Hey everyone - hope the past couple weeks have been helping you guys get ready for this monster.
Now that we only have a couple weeks left before the test, I wanted to see what everyone’s strategies are when it comes to revising their mock exams. I have been taking a bunch of practice exams so far (3 Schweser and the CFA Mock to date) and completed every CFAI EOC question and to be honest I haven’t seemed to retain as much as I thought I would.
My scores (if that matters) have generally fallen in the 55-65% range for these tests with a couple outliers which were a bit worse. There are certain topics that I know I need help in (Derivatives, Im looking at you) and others where I remember the overall topics (and going back over them) but seem to forget the important details I end up being asked.
What I have been doing when revising is actually reading through the material, making notes and reviewing those to help nail the concepts. Maybe I should start drilling questions about this immediately after doing this to help retain better?
Let me know if I am just being a jackass and am in the minority here - but this is pretty damn aggrevating. What have you guys been doing to help retain information better?
I feel like I am also in the exact position as you just described. I just finished my third schweser practice test and I am landing in the same score range as you.
I have been taking notes as I revise by mainly copying into a word document.
I am also going back over and doing the vignettes I really struggling with again after revising. Try to really cement into my mind the proper way to do them and the formulas involved.
Formulas in general have been getting me as well, so I am building out formula sheets as I go back through and trying to commit to memory. Slowly trying to reduce the size of these sheets as I memorize more of them.
I find the Qbank to have to many easy questions that just waste my time. I am only doing vignettes from here on out. Unless is is a very specific area of an LOS I want to really review. But still not spending to much time there.
I feel that I am in the exact same position as you. And with a full time job working 10+ hours every day, I don’t know how I will find the time to improve my scores.
Bad News: I took the exam last year, and was getting around 60 on the exams in the few days before i wrote. Seeing as i’m back again this year, that didn’t cut it! (Band 6).
Good News: My scores improved 10% from low 50’s to low 60’s in the last week or so.
Given that each percent >60 is not attained as easy as the incremental percents >50, you can adjust the rate of improvement down. With over 2 weeks left, you can definitely significantly improve and get up to 70%.
For revision, i thnk it depends on whether you are writing the AM & PM Consecutively. If i really bomb a section , i’ll review the readings, make notes, and go through a few EOC related to it. If they were simple mistakes i just make a note of it, and don’t loose too much sleep.
I’m also stuck between 60-65 on Schweser mocks at this point…but am confident that if i improve a few key areas , and focus at the current pace i’m going, i’ll get to 70+ comprehension by exam day.
I’m with you LearnedDoctor, took the exam last year but was not anywhere near being on pace to pass. Wound up in Band 5 and was hitting around 60% on mocks, though definitely felt like a solid 5% of that was just from blind luck on guesses.
The key difference between last year and this year is utilizing the CFAI EOCs. Right now I’m scoring 65% consistently on the past two mocks, but definitely have some problem areas to smooth out in the next three weeks (Derivatives, Econ, Quant). I’m getting torn up pretty consistently on those vignettes with 3/6 or lower on average.
I am very much an active learner, so drilling concepts into my head via EOCs and problems is how I plan on overcoming this. My first mock was a complete disaster and I scored <50%, but that was before I did a full review of the material including CFAI EOCs. Now I’m feeling more confident, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
If you ever need extra motivation to study or get your head in the game, watch the speech from Glengarry Glen Ross delivered by Alec Baldwin. Works a charm.
Thanks for the responses guys - sorry to see that there are a couple of you in the same boat, though I suppose its a bit therapeutic to see Im not alone on this one.
Ive been reviewing yesterday’s test that I took - full mock, AM&PM sessions for those that asked, and now I think I realize that my revisions have been lacking - Ive spent most of the day seriously drilling the topics trying to gain a better understanding, and now I think Ive been able to settle down some.
There were a good amount of stupid errors (aggrevating when reviewing but at least correctable) and then a couple topics (deriv/pension accounting) where I just bombed. Will do complete revision through those problem areas and hopefully can cut down on dumb mistakes and I should be able to raise my score by (at least) 10% - which should hopefully be able to propel me into a better chance of passing.
May spend a majority of the time reviewing some of these topics while putting a hold on any more mocks for now (signed up for live mock in a two weeks so I have that going for me) and have a couple others I can swing in the last week or so. Also planning on drilling the practice CFA questions from the website - Ive been hit or miss here but they seem to hit all the main concepts which is key.
I have been doing full mocks under exam conditions with 1 hour in between.
CFAI practice vignettes are a great tool to test your understanding on the variability of questions we can be asked come exam day, and also prep you to sort through the extra information they include in the questions. Just finished reviewing yesterday’s mock and plan on doing another run through of the EOCs on the weak areas.
Plan for the week is to complete Schweser #4 and the CFAI mock next weekend after thorough review of my weak areas and going through as many of the CFAI vignettes as I can, particularly in the heavily weighted areas.
I simply revise and review everything. Even if I got the answer right I like to know that my approach was the correct one and I didn’t just get lucky. I feel like usually things even out between a mixture of a few lucky “rights” and stupid mistakes/didn’t read carefully “wrongs”, but it’s important that I cover them all. I feel like in my first band 10 fail of L1 I would just review questions i got wrong and that left out a lot of material I still needed revision on.