So I just finished the 1st 120 mock exam from CFAI and scored 78%. I was generally happy with the score till I saw how I scored on the sections. I scored pretty solidly on FSA, Ethics & Quant…mid to high 80’s. I passed all but two levels, one of them being derivatives…where I scored a 68%, which I know is not my strong suit anyways. However, what I am concerned about most is Econ. I scored a horrendous 33.33% on Econ. It is even more troubling that I was an econ minor in college. Granted, that doesn’t really say much but on my schweser q-bank questions I have been scoring decently on econ. I know the econ questions were not very easy on this CFAI exam, however a 33.33% is just troubling and I don’t even know what to make of it… I need to advice, is it worth going all over econ again at this point in time? I know econ is not a big portion of the exam…I think like 8 to 10% but still could make a difference… any advice would be appreciated…
Of course, a 78% is really good and econ has some easy points you didn’t get. That’s what the exam is for! Suspect that you were overconfident about econ because of your undergraduate minor.
Focus on the other areas…last year I got 70%+ on all but two areas (my worst was ECON where I scored under 50%…and I still passed pretty easily… One thing that I recall on the econ part is that there were a lot of 2 part questions…so prepare yourself for some 50-50 guessing opportunities…last year there were only 12 questions on it and a lot of the material was moved to Level 2.
do we really have to get 70% correct out of 240 problems? I heard all we need to do is to get 70% correct out of the highest score of that year. Few people would score 240, I guess. So imgaine the top score is 230, 70% of 230 is 161,which is 67% of 240 So your 78% is more than enough to pass the real exam.
No one knows how the exam is scored. CFAI Admins maintain the tutorial to the computer scoring macro was lost during Y2K.
70% is considered comfortably passing in most cases. i think the actual cut-off is somewhere in the mid 60’s no one has ever had a perfect score at any level…
I’m feeling you BlueCollarHero…I have a minor in Econ and I basically had to review everything to refresh my mind, and still I am not confident and forgetting things… Plus, is anyone else feeling like they guessed on half the questions after taking a sample exam? I am doing decently, but this feeling is bothering me and not helping my confidence…
I agree with you hoos, it seems like the econ questions on CFAI Mock Exam 1, were nowhere close to the stuff Schweser focused on… JDV, I completely agree with you that I was probably a bit over confident on the econ section, however 33.33% is just crazy, maybe I was fatigued…but econ section is after 40’s and what not…troubling…
Feel the same - I’ve got an Economics degree too and finding it a bit tricky. I’ve found that it helps to forget most of what was learnt at Uni (as that was a lot more in depth) and just try to focus on the basics that the CFA expect (Elasticity, AS/AD, Perfect comp, monoploy etc.)
Yeah, I agree with wood1000. I think I may sometimes overanalyze the questions…if that is possible, and just confuse myself even more. Keeping it simple and using only what they give you is the best way to approach it.
I got a 75% on the 2nd mock econ part…thought i BOMBED it, went through the questions quickly b/c I was so frustrated. Seems like first intuition is the best answer for econ.