In my opinion CFA actual exam is much more difficult than the mock. I wonder, why do CFAI want to give mock that is easier than actual exam?
That’s just how it’s always been. I thought the real exam was harder but not by a large amount.
Oh, I didn’t have time to try the mock
it’s not the level of difficulty that differs, it’s the wrong direction they are point in the mock. the wordings are VERY DIFFERENT. and the way they ask questions diverges fundamentally.
>it’s not the level of difficulty that differs, it’s the wrong direction they are point in the mock. the wordings are VERY DIFFERENT. and the way they ask questions diverges fundamentally. Even I felt the same, mock question were straight forward i.e. not tricky, however actual questions were very tricky especially Economics.
with the dramatic difference between the real thing and the mock i don’t even know what benefit it is to us that they provide us with a mock exam… you can be deceived by your performance on the mock exam in comparison to the real thing.
This reflects very poorly on CFAI. In the actual mock or even in the past they were not using answer choices way off the actual no. I was so panicked in the first few straight forward calcualtions where I was not getting the answers that were on the list of options. I spent a hefty amount of time calculating easy calcuations time and again just to be sure, I have not made a mistake while number crunching. That took too much of time - which I could have used on tricky ones. Every year CFAI tries new things to puzzle test takers. It is Ok to some extent to test a candidates capability to link all thre relevant issues and discard the rest, but in pursuit of that CFAI sometimes really overshoots. It seems like you need to prepare with a special foucs how not to be misguided (rather cheated!) in the exam. Instead of measuring candidates’ knowledge the test is too concentrated on identifying the pitfalls.
mock is much easier than the real test. this is kinda misleading to me, i went to the test venue with confidence but came back home like looser.
I agree with all you guys on the “closest to the correct answer” BS… For all of those who got $99,626 and sat there for 10 mins trying to figure out if you were an idiot, you know what I mean.
^Fuck that question. So fucking ridiculous! Ya the mock has always been WAY easier than the actual test. Not in terms of actual material tested, but the mock has virtually no tricks in it. CFAI just went on a fucking spree with closest to the answer… not sure how that really tests my level of knowledge… just seems like it throws me off, which is what they wanted.
I don’t think the mock was significantly different in difficulty from the actual exam. There is mental pressure for the real thing and fatigue from having to wake up early and do 6 hours of testing in one day. I think the real thing had a couple extra “hard” questions and a couple extra “stupid, tricky, poorly rounded” ones…but it also had a couple more freebies as well. I guess I won’t know definitively until I get my results, but right now I’m feeling that the exam was tough but fair…exactly how I would have guessed it would be.
Very comparable. Everything that was in the Mocks was not in the final exam!
I was very confident going into the exam, I got 80s on q-bank and managed 5/6 on the EOC on average. The real exam confused me in terms of question wording and I felt like a total idiot quite a few times. This was a truly frustrating experience. I am not sure I will trust in any score on EOC, mock or qbank anymore to judge my study progress.
I really don’t know what u guys are talking about when u say u didn’t get answers that were close to the real thing. There were 2 answers that were off by a bit.
funkyanimal Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I agree with all you guys on the “closest to the > correct answer” BS… For all of those who got > 99,626 and sat there for 10 mins trying to figure \> out if you were an idiot, you know what I mean. LOL MAN you spoke my mind. 9"9"626...i mean WHAT THE @#% luckily it didnt take me long to figure out what was going on, i had confidence in my calculation
thought it was easier except the tricks that I knew were coming and the rounding crap
I think they were comparable to some extent. There was just more ‘fluff’ in the real thing which meant you had to dimiss information that was not pertinent to the questions.
whats irritating is that the answer was closest to the same answer the uninformed person would have gotten had they not discounted back 
so heres one question where you get extra credit for not knowing the material right in fact its the ones who studied well who would get more confused by such a question