Well that’s “my” personal suggestion, and I admit everybody has their own preference. If you feel good starting in Feb then go for it, but what do you want to say to those who did the same but failed? People who seek for advice here will judge what is the most suitable way and we are just giving our experience.
dont leave any blank in am and use bullet points
nothing “blank” but I wrote a few hail marys… probably ~25 pts worth. I must have had partial credit on at least some of them based on the matrix.
TakeiFinale wrote:
Nothing left blank.
AM: 2 in 51%-70% and 8 > 70%
PM: 1 in 51%-70% and 8>70%
My suggestion is to study directly from CFAI books and start early. I started last September.
Honestly pple, this is terrible advice. You do not need to start 8 months in advance for the level 3. If you do you’re just going to forget everything anyhow.
I started studying in the middle of february and passed just fine working a full-time job. Guys on this forum like to studybrag, which is really a silly phenomenon when you think about it.
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Totally agree that I think last 7 days at home save my butt, I barely studied 100 hours before it within 3 months.
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I left two 3 point sub-sections blank, so 6 points total. Finished 1 / 2 / 7 in the AM section.
hopefully this helps to calm the nerves of those that’ll be doing the exam in 2018 or later. I realized that I was running out of time by question 8, so I left most of question 8 blank, left a subsection in Question 9 blank and left question 10 completely blank. Those questions were worth a total of 20, 21 and 17 points. I was kicking myself when I saw how easy the first 2 subsections of question 10 were. Left easy points on the table.
my results for these last 3 questions were <50, 51-70, <50. So definitely not good. What saved me was probably the afternoon session. I knew I bombed the morning session so I had to refocus quickly for the afternoon session. Luckily, I did well enough to scrape by and ended up with a pass.
I definitely didn’t manage time very well. This is my first time writing level 3. The problem was that I did not practice writing out the answers to the essay questions when I was studying. I printed out the essay questions and formulated the answers in my head, then compared it with the answers provided by CFA. I just didn’t have the time to actually sit down and write out the answers and time myself. My wife gave birth to twins 4 weeks before the exam, so I had to take care of the babies and I didn’t have time to practice writing or do mocks. In fact, I only did 1 of the mock exam for the item set and that was the night before the exam. I am definitely lucky to have passed.
My advice is to practice writing out your essay answers and time yourself. Also, I think it helps to watch videos (I watched the Schweser video) on how to answer essay questions so that you know how to structure your answers. They explain what components are needed to get all of the marks, so I definitely try to model my answers to maximize marks. Finally, don’t panic if you feel you didn’t ace the morning session. There’s always the afternoon session so don’t dwell on the exam that you already did, but refocus on the exam coming up in the afternoon. Best of luck to all.
5 points left blank for the CFAI to keep. One sub section I just completely blanked on while the other was due to time being called as I put my pen to paper to answer it.
I left 2 subsections with 15 points. Passed
Nothing blank, except one part of Q1, for maybe 4 points.
O left blank but did a lot of mess. Fortunately for me, I nailed PM session.
Nothing left blank,but 4 topics below 50 (probably Close to 50%)
Aced the PM
Nothing.
Finished 15 min early with 5 unanswered question parts. Went back and solved 3 quickly. The last 2 were in Econ, and I didn’t know how to do it. I consciously skipped studying that thing. Wrote … something, but below 50% on AM Econ. Lost the battle, won the war.
1 sub question worth 3 marks. Finished 3/2/5 in the AM, not my best performance but I am happy to revisit my weaknesses on my own time and terms, all that matters now is the relief of that pass result *phew*
Left 1 whole set in AM. Plus 2 or so sub sections. But still did not do to we’ll with the ones I did attempt. 7 was below 50%. 3 was above 70. None in middle.
It’s the PM that saved me. 7 above 70. 1 in 5p-70. 1 below 50.
0 blanks but two sub-sections could not arrive at the answer. 1 sub-section I answered wrongly. For PM, I had 4 wrong answers and besides the questionable ethics, thought I had 90% spot-on (allowing for 10% in errors).
Managed to clear all the Qs in the AM portion - thanksfully I passed this year (failed Band 9 last year)
No blanks. BS’d a couple but tried to at least put something down. Finished with 10-15 minutes left.
Nothing
Hope this’ll help future level 3ers because I tried to look for a thread like this after the exam but found none…
Due to poor time management, I left about 3.5 questions blank, which equated to ~25points. However, I probably compensated for that through focusing more on the other questions and thus earning me more points. Had 4 below 50% and 6 above 70% in AM section. For PM, i had 2 below 50%, 3 51-70%, and 4 above 70%.