Exam Day Strategy (AM & PM)

CFA Level III
#1

guys, i’m curious how’s everyone formulating the exam day strategy ?

I practiced and did Lv. 2 by reading the entire case then answer the multiple choices questions. But when practicing Lv 3 AM sessions, i found it quite efficient to read questions first and then go back to case paragraphs to get the context. Is this a economical strategy for the real exam? what’s the real exam book look like, single-sided or double sided?

Some of the tips says that it’s important to use watch wisely on exam day, to track the time lapse on each question, eg from 10:00 - 10:05 answer Q2 Question B. I found it quite difficult to practice. Is there an alternative?

For the PM sessions, I noticed that CFA website qbank is structured in a way that each case paragraph discusses one question, so usually 6 questions in total. But I think the CFAI sent out email saying that 2019 exam structure will be altered, that each case question will have unequal number of questions. So what’s a good strategy for PM session ?

Thanks

#2

I’d forget the clock and try to do enough mocks to get an understanding of the pace you have to keep. Everyone has topics that they can breeze through and topics that require more time. Treating every topic the same time-wise is not smart in my opinion.

#3

My exam day strategy would be to take the AM exam in the morning and save the PM exam for the afternoon.

#4

Seriously?

#5

yeah, i almost feel that CFAI gives estimated time on each essay only to mess up test takers’ mind

#6

good strategy. as expected.

#7

Needless to say that exam will have a mix difficulty questions. Since everyone will have different strong areas so one may attempt those sections in the AM in which they are more confident. If you try to attempt the paper in sequence then there is a high probability that you may stuck in more diffiicult questions and in the end you loose out marks even on easier questions because of time pressure. For the AM exam, follow Bird in the Hand theory.