 points are 5% of the exam score. If you’re confident in the rest of your AM and your PM, I wouldn’t worry about it.

Don’t worry last year I was close, I am not sure what the points difference between passing and band 10 but it should be minimal. Your pm educated guess could be better the my guesses good luck

I’m in the same boat. Last year, I left 2 cases blank in AM, ran out of time. Then thought I did ok in the PM just to find out quite few topics weren’t in the >70% mark. So failed band 10 on my 2nd attempt.

This year, worked on my speed and finished the AM on time but knew 3 weighty questions were more likely wrong as I wasn’t quite sure what they were asking for but PM, blitzed it in half the time. Then it dawned on me that I may not have read the questions as well in the PM last year even though I knew the stuff…gotta read exact what they are asking for.

Anyway, I reckon you should be a pass if you got band 10 last year with quite a few blanks.

@thatcandidate

i left 20 out of the 180 points on the AM completely blank, which worries me. but the PM, i think i did ok.

when you say you left 2 “cases” blank, do you mean 2 ENTIRE questions, or 2 sub-questions?

Agreed. Why is everyone so concerned with answering every question? What matters is if the answer is correct, not that you wrote something. I left 26 points blank but feel really confident about the questions I did answer. You have to lose battles to win the war.

So . . . you’re saying that if you win all of the battles you’ll necessarily lose the war?

Sounds . . . well . . . counterintuitive.

No, I’m saying it’s hard to get every answer correct. Say you’re scoring 80% on mocks, 20% still represents (2400 x 0.20) 480 pages of material that you don’t know. That’s a lot. I think you need to just accept that certain questions will stump you, but you can lose those battles and still win the war. I mean to the answer every question logic, what would be point of answering a question on AF if you don’t know the answer? Will it really help anyone just to write something?

That’s a bit different than saying that you _ have to _ lose battles to win the war.

:wink:

it depends a lot on how it’s graded and the MPS. If the MPS is low enough then yeah, leaving some things blank is fine. But even then if the questions you felt really confident about are graded in such a way that the score is still reduced (no answer is perfect) then you could still be hurt enough not to pass.

CFAI provides only beyond complete answers and no info on how grading is done so I can see why candidates can be concerned about this.

personally, I think your logic is correct in this case but have no way to know for sure. I went through another credentialing process that had essay exams and there was an unwritten rule that if you wanted to pass, you shouldn’t leave any question blank and it was a very good rule based on empirical evidence of who passed and who didn’t.

Lol fair enough.

I get what you’re saying, but you’re discounting the PM session. I think CFAI knows how difficult the AM is and that’s why they make the PM multiple choice. Also, when I say it’s okay to leave questions blank, I mean calculation questions where you only have a vague idea of what to do. If it’s qualitative you should definitely write something.

I think the AM was significantly easier than the PM session. Came out of the AM feeling confident but can’t say the same about the afternoon.

lol obv your chances go way down if you left 26 points completely blank

@Tommy

yes. With 15 min left, i had the last 3 case studies left and I quickly did a sloppy job on one of them just to get something in there. band 10…so close yet so far.

last year I was studying posts of people here who passed but they wrote quality answers for AM and and left 1-2 cases blank and in PM they scored all >70%. That’s why I thought I would pass last year having written better answers with 2-3 blanks.

At least this year you won’t see the Band anymore given they have changed the exam result format.

Well, I had a similar experience last year. Took level 3 for the first time in 2016 and failed band 10. I did great in the PM session, but my morning exam was a disaster, I must have left 3 entire sets empty…

Took it again last year (2017) after having focused my practice on time management for the AM session and did much better. I was able to complete the full exam and even had some spare minutes to review my answers. I must have left one 6 minutes question blank, but just because I didn’t know the answer.

Even knowing that I had done much better, and that passing was the logical outcome, I had some doubts and even got to think that I would fail again. I guess you cannot escape this feeling haha…

To sum up, don’t worry! I think you’ll pass! Cheers!