It is a violation and can get you suspended.
It’s not worth it people
but nobody knows who we really are!!
I wonder how seriously CFAI takes it. I remember the LEvel 3 manager for Schweser made a Youtube video for 2011 saying how GIPS has been tested for X number of years and WILL be tested in 2011 (obviously a violation and he’s a CFA charterholder). Yet, he’s still a CFA charterholder according to Schweser.
Incidentally, this year he didn’t mention that it has been tested lin the past and said it’ll probably be tested instead of guaranteeing it will be (a youtube comment stated that it was NOT tested in 2011, making the schweser guy look like a fool). Maybe CFAI gave him a warning which is why he didnt say it has been tested in the past like he did in 2011.
It helps if you understand the reason for the rule.
CFAI questions are carefully designed and tested. It takes a lot of work to do that. You may have noticed that the questions on the actual exam tend to be a lot clearer than on third party mock exams. The design and testing that goes into that represents a substantial investment of time and energy and thought.
Basically, CFAI wants to protect their investment by ensuring that people don’t simply go and publish “here were the questions on this year’s exams, so if they reuse them, you know what the answer is!”
Now, technically, *any* discussion of the exam questions is potentially a violation, but historically, the only times CFAI has really come down on people about this has been when they reveal enough content about the question that someone would be able to reverse engineer it or something very very close to it and publish a book of former question for the exam.
Study providers have to register with CFAI and presumably get some special dispensation and rules about creating practice material in exchange for doing that.
Remember though, it’s a slippery slope… one starts out by saying “I liked French bonds over German bonds,” which is so obscure it really doesn’t reveal anything, but soon you start adding more and more detail and bam, you’ve crossed the line.
I agree iteracom.
To the rest:
You are naive if you think there aren’t ways to find out who you are. What is it really going to tell you anyway? What’s done is done. We all either either passed or failed.
What’s interesting is in the recent few years, (I took a couple of years off from writing), and was suprised to see it this year, is that they put that specifically in the actual Standard and Codes, which was not there explicitly before.
It probably did stem from that incident that everybody talks about. But I remember over the years, after the exam, everybody would come online here and talk about all the specific questions and what they thought was right or wrong (even a debate with no clear answer) on certain questions. And at the end of it, through everybody’s contribution, you would have a pretty good idea what the whole exam looked like.
Even during the exam at lunch or right afterwards, people would be talking about certain questions, how did you answer that, etc.
Bump, bump, bump it up!
Look, no one will get any extra points from discussing questions. So why do it - enjoy your summer instead.
If you are really bent out of shape (which judging from how active this board has been, a lot of people are) send your comments about any of the questions to examquestioncomments@cfainstitute.org
Feel free to rant away to the CFAI. That’s their job. To carefully evaluate feedback from candidates, show that feedback to the graders, and then let that group of people make a reasonable decision regarding how a well prepared candidate should have answered the question.
Have some fun! Get off these boards! I don’t want to see any of you until August!
Agreed. This board is pure torture if you are trying to forget about the exam until August. I have banned myself for looking twice already and failed both times…
Sorry can’t agree. What do you think friends?
I’m with bchadwick on this. 3rd party exams, Schweser particularly, we’re very weak.
If anyone doesn’t think CFAI checks these boards, see the following:
“Following the exam, two Level II candidates, Anurag Jain and Nana Kweku Nduom, used Analyst Forum, an internet chat forum, to contribute, solicit, and compile June 2009 Level II CFA exam content. The information was compiled into a spreadsheet and further offered to other candidates via the internet forum and other internet sources. The Professional Conduct Program investigated these matters and found that the candidates engaged in the conduct, thereby compromising the integrity and security of the CFA exam in violation of the CFA Exam Rules, Candidate Pledge, and the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, specifically Standard VII(A) – Conduct as Members and Candidates in the CFA Program. Both Mr. Jain and Mr. Nduom requested a Hearing Panel. After consideration of the evidence in each respective case, the Hearing Panels determined the candidates’ conduct of compiling, soliciting, and distributing CFA exam content violated the CFA Exam Rules and the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct and imposed the sanction of Five-Year Suspension from Participation in the CFA Program and Voiding of Exam Results on each respective candidate.”
Source: http://www.cfainstitute.org/ethics/conduct/Pages/candidate_sanctions.aspx
Coming from where i’m coming from, Level 1 Schweser mock questions are a knock on the ego. They force you to get serious; make you want to tackle questions all day till you master.
When the final paper arrives, your language skills at deciphering Schweser questions are put at work. HAHA It must not go unsaid that Schweser wording of questions is confusing. I guess they wanted us all to learn how to read the questions TWICE
I’m with you. For PM, mocks and samples are supposedly built with a lot of past questions, and I don’t think they’re that special. The exam itself is harder to analyze because I don’t really remember exact wordings or even most questions.
For AM, it’s closer, but I don’t see much of a difference. I think both Schweser and CFAI have a majority of questions that are clear enough, and a few that are ambiguous (sometimes very ambiguous).
I also think that, as a whole, and especially for PM, Schweser exams are better in pointing out how well you’re doing. If you get 90s on a single Schweser mock, it’s very likely you’ll get 80+ on most other Schweser or CFAI mocks. If you get 90s on a CFAI mock, you may have got one of those extremely easy mocks CFAI throws out from time to time - which can be very misleading in my opinion. And for all levels it seemed that Mocks were easier than Samples, which seem a little weird to me, since CFAI recommends taking samples early in our preparation.
Me too. BCHADWICK declares that because there is a huge difference between when you just read the text of a problem and when you sit real life exam and constrained in time granted to solve the problem correctly.