I was wondering if it’s a good idea to skip around topics during exam day? Reason for this is that I want to hit up my strong section first so I won’t potential lose time and not be able to get to my strong areas or risk reading to fast… Here’s the plan: first topic: Ethics 2nd: Economics 3rd: FRA 4:Equity 5: Fixed income 6: Corporate Finance 7: Deviates 8: Alternative Investment 9: Portfolio Management 10: Quant. Is this too much skipping around? I took already the Schweser practice exams and I’m always going over by 8-12 minutes. Please help cause I’m getting 70-75% on the test just going over by average of 10 minutes.
my approach for level I was to start from the start, ethics… read the question, give it a shoot, if it seemed like a pain in the ass i would move on but i write notes next to the question about any conclusions that i got to so that when i come back to it i dont have to start my thinking from 0… there will be so many questions you will answer in a snap (hopefullly), so those you will get on your first pass of the exam second pass you would do more difficult ones, and you would have a few left for last pass… no rocket science, just what i do…
I like to start off with an easy section so that my mind can get in the groove and so that any initial nervousness will wear off. I think it would be an excellent idea to do the ethics section early, since those questions are like a Sudoku puzzle and require you to have your mind at its sharpest so that you can catch the minor details and implicit things of it and such. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to put off ethics until the end when you’re mind is starting to turn to into milk and oatmeal.
For me I think definitely Econ is going to be the last
i reckon there’s no point in messing round with the order – stuffing up your answer sheet is too big a risk. my plan is to go through the entire exam in order, marking down an answer for each question but also making note of the ones i’m not 100% sure on. Then make a second pass through, checking answers and having another attempt at the ones that I struggled with the first time around.
I agree with Kiakaha. Even though I would have loved to attempt equity, bonds, derivatives and AI before quants and FRA but I can’t take risk of leaving some answers unfilled on the answer sheet, marking twice or marking incorrectly if I loose the track. I have tried this strategy with mocks but I get panicked and do crazy stuff so order is very important.
Apart from the strategy, did you guys figure it out what you guys are going to eat/drink in the morning and during lunch breaks. Taking vacation before exam? Drinking wine before one day to calm the body down? etc etc. What do you guys recommend to eat in the morning to be most energetic and not feel lethargic during exam. I have a tendency to get panicked during exams if I run out of time. How do you guys control yourself? Deep breaths? or something else? I hope proctors or other fellas don’t get annoyed by seeing me breathing deep lol…
No need to mess with the order!!!
I started the exam where I was strong - FRA, and went forward from there, wrapping up Ethics, Econ and Quant last. Whatever strategy you utilize, be sure to adopt it while doing practice exams so that you’re not trying anything new on exam day. Time management is really important, and starting out of order does make it more difficult to track your progress.
I agree that the best way is to keep the CFA order and stick with it. But in my case, Econ is really a pain in my ass, so for the 1st round, i’m going to skip it and do it at the end, but all the other sections will be done based on the official order…Can’t take the risk to mess up more than 1 section Sgupta what am i going to eat ? don’t no yet, maybe no breakfast as usual. But for sure I know Im gonna wear a pant and bring a jacket, even if it will be a summer day, don’t want to take the risk to deal with any cold…even if usually when im stressing out, i become very hot, lool
I would start eating big breakfasts and eat one that day