Getting >70% on mock/pratice exams?

83 on the first CFAI sample exam

80.5% on the second CFAI sample exam

85 on AM official mock

80% on pm

I’m getting 77-90% on each session of the first 3 schweser mocks. sounds like I need to do the official mock ASAP though.

i have done the same. i failed last year barely. it stunk.good luck. the quant stuff that they put on there is tricky, not hard.

i have done the same. i failed last year barely. it stunk.good luck. the quant stuff that they put on there is tricky, not hard.

i have done the same. i failed last year barely. it stunk.good luck. the quant stuff that they put on there is tricky, not hard.

roughly 63% to 70%

To all you guys getting >70% on mocks consistently…HOW have you been doing that…I am yet to score above 70% on a single mock (current avg ~ 65%)…I am done with the theory…eoc…approx 30% of qbank…4 mock exams…one round of review…but the score just doesnt cross the magical 70!! What is it that youre doing differently…!!

I’ve taken two, got 68% on first and 78% on second. I spend lots of time reviewing all areas and even more time reviewing my weak areas before taking another exam. Usually spend 2 weeks between each mock, will be doing another mock this weekend and hoping for 80%

Haha… “Magical 70”… That’s why I started this thread by saying 70% in the title. MOST people canNOT get above 70% consistently. Those who claim they get over 70% are among the minority FOR SURE. Those who get 50% on all the practice exams will most likely keep quiet here. So don’t panic! Many people come out of the actual exams and report that they are much easier than most of the mocks they did in their preparation. Keep it up. Good luck!

@Dhruv My case is indentical to yours…i am consistently scoring between 39-42 of 60. Once i managed to breach 70% ( only got 43…haha…). I have really no clue how to push it to above 46 atleast to have some breathing space for the D-day

In level 2 it is difficult to average above 80% for mocks. I was just below 70% on my mocks and got throug first time. L2 you can’t improve just doing more tests. Exert ssome time to comprehend the material. Then only you can imrove score. Hope this helps. All the best!

I did all the stuff twice: Schweser Practice Exams 1 & 2, CFAI Mock, Schweser EOC, CFAI EOC …

Mocks 2009-2012 scores on average with no significant deviations - 75%.

Now time to deep review on FRA and Equity. Do you recommend doing CFAI Blue Boxes or CFAI EOCs again ?

In the order in which I took them I scored

CFAI 2010 Mock 76

Schweser Mock 1 80

Schweser Mock 2 84

CFAI 2012 Mock 76

As you can probably guess, I was feeling great after my 3rd mock, high scores and steady improvement. The CFAI mock woke me up. I know it’s still a passing score but I wish I had a bigger margin for error. I know I missed several question that are just small memorization things, so hopefully I can get that up a bit. CFAI mock was definitely harder than Schweser, but hopefully the real thing is easier as it was last year.

studyn, are you retaking level 2? If so, how were you scoring on mocks last year?

b_sea93

I am taking level 2 for the first time. Last year I thought level 1 was definitely easier than the mock, and from reading posts on here from people who passed level 2, it seems most people think that for level 2 as well. At this point I think my sample size of 480 questions is hopefully big enough that I can be confident I wont do worse than my wost mock so far.

I’ve only done 1.5 exams. I did the Schweser book 1, exam 1 AM and PM, and the AM portion of exam 2. I scored 82%, 85%, and 88% respectively.

I spent 600+ hours studying; That’s pretty much the magic bullet. It comes out to 25 hours a week, for 24 weeks or 5.5 months. I have my process, but it’s probably very specific to my learning style.

I actually feel very derpy during the practice exams. A lot of times I feel like I’m not really sure because my recollection is hazy, and I’m surprised at how many I get correct. I tend to focus a lot on what I find challenging and what I don’t know. I don’t spend much time reflecting on things that I do know.

I keep track of where I’m at, time wise, on a question set by question set basis. So for the first set, I have 18 minutes. I should finish the 2nd set by 36 mins in, 3rd set by 54 mins in, 4th set 1:12, etc. If I need to catch up on time, I’ll skip some questions that I think will take a long time to do, or that I’m really confused on. If I’m ahead on time, I’ll splurge time on questions that I find confusing, or that will likely take me a lot of time (by a lot I mean 5-10 min). I read through question by question, and hunt for the information to solve that question specifically.

For people scoring consistently high, AND timing yourselves:

  1. Do you skip tough questions and come back to them at the end? i.e., will you least a set of 6 questions incomplete?

  2. Do you find yourselves hitting near 2.5+ hours to complete the mock exam?

Personally, it takes me about 2 hours to complete a mock exam, and I do not leave a problem set without answering all questions. Then, even though I’ve identified tougher questions on my answer sheet while taking the mock exam, I don’t come back to the those questions with the time I have left (something I will definitely do during the actual exam). Result: I’m consistently scoring 65~73%.

Do you find that you are picking up extra points by spending extra time and coming back to certain questions? Or do you just either “know it” or “move on”? At level 1, during practice exams and the actual exam, I didn’t have to come back to questions at all, and I felt confident about the entire exam, and I consistently scored very well.

I’ve been needing just about the entire time for the mocks, but I also read the entire vignette first and don’t skip questions. If there is one that I am really unsure about and think I might be able to get if I had more time, I put “?” next to it, and come back to those at the end if I have time. I only needed 1.5 hours per half on the actual level 1, so I’m a bit worried that its taking me taking me so much longer now, but 76-84 on 4 mocks, hopefully I’ll be OK.

I’m consistently hitting right around 60% on my mocks, just did a bit lower on the CFAI 2011 Mock, but I’m happy that it wasn’t *too* far below what I’ve been doing on the Schweser mocks. I still have 3 Schweser and 1 CFAI mock to work through.

I’m going to focus on beefing up my strong areas and re-working the types of problems and formulas that I keep seeing pop up and realizing the stupid mistakes I’m making. My biggest issue right now is that I am blazing through the test. I’m running about 3 hours to do the whole mock, so I need to beef up my formula memorization since I know I have the time to actually work the problems.

At this point, I think that the deciding factor of whether or not I pass is going to be more about the composition of the test and not about my preparation. If the test heavily weights deriviatives, PM, and/or quant, I’m likely screwed regardless how much I study those topics. I’m getting at or below 1/3 of those questions right at this point, so I’m going to leave studying those to overall concepts. If the test heavily weights equity, CF, FI, and FRA, I will be one happy person. I know the formulas, I know the logic behind them, etc.

Krazy, completely in your boat. I’m taking a 4th mock today and my scores have been all over the place. My destiny will rely on which topics they overweight and specific material tested within some of the topics. What a crazy game of chance