Did anybody else have troubles sleeping the night before? I hoped in the bed at 1030pm, however I never managed to sleep. I guess there were way too many thoughts running through my head. I tried every to sleep including pushups vodka and reading. Didn’t work too well. Drank 4 cups of coffee to keep me somewhat alert during the exam.
That’s a massive disadvantage on exam day. Being well-rested makes a huge difference.
Before the L3 exam, I panicked and had massive insomnia two nights (Thursday night) before the exam – didn’t get a second of sleep.
Fortunately, the night before the exam (Friday night) I was so exhausted I slept like a log, and all worked out ok.
I had 7 wonderful hours of shut eye…
Yes, and thats why I was soo frustraited with myself when I couldnt sleep. I kept on saying “I’m done, no way I am going to pass this exam now”. I think fatigue played into the fact I thought the afternoon section was 10x harder.
Also couldn’t sleep at all the night before the exam. I had just completed a mock exam and got a ~63% and spent 3 hours or so going over questions I had gotten wrong, then showered, and went to bed around 2:30 and sat the alarm for 5:30 for a final round of review. Sadly all I could think of in bed were formulas and concepts. Another cause was probably because I was really hungry and kept thinking about a big and delicious breakfast.
Good thing is that I didn’t feel tired at all during the AM section and I’m pretty confident I did well during the morning session. BAD thing is that after lunch the sleeplessness caught up to me and I lost steam when I got to the last 2 item sets in the PM session, and it just so happened the last few item sets required quite a bit of brain power and memorization…but overall I feel like the exam could have been MUCH worse, given that I was running on fumes.
Best of luck!
+1
i couldnt sleep the night before prolly only 2-3 hours. By pm session i was too exhausted that i was kinda shaking.
That was bad. If i pass i will jumping up and down for joy, but not too optimistic
I kinda anticipated this so I only flipped through my notes the last day and just veged out… I had gotten only about 5 hours of sleep the night before L1 cause I didn’t take time off of work and worked on problems till bedtime.
I didn’t sleep but then again I never sleep. I average about 2-4 hours a night so I’m used to it. I’m sure all of you did well on the exam.
I slept well the night before. Last year I took a sleeping pill and still couldn’t fall asleep. I did the same this year and went asleep easily. I didn’t sleep well Saturday night or last night though since I have been worried about tricks I may have missed or the curve getting set too high since everyone is saying it was easy. I will be a wreck the night before they give us our scores.
I had the worst night of sleep in years, it was awful. 2 hours max of sleep. My mind was all over the place. It defintiely cost me 2 easy questions in the afternoon session. Very frustrated and upset about this.
This was my 3rd cfa exam and my 1st time of not being able to sleep the night before. it was horrible.
I feel like I brought it on myself though, slept til 8 on friday and did more studying on friday than is wise. I really felt like I needed to do a full review of flash cards (which took way way longer than I anticipated) and also reading up on soft dollar and pensions.
went to bed at 11.30, woke up at 11.45 and then couldn’t fall back asleep until after 2am. I gradually worked myself up into more and more of a panic.
for some reason my brain was swirling around concepts, particularly the adjustments to cash flows if employer contributions and pension expense are significantly different, i had been struggling with that concept earlier due to burnout, getting confused about the addition to one type of cash flow or another, ie adding it as an outflow or adding it back making the outflow lower. i just couldn’t make my brain think of anything else
My neighbour threw a rave party which started at 10 PM friday night until 10 am in saturday. I literally didnt get a second of sleep in the whole night before the exam 
sexual release helps A LOT!!!
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you should relax as eat something, have a bath with warm warter or hearing your favour music 
had 3 hours sleep after a week of “training”, sleeping at 11pm and waking up at 6am
No sleep here either. I was sooooo mad. Going into the test, I was 1 for 1 with 1 “no contest” due to not sleeping the night before. I didn’t re-sit for the PM because I was falling asleep, so it wasn’t even graded. So this was obviously a threat I was familiar with and took all the measures I could to avoid it (woke up super early Fri, Nyquil Fri night).
At the end of the day, while I was definitely passing out in the PM session- the majority of the questions I didn’t answer were due to not knowing formulas, not really a lack of sleep. I’d say it couldn’t be more than a 3 question difference had I slept.
Same here. barely got 5 hours of sleep. And because they stressed so much that you should be there at least 1 hour before the exam, I arrived there at 6:30. I think I was the first one there. It was raining and they did not open the doors until 7:00. Not the best start.
I slept like a baby. And was perfectly well rested and mentally focused.
I am always so afraid to oversleep that I am not able to sleep. I even set 4 alarm clocks including my phone. I got into bed at 12pm but my little girl (almost 3) was in my bed and she was so happy that the studying would be over the next day. so she was summing up what we could do after my exam and keeping me awake.