Usually a combination of Portfolio Management: Individuals and/or Institutional. If I am not mistaken, getting these 3 questions correct would be the key to pass L3. However, the CFAI material kept using old material (ie Peter and Hilda profile…) to discuss the issue and seems to have a gap between the material and the actual exam. What would you guys suggest to do? Other than: - Doing past exams. - Practice and time the questions. - Understand Command (ie Define / Discuss / …) words. Any “solid” approach to tackle these 3 questions???
EEYY Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Usually a combination of Portfolio Management: > Individuals and/or Institutional. If I am not > mistaken, getting these 3 questions correct would > be the key to pass L3. > > However, the CFAI material kept using old material > (ie Peter and Hilda profile…) to discuss the > issue and seems to have a gap between the material > and the actual exam. > > What would you guys suggest to do? Other than: > > - Doing past exams. > - Practice and time the questions. > - Understand Command (ie Define / Discuss / …) > words. > > > Any “solid” approach to tackle these 3 > questions??? Reading the book helps out a great deal. There was not a really good idea of what exactly CFAi wanted for the questions based on past questions there was some ambiguity. I think you can get a lot wrong and still be on the right track and do well on the questions. Just remember Return/Risk/Liquidity/Time/Tax/Legal/Unique and you can fare well.
Peter and Hilda…they are like my friends now…
Paraguay - gotta disagree with you on RRTTLLU. I knew these cold, broke out my answers in this format and still scored less than 50% on each of these 3 questions. I truly believe the key to the essay section of the exam is luck. I read the CFAI curiculum and had all the behavioral finance terms memorized, but it was little to no help in taking the exam. The questions were so ambiguous to anyone who had a solid understanding of the material that ultimately our answers were guesses, and thus we were rewarded based on whether we guessed right or wrong, not whether we knew the material. Having crushed level 1 Dec 09 and level 2 June 2010, i walked out of level 3 thinking i was done with the program for sure. Absolutely shocked to have not passed, and horrified to see that it was entirely due to my essays. I’m deeply concerned about next year’s exam, as i don’t see any way to adequately prepare myself for the type of ambigous BS that was thrown at us this year.
Judge Smails, I think you hit it right on the nose. I am not a believer in coincidences, and there are too many takers this year who feel that something is wrong… On top of that, either the CFA needs to be more transparent about answering the essay questions, or they need to have an objective way of grading them, and not subjective. I knew behavioral finance down cold, and still I scored below 50 on that section. Luck and following directions should not be what this test is about, but it should be about the CBOK, which I feel many people who failed knew, and some who passed did not know.
focus on schweser book 6/7 and do absolutely everything from there.especially am exerises in the am exam just answer what is asked,only what is asked (i know it sounds weird-but read the damn question - 90% of the time all they need for an answer is 2 sentences)
Again, I feel similar. I was really surprised I didnt pass (Band 8 Fail). I didnt I have any issues with the difficulty of the material. I feel like I need to have somebody teach me the test rather than teach me the material…
For Individual questions, Stalla suggested to do: 1) 5 (or less) constraints first (save time for doing return objective). then 2) Risk objective (ability / willingness /overall) 3) Return objective (ie calculation). For Return objective, here is what I have been doing. 1) Setup the calculation format first. (Cash Inflows / Cash Outflows / Net cash Inflows or Outflows / Net Worth) 2) Time period ( ie the year before retirement and the first year of retirement) 3) Then I wil go back to each paragraph and pick the information by paragraph (ie tax rate / inflation rate / amount of inheritance) and filling in the calculation format that I setup in the very beginning. ( ie Salary / Tax / Mortgage / college education / donation / etc…) 4) Adjust the inflation rate at the end(if necessary). 5) Normally, the final return objective answer would be less than 10%. Good or Bad approach to deal with this type of question???
All of my answers were straightforward, and one or two sentences, no fluff. I don’t think I could have known any of the concepts better than I had. I also want to just remind people on here that those who did pass could have only passed by one or two questions. Do not think just because you have a pass on a test that can be partially based on luck you somehow have all of the answers on how to pass it. I find it quite interesting that there are more than a few candidates who failed with a high band last year but this year it dropped down.
+1 on the essay grading being a total mystery. I think the problem is that you have graders looking at literally thousands of essays at a clip and they are basically scanning for key words and trying to make a judgment as quickly as possible. +1 on the morning behavioral finance questions being super ambiguous and could have been answered about 6 different ways (and all valid, per the curriculum) I have failed this exam twice, low score bands, both driven by bad morning performance, and I am totally mystified about what these “essay responses” are supposed to achieve. Another thing to remember…the entire curve of grading for this test is between 50-75% raw score on the exam. so it is *very tight* on the borderline (maybe even 1 question would make the difference). It sucks but that is the nature of the beast. congrats to the passers - hope you all are taking some time to celebrate!
OMG ITS KEN LUCE. INTERNATIONAL CFA MODEL !
yea mr. ken is definitely the derrick zoolander of the cfa website…ha!
It would b gr8 to have someone who gunned the AM session point out a few tips.
The other post mentioned about “Creighton University CFA Boot Camp”. Is it good?? Any 2011 notes available??
everyone will have the same difficulties in the am session…focus your efforts to achieve a very high score in the pm part as this is almost always easier and if you do enough practice you should be able to do that…by fact you will score low in the am as will everyone else so dont think about it that much…just answer what you see based on the curriculum (focus on command words) and your target is 50-70 not to get full marks on them and one last thing,its true that it is a matter of 1-2 questions that determine a pass from a band 10 so read ethics 5 times from feb to may
Do the 16-week Schweser online course. I’m no genius by any stretch but Bruce did a great job on coaching you how to answer these PM questions. VERY VERY helpful, its stuff that you don’t get to read anywhere. I think thats the biggest thing that I took away from that course. I probably had few words in each point for the first 3 questions, thats it. If they asked what was the risk tolerance, I’d said average willingness, below avg ability. Thats it.
Do the 16-week Schweser online course. I’m no genius by any stretch but Bruce did a great job on coaching you how to answer these PM questions. VERY VERY helpful, its stuff that you don’t get to read anywhere. I think thats the biggest thing that I took away from that course. I probably had few words in each point for the first 3 questions, thats it. If they asked what was the risk tolerance, I’d said average willingness, below avg ability, therefore below avg. Thats it.
I also try to pickup key sentence from the paragraph. If someone is try to accumulate certain amount of money by end of a specific time period, this is most likely a bond calculation (ie getting FV / PV / PMT / n yrs) in order to calculate the I/Y for the return objective (before adjusting the inflation rate given in the question).
kenluce, Judge Smails, pandeter, mikecocos … I’m in the same boat. I failed L3 band 7. I was in complete shock. To qualify myself, I’m a pessimistic test taker. After exam day, I was convinced that I failed L1 and L2; in both cases I passed on my first attempt with relative ease - 13/20 sections >70 between the two tests and nothing below 50 on either L1 or 2. L1 represented 4 of the 7 sections that I didn’t score >70 on between the first two levels; I took L1 without a minute of sleep the night before. The 7 sections that I didn’t post scores of >70 were almost entirely the smaller sections (5% alternative assets variety). My background also includes a Masters degree in Finance where I earned a 4.0 GPA. I did better on the PM section than many of the people that passed L3, but I had *5* sections below 50 in the AM. I went into the level 3 exam feeling better prepared than I was at L1 or L2 and I left the exam thinking that I nailed both sections. Again, I was completely shocked by my results. I have no regrets with how I prepared for L3. If I studied 200 more hours for L3, my guess is that I would have ended up with a higher band fail, but a fail nonetheless. Whatever happened, it resulted in a systemic and epic collapse in the AM. I must have scored 0 points on some AM sections…why? Did I put my answers on the wrong pages? Were my answers too short? Was I unclear on command words? Did I not show enough work to earn partial credit? I’m rambling (venting really). What’s my point? I’m taking this thing again. I want to destroy it. I can solve a “content” problem. I can’t readily solve a problem with HOW I am pre-programmed to answer an essay question. I’m just anxious at the thought that I can’t learn may way out of my problem with the L3 morning section. I’m not going to knock CFAI at all; it’s their test, and I own my failure. I would say that the institute dedicates hundreds of pages to each study session and assigns a weighting to each of them. To me, the most heavily weighted aspect of the L3 AM section is the format itself. They should have a comprehensive guide on how to approach the AM section if the approach has a significant impact on your results. It’s hard to find clear and concise instructions on how they’re going to ask questions and then a sample of realistic exam day answers that would score points. Yes, they provide samples and mocks with explanations which are then prefaced by statements that they don’t represent realistic exam day answers. The templates and formats that they offer aren’t provided in their actual exam day format. The scoring key is a complete mystery. My approach for 2012 will be to start really early, complete CFAI EOC’s and blue-box questions, watch all Stalla videos, complete all Stalla homework, and re-read the 200+ pages of notes that I have…by January 1, 2012. The remaining 5 months will be dedicated to the old CFAI exams, CFAI mocks, CFAI samples; Schweser books 6/7; and mocks from BSAS, Schweser, and Stalla. Hopefully that does the trick…
TCW - good post. here’s to a better 2012! your plan to do 5 months of only review and practice exams seems a bit extreme…be careful not to burn out. i think the optimal study for someone who is already familiar with the curriculum is shorter. there is definitely a point of declining returns to study assuming you get all the concepts and can apply them. just my two cents.