How are you guys doing?

Wow now I am scared. I question how anyone passes this exam. There is so much stuff to go off. Even getting fairly high practice exam scores, I still feel like I will fail.

onelasttime Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > band 8. > > I thought I was prepared. > > As for background, I have an MBA (top 5) and have > been working in finance (Inv Mgmt) for last 8 > years. Okay. Maybe you were prejudiced with all your experience and education and answered the questions your way instead of the CFA way. I am sticking to my plan… I don’t have the time or the money for question banks.

I have CFA Sample #2, CFA Mock, 2 Stalla Practice Exams, Stalla Mock, BSAS Mock and CFA eoc’s from study sessions 15-18 to finish. Also need to go back and re-write Stalla essay questions from study sessions 15-18. Overall, I am feeling pretty good about my progress. I am in the industry, so a lot of this stuff is way easier to comprehend than accounting. Also, I took the week before the exam off. Certainly feels like I am going to be able to pass.

am a repeater too…i think onelasttime will agree with me that last year the killer is as always the am paper…people think that will get lost of partial credit but seriously guys we dont get it and it is so hard under time pressure,you just cant answer as you like under such a pressure i mean when you dont find the answer dont hope that if its 10 points and you did put lots of calcs and comments will get you 5-6 points cause it wont… two friends of mine that passed last year both told me that they answer spot on,and i mean exactly one answer applicable to the question. to give you an example and not to spook you lets say that the question says 'explain why a butterfly option strategy is not appropriate if someone expects a sharp movement" if you start by going what is a buttefly or a definition of the strategy or even a diagram it wont get you anything,and i mean anything (i did it last year believe me!!) you just have to very very briefly explain that “not appropriate cause a butterfly profits only if price stays close to the middle options shorted.” so many people believe that by starting an analysis or a discussion will get them “some points” they just have a way and disregard EVERYTHING which is not relevant…so imho just try to answer just a very brief comment that you think is the answer and do not write a whole paragraph this will just annoy the grader

that makes sense. short. concise. either you know it or you dont. however, if you dont know it, i imagine your chances to get partial credit are increased with a longer response? better than one short bullet point that completely misses the point and is automatic zero no? time permitting of course

Totally makes sense to me. Kind of pisses me off that the CFA texts write paragraph after paragraph for answers to eoc’s. In some rare cases you may gain a better understanding, but it is almost like they are teaching you bad habits.

im gonna nail this test then, I like short and concise

Also struggling with book 2 morning sections. So along the lines of Short and Concise, would most say that the “For the Exam” answer in Swheser is 99 percent of the time all you need? One, maybe two sentences in most cases? Time is killer on the essays

skip, well yes i think that if someone does not know the answer then a longer explanation might get you something IF you hit a key word or key phrase for the answer…however i wouldnt bet much on it but i will do it also in questions i dont know. and also this year am not going to stuck in a very difficult question…last year we all spent like 20 minutes staring at the first part of the question on fixed income AM paper and myself i didnt have time for the Implementation shortfall part which was very very easy. Virtually nobody and i mean nobody including my friends who passed got >50 on that and on the econ question. my point is when you see something very hard dont spend your time on it cause everyone will miss it including the guys who try to be smart and write something general for an answer,they wont get anything

montanidate is right on the mark in that “Time is killer on the essays.” This is gonna sound odd, but make darn sure you ANSWER the question asked (Time and Pressure have an uncanny way of steering you away from actually ANSWERING the question asked). I also agree that short and concise works well…keep the grader on your side as they read your answer–give 'em a reason to pass you!

Paraguay, results are far the best in US. Best in Asia (East Asia not Arabia) 2nd best in Europe we speak this crazy lingo, too, factors that influence grades: - General knowledge of math (good for China/Japan) - Time to prepare (Holidays in socialistic Europe are up to 6 weeks per year so you can take a month of before exam) Seriously, our latest intern (from China) did some 3 weeks in total only learning from CFAI books and said it wasn’t that hard (1st) … an ex-colleague from China said he didn’t like to learn for third so he made nearly all in the latest 3-4 weeks (and passed all with first try), even skipped ethics because he didn’t grasp the inherent logic :wink:

…far away from being best in US I wanted to say…

Malawyer: That’s really something. Do all Asians have these incredible superhuman alien brains? The rest of the world is doomed!

This is fear of unknown or availability bias. As I know ,lv3 pass rate in China is below 30% for they are not good at English writing. You can check each year pass rate in different regions to confirm it . I think Germany may have the highest pass rate , they are more diligent and good at English.We only need to try our best and need not worry about others.

I am a re-taker (failed last year by band 8) and English is not my native language. The biggest problems of AM exam for candidates who’s native language like me are following (at least for me). 1. The vignette is not written very systematically and it takes time to collect required information from the vignette, especially with some implied information which is not expressed explictly. 2. It takes time to write out some sentences to fully express my key points in answering to the question. 3. Above two issues will be more exacerbated under time pressure. I think if the exam is in my native language and I can answer in my native language, the probability of passing the exam “may be” higher for me. And this exam is more or less unfair to those whose native language is not English. Due to above reasons and due to the opportunity cost is very high to me, I am going to give up if I don’t pass this time.