I'm scared what do i do?!

CFA Level I
#1

Hi all,

So, I had a plan, I followed it, I studied using Schweser, studied hard, gave it my all, did all the EOC, understood it or thought I did…and I finished my second practice midterm today…got a failing mark < 50%…so uber failing compared to 70%. My first test was 50ish%, so it seems I did worse…how? What do i do? I feel like quitting, how do I even begin to understand wtf im doing wrong? Please help with any sort of helpful addddviice pls!

#2

Do you have any accounting/finance background?

#3

did 2 courses in accounting and 2 in finance, but am i approaching this wrong? I was confidence my 2nd mock was going to be better…but it was worse…is it because I was confident? what should i do now with less than 2 weeks left?! more mocks or just aimlessly do q banks? should i give up on schweser and do cfai material? People say the cfai q bank and their mock test is all you need? Is that true?

#4

Just do mock tests and associated practice questions with the mock test. Those are the best gauge for the exam (I believe).

#5

ok thanks man, anyone else have any other suggestions too please? im kind of freaking out.

#6

dont’ freak out man. just relax (i know its hard to do at this stage) and study the material. You may have to put in some hours these next weeks but also try and understand the intuition behind the material as well.

what i do , is rotate between different problems in each section, that way with the limited time we have, you can get as many question of different sections as you want.

#7

a common issue is lack of drilling. you do the EOC once, but once is just a taste. if someone teaches you how to tie 41 knots, you’ll know zero after tying them yourself once. if you learn how to shoot a 3 pointer in basketball, getting your first basket is not the end. there’s like 9,999 more till you’re a little bit good at it.

you absolutely can still pass this, but you need to do the following:

  • don’t go to work. find a way to get as much time off as possible – ideally, all of it from now till June 3 (don’t kill your career obviously, but be aggressive about getting away from all distractions and finding 10x9=90 hours of final revision time).
  • audit your mock performance. for each answer explanation, track (excel) whether you have some semblence of what’s going on, or it’s completely foreign to you. if the explanation is not comprehensibe – if you can’t walk into another room and explain it in your own words 30 seconds later – drop it. it’s dead. let it go. there are 100’s of other chances to get your magic 168/240. every question is worth 1 point, so you need to build intimacy with as many questions as possible, not the hardest ones.
  • if you’ve done 2 mocks, you have 480 questions. let’s say you discard 100 that are “Greek” to you. Among the 380 remaining, go through them until you are 100% perfect at all of them. On your first pass through “380”, as you select an answer, write down whether you’re confident in your choice, making an educated guess, whether you know how to do it but forgot the equation, or it too is Greek. Drop the Greeks (unfunny Black-Scholes pun
  • On your second pass, skip the ones that you both got right and were confident in. Repeat the ones you got right, but guessed at – to drive home the concept. Keep going until you have score a legit confident correct answer in 100% of the 380. Drop any where you realize you don’t understand the answer.
  • Do another mock. Repeat the process above.

From now till June 3, you’re just rehearsing the motion of making a ball go in a basket. You’ve already learned everything once. It’s vaguely floating in ether … hammer-drill the mock questions you have a chance in. Be a machine at it until it is impossible for you to get less than 168.

bon chance, matt

#8

wow thanks biuku, my goal today was to do another mock, but after my first half, i unfortunately calculated my score during the 1 hour break…and failed yep…so i stopped, was totally discouraged…so i think i need to do what you said…im taking the rest of my time off from work to really focus on the questions i already did and see which ones land in which category as my first step, then ill skip the ones that were right + confident in, repeat the ones I got right + guessed, rince and repeat until confidence goes up in those…then do another mock, repeat the process again…

so after that last mock…should i finish my mock sessions off with the CFAI mock maybe wednesday or thursday?

#9

yeah, what biuku said. stop being a negative nancy. keep plugging away

#10

I am seriously trying…check this out:

I just finished my 6th mock…my average so far has been 50%…what do I even do at this point?! Keep doing mocks or should I just redo the CFAI one until my hands are bloody and memorize every question and answer?!

Has anyone passed their level 1 here with their mocks score way less than 70% on average? I need some inspirational stories, because I’m scered :’(

#11

Read the EOC schweser summaries.

Read and UNDERSTAND every answer you got wrong in the mocks.

After you have done this do another mock. DO NOT do more mocks until you have gone over all previous notes and topics and mocks.

#12

You need to understand why your scores are low. Did you have difficulty recalling formulas? Did you just not understand the questions?

I think you should stop doing mocks and questions. Just go over the readings and review them. Use your flashcards/summaries/notes, whatever you have. If you can only do half of the questions right, chances are you do not have a sufficient understanding of the materials, and the best choice is probably to study more. Try to retain what you read.