yeah don’t burn out. I plan on taking one (maybe two) more mocks up to wednesday. then just light reading and soe qbank from Schweser, formula/concept review. If we are getting 70% or above across the board chances are its a good sign we understand a lot of the material…not much more you can do within a week anyway.
I took 4 exams (3 Schweser and the CFAI Mock)…I don’t believe I ever did better than a 73% (FRA killed me).
Passed with plenty of room to spare on the actual exam (based on others who passed and posted their scores on this website). I also was 70+ on FRA for the actual exam.
Remember…a decent percentage of people who take the exam spent a quarter of the time you did preparing. These folks pull down the MPS (minimum passing score).
So…stay optimistic and you should be fine!
My best tip: Start with a subject in which you are comfortable. The first question I looked at for Level I was probably the easiest of the 240! After the first topic I had plenty of confidence to take on the rest of the exam.
Nice to hear that about the FRA. I have scored a 73% on the CFAI mock and a 78% on a 7city mock. My worst by far is FRA, mostly scoring low 60s in that section.
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70-75% is a great range to be in, and if you are getting that consistently, the exam should not be a problem.
I barely scored over 70 on the CFA mock. My average among the Schweiser mocks were in the low 70s… I don’t think I ever scored higher than 75. My overall scores tend to be very consistent but scores in the individual sections are diverse. Strange…
I’m averaging over 80 on Quant, Fixed Income, Portfolio Management, Equities
About 65 - 75 on Econ, Derivatives, Alt, Corporate Finance
I’ve never broken 70 on FRA and am lucky to break 60.
Ethics is very volatile… sometimes 50-60, other times 80+.
Is everyone going to take practice exams this next week or are some people going to dive into the curriculum questions again?
Sometimes I feel that I have Schweser’s pulse–consistently scoring in low to mid 70%'s–but then I did the mock exam and scored in the high 60%'s.
Does anyone else feel that Schweser uses easier wording when constructing the practice problems via the CFAI mock and/or curriculum?
at this point… try to master the things you KNOW are going to be on the exam… all of these should be freebie points
- memorize code of ethics
- GIPS
- coversion between yields
- FX rates
- FIFO/LIFO
- EPS calc
- DDM 2 period
- PE ratio
- dupont
- vol putable/callable bonds
- portfolio deviation
- duration/convexity
- BP$V
when it comes down to the questions you dont know… guessing is going to have a 33% EV …your performance will be peaking on exam day… you will not make stupid mistakes 
I agree. I definitely feel that sometimes in the CFAI mock they try to trick you more then they do in the schewser. They’ll put one additonal wrinkle that really challenges your knowledge of the concept. And schewser also tends to focus on more key areas, vs the CFAI will have a question on some random stuff everyonce in a while.
I agree with what other ppl have said though, if you are in the 70s in schewser you will probably do fine.
I like this advice.
Also, completely agree on the extra wrinkle in the CFAI mocks. The ethics and FRA were significantly harder for me on the CFAI mocks than on the Schweser ones.
I finished my finals a week ago and have been pounding the CFA material ever since. I just take a practice test, see what I scored worst on and then study that like hell and take another test. I also ranked the sections in terms of their weights and study them like that(Fin rep #1, ethics #2, quant & fixed income #3) . I got 21/24 on the Fin rep on the last practice exam I took(definitely guessed on a couple)
a week ago I was getting 62% on halves of the tests, today I got 79%. I haven’t even bothered reading portfolio mgmt, just stick with the heaviest material.
if you are getting 70% plus on schweser or CFAI you are going to pass for sure, this coming for some one who is taking L2, just make sure you pass ethics…and word of advice if you pass start studying for level 2 in oct…
if you are getting 70% plus on schweser or CFAI you are going to pass for sure, this coming for some one who is taking L2, just make sure you pass ethics…and word of advice if you pass start studying for level 2 in oct…
I highly suspect CFAI looked at the Schweiser notes and created questions that are not similar in style as Schweiser’s (but still test the same material.)
79% a very good score. I’d still go over PM once if I had the time if I were you. Every point matters.