I failed and I'm angry

CFA Level III
#41

go see Alex https://www.acelevel3.com

#42

Thanks my dude. This anger is actually motivating me now. No stop sign on this grind train.

#43

And as they say, every cloud has a silver lining.

For me it’s reading that you can have shiity handwriting and still achieve good scores! Seriously, my wife is a teacher and I’ve requested handwriting sheets for for 10 year olds…

#44

Thank you. that is a good point you will not remember any thing about the time but your charter.

#45

You got 80% in the PM showing that you did possess the necessary knowledge. It doesnt make sense your score is that horrible in the AM. I believe you failed one of the “testing areas” that CFAI wants to test you. It’s how you write down the answers in the way that CFAI “wants” and “understands”. My advice is to go for third party provider for AM section. You should be fine next year.

#46

the anger has made me desperate. the typical Bruce Wayne moment like in The Dark Knight Rises.

#47

Doing well in the PM and not in the AM is totally understandable and has little to nothing to do with the illusion that the graders subjectivity is what did you in. AM tests recallability/output and requires more of an active learning strategy. PM is mostly passive (at least the questions that don’t require calculations).

ie (not referencing any specific thing from the exam but just being hypothetical) Being able to pick from a multiple choice set the one item that is a weakness of mean variance optimization requires a different type of understanding/knowledge/study strategy than being able to write and briefly explain that weakness of MVO with nothing given to you.

You could replace the MVO above with a million different things from the curriculum (BSM assumptions, requirements for immunization of single liability, advantages of Monte Carlo simulation, etc) and that is basically a hefty portion of the AM exam. These answers are explicitly explained in the CFAI text and I think where a lot of people go wrong is they read it during their studying and say “yeah that makes sense I got this” but then when asked to recall it and write it on the spot they struggle. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t realize this gap in their knowledge until they are writing the actual exam. I imagine many people then try to BS their way through it on the exam and get a false sense of confidence hoping for partial credit but miss the key points outlined in CFAI and get zero.

#48

Did you switch the colour the pen in the middle of the exam, i.e. using Blue pen and then to go ahead with black pen. Two people I know who were feeling they should get a decent mark for the morning session end up ending at the lowest range. One of them actually appealed and the reason of the low mark is due to more than 1 colour of writing being involved.

#49

I circled my answers in pencil and wrote in pen in AM. Would that have cost me marks ? Cause I was really optimistic about the AM.

#50

you can request for retabluation and I guess they would tell you whether it’s because of the pencils or the answer itself

#51

Where did you get the mocks of 2008 to 2019? Theee are actual past exams right? Are they revised to reflect the curriculum changes ?

#52

I have some bits of advice, I hope it helps, best of luck!

I felt very prepared going into the exam. Overall, I passed easily doing a little worse in the morning than I thought and a little better in afternoon than I thought.

  1. You need to study smart, not just hard for level 3. The CFAI tells you the weights for the different topics, and the exam (and old exams) are pretty much in line with their guidance. So if you spent a bunch of time on nailing down performance attribution, while you didn’t have a firm grasp of say taxes or fixed income…then you didn’t study smart because CFAI told you one section was 5% and the other two 30%. Not listening carefully to CFAI is an amateur move.

  2. If you don’t have a lot of work experience, then consider taking LevelUp or some other program that has videos that teach from the curriculum. Key point is that they teach, and that’s what you need because a lot of the curriculum is new to you. If you have experience in asset management or banking, then you’re ok with a study provider who summarizes like a Kaplan.

  3. Whoever you choose to study with, stick with their methods and work it hard. Loads of people pass using ALL these providers, their systems work if you apply them and put in the time grinding away. Stop accumulating more and more study materials, you will only confuse yourself and feel pressured to get through it all. Don’t be a victim of marketing.

  4. Be consistent, especially if you are busy with a lot of commitments. I have a stressful job, lots of travel, kids, and a wife who is angry at me and the CFAI. So I never studied more than 20-45 minutes at a clip, but I did study almost every day. Consistency helps ensure you cover everything.

  5. You don’t need to do 10 timed full exams or pay to have your exam graded. Most old exams are full of questions that aren’t relevant anymore. I never did a whole mock exam, but I timed myself on individual morning questions, did all the CFAI provided online questions, and many old exam questions. Studying from old exams is exam prep 101, if you’re not doing old exams you’re just an amateur.

#53

You can either be angry that exam strategy matters or you can try to pass the exam and honestly, I’m not clear that exam strategy was the issue as you could have been lucky on a few questions in the PM.

Marc’s strategy isn’t some sort of magic to pass. He recommends working hard and focusing on the entire curriculum, which is really pretty obvious advice really. What he does and why he has people supporting his method is that he does a fantastic job of teaching the curriculum without short cuts and helping focus on what to do on pass.