I am taking level II first time. i passed level I on my third attempt. I am getting scared! Am now panicking!I need everyone on here to help me where you can and may God help me where you can’t.
hey Audrey, Don’t panic! we are all on the same boat, just think of the fact that on 06/06, at 5:00 pm (Paris Time), all that stuff will be over and we’ll restart live once agin 
M.
Guys thanks for all your inputs, your tips and advice are truly valuable. I hope all you guys will win this one tough battle and move on to kill Level III. Right now, I’m revising my study plan a bit, re-review some of the “not well known” topics, and be as consistent in all the major areas as possible.
and what are these “not well known” topics again?
just some small topics that i personally view is not that important. apparently, you need to be consistent on all major topics rather than focusing on a few…
everybody is telling tht real estate problem last year was toughest …but y it was tough ? bcoz you didnt study well that topic or questions were really tough was real estate sum last year was covered in schweser ?
rf040234 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > just some small topics that i personally view is > not that important. apparently, you need to be > consistent on all major topics rather than > focusing on a few… so what are these topics again so i can corroborate with my notes?
for me, the topics are economics, time series (since they were not that heavily tested last year), various risks for different tranches, different types of CDOs, and definitely derivatives (in much greater detail review)…
A former teacher once taught me, there is nothing to fear, but fear itself. If the details are what CFAI like to test us on, learn those details. Also, don’t let what CFAI threw at us last year to intimidate us. There is not much you can do with what CFAI would throw at us this year. (Who knows, it could be real estate again this year.) This applies to both new comers and repeaters, so everyone is more or less equal. What us retakers have learned from our previous attempt is how to better align our study strategy based on our experience with the real deal. And the new comers already know what we learned: be comprehensive, attentive to details, don’t wing in and be ready for surprises. Aside from that, there is little point to expect the retakers could retain study materials from more than one year ago. (The CFAI curriculum are made to be forgotten and one month is already too long.) What this means is, we all have the same amount of studying time with the same amount of materials in front of us.
>"(The CFAI curriculum are made to be forgotten and one month is already too long.) " sad but very true
chiank123 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > everybody is telling tht real estate problem last > year was toughest …but y it was tough ? bcoz you > didnt study well that topic or questions were > really tough > > was real estate sum last year was covered in > schweser ? because there were only 4 pages in schweser on that and they asked the full item set on that. This schweser has covered in depth on that section but this year something like that will be there
I have this strong belief that CFAI has also read all the popular 3rd party education packages on the CFA curriculum (Schweser, Stallar, BSAS) before coming up with the exam. This way they could prevent the exam being overly biased towards one particular package. Back in 2007, there was Treynor Black vignette. In 2008, we had real estate instead. If history is a good indicator of the future, do expect a full vignette this year from an area that isn’t well covered or easily overlooked. Which one? Your guess is as good as mine.
for those concerned about “curveballs”- econ- 2 BOP q’s when it was barely covered PM- whole set on min variance frontier when it was barely covered alts- whole set on real estate which wasn’t covered a ton so let’s say that’s 14 q’s. the test is 120. i’d maybe bump that up by 2-6 more q’s because the whole ethics ROS set was grey as can be and hard and i usually crush ethics. so let’s say 20q’s are “curveballs”. that’s about 16.67% of the test. is that enough to sink someone? yes. but is it enough to sink you if you can make some intelligent guesses and make up for it in other places? no. we’ll get some curveballs. no doubt. i think it’s probably around 15% or so of the test by design… trying to really separate those who put in silly extra hours and those who didn’t. you can still pass if you bomb the curveballs if you know your other stuff so don’t freak out. but if you by chance studied your $ss off and you nail this 15% of the test, you probably will have a nice bit of breathing room and will comfortably pass. that said, i’m going to take a practice test. see everyone in 3 hrs.
Would you say that the CFA mock is similar to the real thing - I mean in difficulty-wise, not topic wise? I have only taken the AM mock so far, but at least the wording is pretty straight forward…I really hate Schweser’s wording in the exams…
I would say the CFA mocks are similar in style of the actual questions on the exam. (Schweser’s mocks are too wordy over time. CFAI’s questions are usually more concise.) It’s hard to make a comparison on the difficulty because one must compare apples to apples. So if the CFA mocks do not cover real estate and a whole real estate vignette shows up on the exam. Can the CFA mocks tell us if the real estate vignette is easy or hard?
good discussion indeed. im taking the CFAI mock AM and its certainly better laid-out than schweser’s samples. i’m making silly mistakes though, such as using NOPAT in residual income instead of Net Income.
just took CFAI morning session…passed but bombed ethics and quant…
Alright guys, I have been really focusing on CFAI questions. I’ve noticed the calculations are not that in-depth - they are more looking for if you remember the formula. Take for example residual income end of chapter vignette questions, you need to know the residual income one stage model but the questions are very straight forward. Did you guys feel this way about the exam? Real estate equations in themselves are not difficult, I am assuming it wasn’t the calcs that were tough?
The CFAI questions (most of them I believe) aren’t meant to test you on the calculation, but rather on your concepts. So if you know the concepts, you know what equation to use. I believe Stalla already released some statistics that only about 40% of the exam is calculation oriented. That leaves us with 60% which are qualitative (and hence the concept parts).
Ths can be little off topic but i would love to know from level2 retakers about the final score… i mean every one is talking about 4/6 (66.67%). 4/6 is definitely < 70% so i want to know has any one managed to pass level 2 with score of 50% to 70% in all the 10 sections?