I am feeling pretty OK with all the main subjects except FRA., which is a bit of a nightmare for me. I am really really struggling.
I do not think that I will be able to achieve a great score on this subject. So, I am targeting roughly 60-62% for this section and doing better on the other topics. I will dedicate the two days of this WK to review FRA. I have heard that the topic tests on FRA are ridiculously difficult. Instead of doing the FRA Topic Tests (which I usually do and found very useful, despite explanations that are average), I was thinking doing all the FRA questions from the 6 Schweser Mock Exams in order to learn a few patterns (there are maybe more straightforward and easy) by carefully reading the explanations (which are really well done). What do you think of that (taken also into account, that compared to 2016, the same weight is dedicated to FRA, but some topics were removed i.e. Inventory/Capitalizing, and as a consequence there is a high probability that Intercorporate investments, Pension, Multinational Operations will be tested)?
In my opinion the FRA topic tests get an unjust bad reputation. There are definitely a few outliers such as Erikksen, but there is also many very valuable item sets there that greatly improve your understanding of the mechanics involved in FRA accounting questions. Especially with Intercorporate investments and pensions.
My advice would be to continue to work through them, if time permits.
Crunching through all the topic tests has greatly helped me in connecting dots between subjects.
I agree with rexthedog. Adding to what has been said above, I found Aeolus particularly useful (and annoying as well). It made me realize i had been far too complacent about the last chapter in the FRA reading.
And I’m afraid they are nowhere from the exam, since I was better on TTs than on the mock. The pure fact that you see the vinette on the left side and the questions on the right.
When I have a case study running in 3 pages I’m already lost, so probably even better to print out the TTs and do on paper.
Moosey, if i may ask you an unrelated question - how was PM on the CFAI mock? I am planning to take it this Sat. Were questions in line with schweser mocks/TTs or were they completely different (and tougher?)?
In my opinion mock was tougher, but I’m kind of alone with this belief here on AF.
I would say questions were much more qualitative than either Schweser mocks or most of the TTs, and there was so much text in such a high level of English that I could hardly peel it down to the core and find the relevant info.
Plus as I mentioned above I probably became too used to do tests and read material (and write my notes) on the screen so the flipping of pages forward and backward already confused me.
I had 59% score on the mock, and by reviewing it I say I could not have done too much better even if I had been more focused (which I wasn’t).
@moosey . Regarding the Schweser 6mocks don’t you feel there r a bit messed up? In TT when you are doing question it will always ask u to refer to exhibit 1 or 2 for your answer . But that doesn’t happen in Schweser.
yes, plus Schweser Volume 2 is much more difficult than Vol. 1. Some of the questions are extremely detailed and keep catching me off-guard…I have the feeling that the 6 Schweser mocks will nicely complement the topic tests though, so I am hopeful for the exam (despite not getting 70s in anz of my Mocks, I am more like hovering over high 50s/low 60s at the moment, 2 Schweser mocks to go…