Hi, I don’t think I will get much time to review the materials and without review I don’t think there is a chance. I have looked at Elan’s sample material and it look very impressive. Any feedback on Elan’s “Eleventh Hour Guide” & Full length mock exams. RedKnight
The mock exams are going to be sent out Monday, so no comment on those yet. The Eleventh Hour Guide is great. There are a few other threads that discuss their materials and overall everyone seems to really like their stuff. You should look into the final stretch as well. If there’s some stuff you haven’t covered yet, their lectures are quite detailed.
+1 SeeEfAye Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The mock exams are going to be sent out Monday, so > no comment on those yet. > > The Eleventh Hour Guide is great. There are a few > other threads that discuss their materials and > overall everyone seems to really like their stuff. > You should look into the final stretch as well. If > there’s some stuff you haven’t covered yet, their > lectures are quite detailed.
I personally have been using the 11th hr…and i gotta say it has helped a lot since i forgot most of the smaller stuff i read at the beginning. I am planning on being done with my first read through of the 11th hr this weekend and plan on reading it entirely again once more then hitting up my weak areas that i high-lighted for a third revision.
Hi, I got Elan’s 11th hour guide and the 2 mocks as well (which will be sent out on Monday). I personally really like the 11th hour guide. It’s not going to teach you anything in that sense. You have to have looked at the material before. The guide is a very good review and summarizes all the important concepts. I think it’s worth the 80$ for the guide and the 2 mocks.
The best bang for your buck!!! Elan guides Eleventh hour is simply amazing, better than secret sauce. Having said that, if your understanding of the concepts is weak, then even Eleventh Hour will not help cracking the exam!!
11th hour guide is great, nuff said. There are a few spots where it isn’t that great, but for $40 it is incredible.
Any word on the quality of the Elan mock exams?
I received them ealier this week, but probably won’t be taking any of them till the weekend. Here’s what they said about their mock exams in an email: “We think that you should be quite happy if you are scoring above 65% on these exams. The Econ, FRA and Fixed income sections in particular contain a lot of difficult questions. Attempting these questions and understanding their solutions through our comprehensive answers will stand you in good stead when you confront the actual exam. There are three basic categories or types of questions that you will see on the actual test: 1. Those that require memorization of features, characteristics, advantages, disadvantages. 2. Formula application/ Number plug-and-chug problems. 3. ‘Smart’ questions that test your concepts and your mastery of the LOS. We have included all three types in these mock exams. While it would give us immense pleasure to make a whole mock exam full of conceptual questions only, CFA Institute (for reasons best known to itself) includes a fair amount of questions from Category 1 (e.g. which of the following is most likely to be found in the proxy statement) and Category 2 (e.g. the price value of a basis point for the given bond is closest to). What you will find is that we have included a relatively lower number of Category I and Category 2 questions, and more Category 3 questions. While you may be tempted to simulate actual exam conditions and take one whole mock exam (240 questions) on one day (in 2 three-hour sessions on either side of a 2-hour break) we recommend that you actually take each session of these exams on a different day. We only say this because these exams are quite difficult, and it’s best that you take them when you are fresh. After taking these exams, we suggest you take the CFA Institute mock exam in one day. If you continue to review the material and ensure that you understand everything in the Eleventh Hour Review Guide, we are quite confident that you will see an improvement in your scores over the next few weeks. If you have any questions regarding our problems and solutions, we are accessible on this email address. Our content team will be glad to help you out. Best of luck with your final review!”
I just went through the morning session of the first exam. It is definitely not an easy exam and the questions are really really good. I have only gone through one out of four sessions, but two thumbs up so far! Btw. For FRA you have to assume that IFRS applies unless otherwise stated. This is true as far as the exam is concerned as well. The Elan mocks say so as well, but I think they forgot to state that explicitly in the morning session of the first mock. The order of the topic areas on their exam is the same as the structure of the real exam to the best of my knowldge. PM comes last. Is that how it is on the CFAI mock as well? Can anyone confirm this?
Questions Topic 1-18 Ethical and Professional Standards 19-32 Quantitative Methods 33-44 Economics 45-68 Financial Statement Analysis 69-78 Corporate Finance 79-90 Equity Investments 91-96 Derivative Investments 97-108 Fixed Income Investments 109-114 Alternative Investments 115-120 Portfolio Management
Thanks beatthecfa. I was really looking forward to opinion of anyone who already did L1 (for ellan mock). I did Qbank questions (not a lot), Volume 1 from Kaplan (found it relatively challenging to Qbank). I started Ellan Mock did 120 Questions today. I liked them in a sense that they were not so heavily based on calculation (so far) and really tested concepts. I hope exam is in similar format. Any comment on ethics ? They are not that long as compare to Volume 1 or Q bank. I mean you don’t have to read all those stories! 
beatthecfa, you seem like the resident expert on this forum (thank you), would you say elan’s 2 practice exams would be better to practice with then Schweser volume 2?
Just went through the second session of the first exam. It really is quite hard. @sparatan262: Schweser practice exams volume 2 is difficult, but only because it involves extensive calculations Elan’s tests, from what I have seen so far, are really good. I have never seen a Boston society test. I have heard very good things about it in the past, but I have read on this board that this year’s exam is easy. I am not in a position to make the comparison between BSAS and Elan’s mocks. However in my opinion, I really feel that Elan’s Mocks > Schweser Practice Vol 1 > Schweeser Practice Vol 2 @thegames: Browse through some of the threads on the Level I forum between Dec 6 and 12 2009. If they havent been deleted, you’ll see that most test takers find that there are not too many calculations on the real exam. About Ethics. There were no long stories when there were 4 options to choose from. I don’t know about now because I don’t have access to the CFA mock exam. Have you seen it?
I am only satisfied with the Elan videos, I would never purchase Elan mock exams in the future. There are a significant number of errors on the mock exam. Many could have been corrected by a simple read through, which they clearly didn’t do. The quality of the mock exam is so poor I am now forced to verify all the solutions they give with the actual text.
rrbest - are you saying that their answer choices are incorrect? Can you please provide an example or two (at least the question # and what exam it is). I just took the first one this morning, and now I am concerned that my mark isn’t as good as it was.
Well, for example here’s an obvious one, test 1, afternoon #85. A higher retention ratio will most likely result in a higher: Dividend payout ratio. Return on equity Growth rate. well, if you know the formula, g = ROE x RR so the answer is C. But they say it’s B and then go on to explain how it’s C. (So in this case the solution was correct, but the given answer was not). This is an example of how a quick read through could have solved several of the errors. Another example is the incorrect use of the operating cycle formula somewhere in the morning session.
thanks, I will pay attention to their answer choices. I’ve emailed them to see if they will be putting out an errata for the mock. as for the operating cycle, they asked what is the operating cycle (DSO + DOH) and not the NET operating cycle (DSO+DOH-Days Payables). Therefore the answer is correct - Am I correct in that thinking? other than the errors, what do you think about the difficulty of them?
They still did the formula wrong. Check out how they solve it and compare it to the formula in the text. It’s not the same and does not produce the same answer.
rrbest: If you’re talking about no. 75 in the morning, their answer is perfectly fine I think.