Hi all,
As exam date is approaching we need to focus on how to do the review process. I am unsure on value of practicing CFA EOC 2nd time versus practicing additional mock exams. In either case I plan to finalize questions from CFA learning ecosystem. So question here is really:
Option 1: Do EOC 2nd time then do 2-3 mock exams
Option 2: Do not do EOC 2nd time do 7-8 Mocks
What will be more beneficial?
I would def have another pass at the EOCs. I’ve gone through them twice and there’s very testable stuff in there. Then do as many mocks as you have time for and can get your hands on.
So better have 2nd EOC practice than additional 4-5 mock exam practice?
Yes imo. Only the last few years mocks are properly relevant, go back to 2016 for example and the majority of the mocks aren’t relevant for this curriculum. The Boston ones are worth doing.
Well, thank you for your response. What does Boston mock mean though? I googled it and could not find anything relevant.
The official CFAI mock. On the ecosystem. They’re written by Boston CFA.
IMO I would say it depends on how comfortable you are writing AM mocks and which one’s you are doing. You should definitely attempt all of the past AM relevant questions and work through 3rd party Mocks. If you scored well on the EOCs the first time, doing them a second time doesn’t add much value and they are less representative of exam style questions. They are either to basic or too lengthy. I would say always work through new material first rather than redoing problems. If there is a particular topic you are struggling with identified by poor performance on the topic tests it may be worth while redoing the EOCs for that section. At this stage I’ve been hammering mocks. I’m a twice deferred candidate and actually did the EOCs twice, the second time was in November and I found little benefit/improvement from doing them and still remembered most of the answers.
I would say, focusing on past mock exam relevant questions and /or 3rd party providers(if u have) as per PoisonP mentioned.
EOC is great for understanding the concepts at initial stage but not that useful in showing u the way how the real exams questions may look like on actual day.
Hopefully there won’t be any cancellation of the test center at this point of time given the situation of the pandemic which can go either way.Can’t imagine how it will be feel like if there a 3rd time cancellation.
Best of luck and take care guys
Wow you have great memory! Working through the EOC a 2nd time to me felt like doing completely new questions since I forgot most of them already 
I agree that most of the questions are lengthy and sometime basic, but I think the quality of the questions are certainly better than many of the 3rd party MC questions I’ve seen.
I mostly scored between 65% - 80%, does it count as “scoring well”? 
Working on AM questions from 3rd party is brilliant idea, but identifying relevant question is a bit of time-consuming, I guess. I plan to practice CFAI 2016-2021 mocks, do you think they are not enough? If not, do you have any good recommendations regarding sources of 3rd party Mocks?
I asked this above but will repeat it here as well. I plan to practice CFAI 2016-2021 mocks, do you think they are not enough? If not, do you have any good recommendations regarding sources of 3rd party Mocks?
P.S. In my country cancellations are not expected, however I feel the stress and anxiety of our fellow candidates who live in countries where Covid related cancellations are possible. Hope there won’t be any cancellation either. Thank you, take care you too.
Yes that is well done and demonstrates that you understand the core concepts so IMO going over them again is waste of time you’re just going score 75%-90% on the same questions and not learn much since you already know it.
“but identifying relevant question is a bit of time-consuming”
-Depends on what provider you’re using. Kaplan has a good reference sheet but is behind a paid firewall
-The Past AMs only cover relevant material so going back to 2010-2016 only about half of the questions on the exams are still relevant (Mainly IPS and BF) and there are full topics that have completely been revamped so… probably not enough. 2017/2018 have more relevant questions but still lacking a full AM exam experience. I haven’t done the Boston yet,
For L3 I’m using IFT, Kaplan & BCIII 3rd party materials.
IFT & Kaplan AM Qbanks were pretty good and a primer to writing full AM mocks
-Kaplan PM Qbank not worth the time. Many are stand alone questions
-IFT Mock exams were decent for the price, reflective of time constraints and style of past AMs. IMO on the easy/moderate side for difficulty I scored in the 70-80% range
-Kaplan AM mocks were not representative IMO. I found them not written well. Only completed one and gave up on the rest.
-Kaplan PM mocks were okay, similar to level 2.
-BCIII mocks are written very closely to the past AM style and format. They are challenging and go one or two layers deeper on some questions. Scored between 55-65% range
-I did not do MM but heard they are soul crushing.
-I’m guessing the actual exam difficulty for the AM will be somewhere between IFT & BCIII/MM with say 60% straight forward/moderate, 30% that test deeper knowledge and 10% WTF table flippers.
Brilliant, thank you very much! Just curious, you listed different sources, and all of them are paid ones, did you buy so many different mocks simultaneously? 
I know it is better to overshoot rather than undershoot, but I just checked and 3 mocks from IFT cost 145$, 2 from Kaplan cost 218$. If I’d buy both of them I will be spending third of my net monthly salary lol (I am not American, and nominal salaries here in finance are 3-4x lower than in USA). Does it really worth spending that money taking into consideration that we have highly relevant Boston mocks, relevant 2018-2020 and somewhat relevant 2016-2017 mocks?
If the answer is still “yes” what would you buy if you should select only one provider to minimize costs?
Cost have to be considered based on your own circumstances. I acknowledge that I am in a fortunate situation living in North America with full employment. I would first do all of the past AM papers from 2010-2016 picking out relevant questions, there is a google drive floating around with them if you do a search. You can tell pretty quickly what is relevant, if you are very short on time even spending one full day skimming the answer keys to identify what is relevant will work, make a list of all the relevant q’s for all years one day and wait a few days before starting the mocks, you should have forgotten anything you saw for the most part… It’s worth the time to pre-screen the questions, you can do this yourself after that you should be comfortable with the AM format. I would then buy the 3 mocks from IFT and do them under exam like conditions. I feel they will prepare you for the exam writing experience.
Keep in mind the purchasing note: Details about IFT Level III mock exams : IFT Support Portal
The IFT Mock Essay Exam #3 is a modified version of the 2017 CFA Level III Essay Exam. The vignettes are edited, and questions are changed to make them relevant for the 2021 CFA Essay Exam.
So you may want to avoid doing the 2017 past AM until you do the IFT Mock 3 to get a fuller experience. Then do the 2017 past paper after.
Good luck
I felt myself somewhat guilty that you had to acknowledge your particular fortunate situation - I am afraid I was misunderstood. I was not in any way implying on differences in wealth levels in our countries etc. or trying to make you uncomfortable for that matter, please do not understand it in this way.
I just tried to tailor your experience to my unique situation taking into consideration my constraints, so no need to be sorry for being more fortunate lol. Thank you very much for your time and detailed responses I really appreciate that. Best of lucks in forthcoming exam!
Be aware the all the EOC have been included in the CFAI Learning ecosystem. So if you go over that you are automatically gonna do the EOC a second time.
Something else that i found interesting. EOC are DEFINETELLY easier compared to last year. I know that a lot of readings changed but the difference is quite significant.
Good luck everyone