Knock on wood, I thought L1 Ethics was pretty easy. I went into it hearing that it could make or break your pass/fail, and studied hard at it. Most of the answers seemed more clear cut than some of the test prep providers difficult q’s. How differently would you recommend someone approach L2. Just spend more time and concentration on the details? Do they try and trick you more. Any insights?
GMofDen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Knock on wood, I thought L1 Ethics was pretty > easy. I went into it hearing that it could make > or break your pass/fail, and studied hard at it. > Most of the answers seemed more clear cut than > some of the test prep providers difficult q’s. > How differently would you recommend someone > approach L2. Just spend more time and > concentration on the details? Do they try and > trick you more. Any insights? In the CFAI materials they have some actual L2 vignettes from the 2006 exam. They are very in depth and very tricky in areas. They made me realize quickly why the scores were a lot lower in ethics than on L1.
^ Thanks for the heads up. Going to hit all the CFAI q’s after I finish going through all the material.
GMofDen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > With L2 ETHICS last year it seems as if a lot of > the scores are below the 70% mark. > Was ethics on L2 a lot more difficult than L1? > How was it different in L2 vs. L1? Just trickier? if you call shades of grey trickier, then yes…in Level 1 the ethics Q’s were more black and white…in L2 there’s a requirement to make more of a judgement call and be right. ie there was a question about whether a hedge fund was suitable for a client “Are you in the industry?” yep, but on the buy side “What kind of work do you do?” IC “What caused you to fail level 2 last year?” PM and FI…I gamed the FI because I was running out of time and thought I knew it, no enough review PM…Treynor Black…it may not seem difficult to some, but understand it was a whole vignette…if you bombed that you automatically lost close to 50% of your PM mark “I’m trying to figure out if there’s a chance for a non-industry person to pass. The material seems hard. A lot of equations to remember. I can read the material and understand it. However, I can’t remember everything I read.” yeah, you have a chance…buy side in some ways is much like not being in the industry compared to caspian or Sponge Bob…buy side…we’re the relationship people, we pay guys to do this for us (j/k) BUT I will say that it’s quite common for IC’s to have the designation and many of them come from non-analytical fields. as was said above, you have 2.5 months, head down, do the reading, do the questions, do the prep tests…we’ll all get through this.