Can I just rant for a sec about the ridiculousness of this test? You can get 95% of the concepts, 80% of the formulas and still fail miserably due to how they test to subject matter: miss a multiplier on a futures Q, its WRONG. Flip an exchange rate, or forget to annualize a return. WRONG. So what if you get the concept or do 8 out of 9 steps correctly. Same thing goes for GIPS and ethics: They work so hard to ask questions in a counterintuitive way: are you required or recommended to get permission before making a personal trade? Do you need permission in writing to ref high school bball if you get paid? A prof. I had put it best when he said the “CFA tests the ethics section in an unethical manner.” At the end of the day, the ones who bitch are CANDIDATES, and we carry no weight by definition. Who cares you are cranking 300+ hours to cram for questions you might never even see on the test and will certainly never use in real life. Miss enough of the tricks and fall for enough of the dummy answers, and your reward is to do it over next year. Heck, once you do pass L3, you WANT the test as hard as possible so the CFA ® designation (note the proper use) wont get diluted. So really the only solution is to pass this bastard and laugh at the sucker candidates for years to come. It’s only going to get harder. (Just ask anyone who took the test a mere 5-10 years ago. The breadth and depth of material has easy doubled since 2000.) End rant. Back to the books.
I enjoyed this rant to the fullest! Love this quote: “CFA tests the ethics section in an unethical manner.”
Favorite quote as well.
I can’t wait to tell all the LII test takers that LIII is the easiest of all three.
agree agree
haha… nice rant and an enjoyable read. I will say in CFAI’s defense, i have learned a ton more in the 3 levels of this program than i ever did in college. Never worked so hard for anything, hoping it gets rewarded with a pass, so i can say make it harder next year.