I am in exactly the same boat as you Maria. I took the Decemeber exam in both 2010 and 2011 after deciding not to do June 2011. I went into last months exam very confident after having a good run in the mocs and samples. The first few Ethics in the morning had me worried as did the one of the last questions in the afternoon. Quant and Econ were good as was Fixed Income and Port Man. FRA was always going to be difficult but manages to quess a few right so am hopping I’ll sneak passed 70% in that. I completly f*cked out in Alts and Derivs, but might get Ethics. Its so frustrating that there is nothing I can do about my mark anymore. I’m also starting to remember that awful feeling of waking up at 4am (NZ time to find out I failed last time). Anyway, I’m preparing myself for the big PASS and am expecting a 39% pass rate. All the best to those who sat the December Exam, Chris
So how did you feel the difficulty was this year vs. last year?
I f*cked out in Alts and Derivs as well, honest truth is, i just didn’t bother to read both at all before the exam, cos then, i thought the time i would have spent reading either is not worth the weight in the exam. Like you, i also think the Quants, Economics, and Fixed Income was good. I think my accounting was good too.
Well to be honest, I found the Dec '11 paper to be much tougher than the one in June '11. I felt pressed for time and I also felt the paper to be slightly more quantitative than what I’d seen in the mocks and the June paper. I was a band 7 june '11 failure but then that was because I had completely neglected certain sections. This year I was much better prepared and I think I did better in all the sections except quant. But frankly, I think the paper was lengthy and some questions involved doing a lot of calculations. Also, i felt ethics had a LOT of grey area compared to last time. I don’t exactly know what the Angoff method is but then I really hope that they have a lower MPS this time. Fingers crossed!
I felt the June paper was far easier than its mock. How did you guys find the dec’11 paper compared to the mock? I found it almost as difficult as the mock if not more.
I think I mentioned this before but the difficulty of the actual exam in December 2011 was much higher than the mock exam. I didn’t need extra time to do the mock exam and did quite well. On the actual exam, I had to skip some questions because they required a lot of calculations and I was running out of time… Fingers crossed!
Wow! Seems like we’re sailing in the same boat then! 
6 days to go, fingers crossed!
Maria, what mocks did you do? Schweser mocks were definitely more calc intensive. i barely used my calculator for the real exam. btw, who here is sick of waiting for the results? CFAI, just give me my results so I can get on with my life! 6 more days!
IMHO, the actual paper was far more quantitative compared to the CFAI mock. I even had to leave a few questions midway because they involved a lot of calculations and I was running out of time.
I agree. I thought that the CFAI mock was much more qualitative than the actual exam. The real exam had more calculation that I was expecting to see. It seems like the Schweser mocks were almost a better barometer than the CFAI’s own mock exam, at least for this time around.
I thought the December exam was pretty easy, and I left feeling very confident of my results. The afternoon exam felt a tad easier than the morning, but that might just be a result of getting acclimated to the test/environment. There was definitely less calculation than I was expecting and more “understanding/explain” type questions. I felt that I barely used my calculator the entire time.
Guys, sometimes when I read your comments, I feel I did a different exam…
Could it be possible that there were two sets of papers? As in, a more understanding based one in the states and a more quantitative one in Europe/Asia ?
You felt so confident that you are already considering yourself a level II candidate on this website … haha I agree with you though that the exam was not quantitative at all compared to what i expected! I found myself disappointed of spending so much time working through hard questions while the test was more memorisation based! I am still confident that I can pass but not ready like you to already change my status as CFA level II candidate
Lol good point… as French say ne vend pas la peau de l’ours avant de l’avoir tue! Not only it is not sensible to show as “Level II Candidate” but also, doesn’t comply with the Code of Ethics… maybe bullbear420 won’t do that well in that part… hope everything goes as you expect…otherwise it will be very painful to go back to Level I candidate…
In spanish we also use that saying :“no vendas la piel del oso antes de matarlo”. Im just not making any plans yet before the results come out… blank mind.
In mandarin, we say “chi shi”
lol I am Spanish too
yeaa i m spanish as well, i dont want to think about the results, i m just thinking i put a lot of effort studying for this exam and i was well prepared thats all… we ll see next week. Good luck!
I passed ))