Here is my 2 cents from Madrid. In my opinion GARP has gone mad and I have a very strong feeling that it is not long time left until we will see level 3 added to FRM certification programme. It’s now all about cash coming in and fighting market share taken historically by CFA folks. Having taken CFA L1 just about over 5 months ago I can conclude that what I have had today was just a pure resemblance of GARP assigned readings: no structure, no order, no logic, – just a bunch “cut and paste” questions. Some questions in my opinion were above medium level in terms of time required for solving them. Almost over 4 of them used exactly the same problem type with numbers which were different. Basically all you needed to do was to write a formula once and then plug numbers 4 times. Ethics questions were very poorly designed (I am saying this because I did hundreds of those for my CFA L1). Overall, I am very disappointed with what GARP calls Level 1. IF they want to be different from CFA and have a good reputation then they need to change a strategy. For example: 2 hours + 2 hours exam with break in between and 40 QUALITY (well thought and designed) questions in each session. To succeed in current exam student don’t have to “think” all he has to do is to practice 1000+ questions for patterns and master his calculator technique. I give GARP for Level 1 November 20, 2010 exam – 3 out 10 mark.
I totally agree, I am very disspointed myself. Few questions were so lenghty, they were just numbers substituation but very very lenghty so I just left them hald way through. Also what was that nonsense about 2 answer sheets and carbon copy and not being able to erase answers, I found that soo riduculous, why in the word do you need a copy of the answer sheet? The protractor in my room was an idiot, came late, distributed the question papers just on time, so I never read that instruction about not erasing the answers, by the time I did, i have already made few changes to my answers!!! Damn damn damn!! Nonsense!! And I wrote my exam in dubai!! Such poor standards!
I am with you guys. I took the exam in the US (Massachusetts). About a quarter of the registered people didn’t show up for the exam. Too bad for us. Carbon copies and not being able to erase them??? The exam cost me $650!!! I prepared for 4 months using the GARP readings and Bionic Turtle. I enjoyed some of the GARP readings, but when I took the exam it seemed as I was taking a practice test. The very few Ethics questions on the exam seem to contradict the Ethical focus of GARP. The CFA has 5% of its questions assigned for Ethics and the ethics cases are very well elaborated. There were at least a couple of dozen questions that would have taken more than 10 minutes to answer given the number of formulas and calculations required. I hope level II is more challenging.
I agree with the comments posted over here. Both the FRM course material and the exam is highly disorganized. GARP should have questions which are geared towards thinking and not just calculating!
The exam was extremely long. There seemed to be no middle ground…either you knew how to calculate the answer or you made an educated guess. No revision whatsoever. On the bright side, the tone in Montreal seemed negative after the exam (like the forum). I highly doubt that necessary passing grade will be anywhere near 70%. I’d say more along the lines of 60%. I mean realistically speaking, they cant just drop from a 50%ish passing rate to 30%. It is a business after all. Wouldn’t you guys agree?
johnanthony_69 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 60%. I mean realistically speaking, they cant just > drop from a 50%ish passing rate to 30%. It is a > business after all. Wouldn’t you guys agree? You are right “It is a business after all”. Statistically, out of 10 000 people who took the exam if they were to lower (i.e. from 50%) the pass rate (i.e. CFA like level) to 35% (poor results would be a fair ground for that) then they would get around 1500 who would potentially consider giving it another try. Which means around 400 000 USD being made just by poorly designing exam paper and not setting clearly exam standards. Not a bad business model?
Agree with all of you. (1) I don’t understand why they need a carbon copy. Can’t they just make a photocopy after collecting the answer sheets? If we have to write the answer after making a change, why not just write all answers? Do they expect to grade the changed answers by hand? I really doubt about the quality of grading. (2) Why do they keep testing candidates how to do many-decimal-place calculations? Some questions require plugging(and plugging again) in equations with extremely small parameters and you won’t get the answer if you miss any decimal place because values small as such are very sensitive. But do these questions really test how good a candidate understand the content? (3) I feel really doubted about the quality of the design of questions. The questions have not given sufficient information unless you assume it. I hope you know what I mean. When I took the CFA, the exam is more organized and better managed. For exam questions I do not know, I can still feel that : If had spent more time, I would have got it. One reason is that they have a well designed syllabus and books for revisions. And for this exam, I feel like being cheated.
bcdddd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Agree with all of you. > > (1) I don’t understand why they need a carbon > copy. Can’t they just make a photocopy after > collecting the answer sheets? If we have to write > the answer after making a change, why not just > write all answers? Do they expect to grade the > changed answers by hand? I really doubt about the > quality of grading. > > (2) Why do they keep testing candidates how to do > many-decimal-place calculations? Some questions > require plugging(and plugging again) in equations > with extremely small parameters and you won’t get > the answer if you miss any decimal place because > values small as such are very sensitive. But do > these questions really test how good a candidate > understand the content? > > (3) I feel really doubted about the quality of the > design of questions. The questions have not given > sufficient information unless you assume it. I > hope you know what I mean. > > > When I took the CFA, the exam is more organized > and better managed. For exam questions I do not > know, I can still feel that : If had spent more > time, I would have got it. One reason is that they > have a well designed syllabus and books for > revisions. > > And for this exam, I feel like being cheated. I really disagree that older combined exam was better, and I don’t agree you should able to reason out the answer while not knowing anything about it. I did the sample on CD came with handbook, which is combined, I scored 80% or so without study for lv 2 at all, I don’t think this is what we want, if we want the FRM title to mean something, and that’s why we are taking the exam right? While I disagree with most of what being said in this thread, although I do think you have some point. For point 1, carbon copy or not, does it affect you, the test taker in any way? I don’t even notice it’s there for most part. Point 2, while I agree it should not be part of exam, knowing how to use sto and rcl on my BA II helped a lot and it did not give me any trouble. I agree with last point though, we shouldn’t need to assume anything, questions needs to be more clear. My biggest problem being some question take too many steps, such as the question ask to use a two step binomial, calculating u, d, p then make the tree and discount back, that’s well over 10 steps for a question should take no more than 2.5 min MAX.
Hi SSKK, Ofcourse the point 1 affects us!! C’mon, why wud we b cribbing abt it if it hadnt!! The fact that you can not erase ur answers once you have written ur aplhabet in the last column is ridiculous! it’s totally lame!! ( I even explained why I nevr saw that instruction abt not being able to erase my answers and am probably flunking the exam cos of it!) Stupid protractors n stupid exam!
One thing to add: the way some questions were formulated were a problem for me due to the language used. I am not a native english speaker and they tend to use strange words which do make a big difference in the question. Are there more non-English / non-American people coming across the same issue? (i had no trouble though with the CAIA and the CFA exams with language used)
For me the exam was lengthy, complex and full of guess work. I have my doubts about clearing this one. If I flunk, I dont think I will attempt it again, will try my hand at CFA instead. If this is the feeling of even half of the public attempting this exam, then GARP is doing no good in having such a reputation of the exams. The number of candidates taking a dig at this will soon be dwindling to record lows.
zuricher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > For me the exam was lengthy, complex and full of > guess work. > I have my doubts about clearing this one. If I > flunk, I dont think I will attempt it again, will > try my hand at CFA instead. > If this is the feeling of even half of the public > attempting this exam, then GARP is doing no good > in having such a reputation of the exams. The > number of candidates taking a dig at this will > soon be dwindling to record lows. As soon as we get our “pass” email everything will be forgotten and we will speak highly again of FRM and GARP. I guess its mostly frustration because it was a long period of studying and stress and we need to wait 4 more weeks before the results come in.
I feel so frustrated. When I saw the paper I thought, I could solve at least 80 questions confidently, but to my dismay, I could not even get to so many questions I could have solved. Some of the questions were really really calculation intensive. I could manage to solve 70 and of course I did not get all them right. I guessed the rest. I am hoping to get a score of around 60 which is a fail. I have CFA level 2 next June. So will have to wait till next Nov for the retake. 
Hi Alcfa, 60 is sure pass for such an exam, unless they want to fail 85% of the candidates. I knew many questions but I gave up because they were too calculation intensive - it is not worth given that every question is equally weighted. Why would you consider taking such an exam again ? I am more with zuricher . If I fail, I will not do it again. Good luck!
I had to guess 5 questions since I had 2 minutes left. These were one of those questions that would have taken more than 10 minutes to answer any way. I thought the exam required lots of calculations and had very few questions covering theoretical concepts, which is fine by me. I believe these concepts will be covered on Level 2 (less quant, more qualitative?). Overall, I thought the exam was fair if you prepared appropriately. I think the pass grade is probably around low 60’s, which would be similar to the CFA level 1 and 2. We will find out how we all did in less than a month. Please ensure that all your inputs and concerns are reflected in the FRM Survey sent today. I think this is a good forum to ensure they correct some of the problems we encountered preparing (material cohesiveness and organization) and taking the exam (improve language, test organization, no more carbon copies etc). Good luck!
Anyone who took the 2011 May exam can advise if the exam was still structured in such a bad way as that of 2010 Nov exam ? I am very much interested in the FRM program, but to my dimay, the exam was said in this thread to be structured to focus on the meaningless calculations rather than concepts, the questions were not written in plain language, as well as some other unnecessary confusions !
I felt that the November 2010 FRM1 exam was competently written, but very challenging.
Anyone who took the 2011 May exam can respond my questions raised above ? Thanks !