Did anybody think they honestly failed but actually passed?

Ok, not a 100% feeling that you failed, but truly and gunuinely expecting the worse but actually passed (so giving yourself ~30% probability.) I for one was expecting a greater chance of failure based on alot more 'educated guesses and having run out of time on the afternoon session, + forgetting some basic formulas and concepts. When initially logging and checking my results, there was very little excitement as a true gloom feeling came down, but upon looking at the scores then thinking ‘whoaa, it doesn’t seem that bad’, then the “PASS” which also didn’t register, but of course a few seconds later it did. Just because I’m sure there are candidates with the opposite which might be common, but since usually you don’t genuinely hear about the expected fail resulting in a pass, I thought it would be interesting to see if anybody else also experienced this.

My posts after the exam is that I truly expected to fail. Best case was 30% chance of passing. I scored pretty well though, highest band in all the big topics, which makes me think I should I ask for a remark :slight_smile:

i thought i failed, went to sign up for level 2 and saw level 3

I’m pessimistic by nature and usually underestimate my results, which I did for Level 1 as well. For various reasons, I studied less for Level 2 than Level 1…about 200 hours. Not recommended by the way. Thankful for my accounting background…think I got less than 3 wrong in FSA, which countered my less than 50% in equity (which I didn’t study enough for) Whatever…it’s done and I’m on my merry way to Level 3 now.

I thought my chances were a coin flip when I finished the exam. Result: Fail - Band 10 A handful of good guesses away from passing…

I gave my self a 40% chance of passing and a 60% chance of failing. I was really pissed with myself after the exam b/c I busted my ass studying, like most people here I consider myself to be a fairly smart person who’s not used to failing. To make matters worse all my friends were saying things to the effect of “I’m sure you passed.” “You studied so much there’s no way you could fail.” etc. When I logged in on Tuesday I was fully expecting to see the Fail. When I saw the Pass instead, I was in a state of shock and had to log back in a coupple of times to make sure I saw the Pass correctly. Level II is a b*tch of an exam and I feel the no matter how prepared you are there is still an element of luck in passing. Btw I’m still smiling. mz

mz, I’m in the same boat but I gave myself a 10% chance of passing. I’m not into this false modesty thing either. I seriously thought I blew this thing as I know I missed simple stuff that I knew but got flustered with. L1 was totally different, I felt great walking out of that thing, I knew I killed it and I did, everything >70. This was a hellish two months and because of that I’m not taking any chances with L3. I want to walk out of there knowing I killed it. I can’t take this stress anymore…

sterling76, I hear you. With level I I walked out fairly confident that I passed. I took level I in dec and level II in june so I suffered from a little bit of burn out. This time arond I’m not taking any chances I’m going to start early and hit the books hard.

I was giving myself 30% chance rate to pass, and I passed, but it was really touch and go, since I had 65% based on the 40/60/80 rule.

For the last 3 months I told everyone I failed and I’d retake it. my reasoning was… i felt pretty good during the practices, finished with time to spare and yet consistently got 64. the passing grade is usually around 67, right? In the exam, i was panicky, slow, didn’t finish and guessed a LOT… optimistically I gave myself 60 but i wouldn’t be surprised by high 50’s. the only time i was hopeful… Tuesday i logged in then quickly hit the back button to look at the passing results… 46%! Crossed my fingers then I logged in a second time to see the PASS.

I totally concur. I walked out of Level 1 knowing I killed it, and I did. I walked out of Level 2 feeling crushing, giving myself <30% chance of a pass. Since June I’ve been mentally accepting a failure, and basically telling all friends/co-workers that I failed. I almost passed out when I saw my “pass” score. Overall I did pretty shitty, but must have NAILED equity and FSA to carry me through. Incredible!

In the afternoon session there was half hour left and I had been done for a few minutes and I didn’t want to get locked in (no one allowed to leave in the last half hour) so I just said what the heck and left. I didn’t check any of my answers. I felt there was a 60% chance I had failed and that number grew in my head over the months of waiting. So I’m a lot like mzwerner. I psyched myself up to see a fail and my mark was worse than some people who did fail. When I saw Level 2: Pass I started sobbing and almost hyperventilating (my poor dog was so confused, he’s never seen that emotion before!) The reason why I woke up at 6am was because I knew that if I failed I wanted to let it sink in for a few hours before I had to go to work. Instead I was on cloud nine. The worst part was that morning I had a dream that I passed and was so happy in the dream. When I woke up I had to face the reality that that was not going to happen. Maybe my subconscious knew before I knew :slight_smile:

Yes, thought I had 0%-10% chance of passing. Not only did I pass Level II but got many more >70%s than I expected. You can pass this exam even with getting 1/3 of the questions wrong which is a lot if you’re used to aceing exams and getting 90%+ scores. I think I focused on the 1/3 wrong rather than the 2/3 right. I think my score was about 70% based on 40/60/80 and while I failed a few sections it was the small point sections.

I thought I was going to fail going into the exam (you an search one of my posts on Friday afternoon to that effect), I thought had a chance of passing after the AM session, but that feeling was downgraded to 50/50 after the PM session, with me leaning on the fail side. However, I am usually more pessimistic than most.

I miracled it. If anyone is reading this for next year, you won’t walk out thinking you passed if you start cramming a month before (I started a new job in Jan which made it tough). I thought the PM, EVA, real estate, swaptions were a total bust. I got bottom marks on PM/deriv. I honestly think they must have chucked out the PM and not counted it toward the passing grade since the pass rate is so high, and I lucked out on real estate with a 50+ to get a 67 by the 40/60/80. (RE would have been a layup had I spent the time there). I think you can definitely add a few points to those practice test scores because I was getting around 60. But that’s not the way you want to do it. Hopefully will not forget that for L3.

@mzwerner : It seems like we were living the same life after the exam till the results. Congrats on passing. I would try to avoid the topic of CFA in conversations and when Level I results came out and I was still telling that my results are pending, it almost seemed like I was lying and I had failed…!

I did. I was reading the 40 questions thread after the test on here and remembered that I got most of them wrong. It was very frustrating. Some how I passed. I’m not sure how. Maybe some of those answers were wrong. Anyway, they sounded right.

I was 50:50 optimistic just after the exam, but I kind of kept it down, cos quite a lot of guys wore gloomy faces. I don’t like to discuss the questions after the exams so I avoided those threads and convos. But optimism kept slipping down anytime I remembered a question where I was sure I got the answer wrong… I realized (one week to result release) is that the best way I can handle the stress is to keep off the forum, but on Monday when saw the link thread (isn’t that the longest thread in the forum?) went to check and realized it had been removed, I just got resigned like, whatever. On d-day after checking for hour with highs of adrenalin and headaches, seeing the Pass was a priceless, I had to leave it up all day. Yeah, still checked on it yesterday. Then I was aglow when I (finally) saw the link to enroll for Level III. Still unbelievable, but I’ve signed up y’day and waiting for the cfa bks and scurrying for the old schwesers…

I passed, but if I’d mark the paper myself I would have failed myself as I should have done so much better. I will be reviewing all my L2 books from now till Dec, before even thinking of stating L3.

I think I should had passed but my performance band thinks another way.