I found morning FSA tough… esp all those depreciation and lease questions… Asst valuation was pretty ok am and pm… ethics was stratighforward and like Aimee pointed out, lot of questions seemed straight out of the Std of Prac manual…eco was ok… overall - straight forward ppr…
friday night i was reading a post where some said " if you find two or three questions in a row that you feel you have no clue, dont let that get you down." and that was like my bless, in some instances i felt like all the time i put was worthless, but then i found some that i knew and that kinda kept motivation up.
for me… those ones that I knew seemed few and far between… quite sad… it didn’t help that I only had 90 minutes worth of sleep… woke up at 1 AM and couldn’t sleep again… even though I kept trying…
After review I know I screwed up about 16 questions (100% wrong), so I’m left with 224 questions, out of which I’m confidentto get about 30% correct (about 67), so I’m left with 157 qeustions, out of which I had 50% probability to get right (about 78) because normally I can narrow down the choices from 4 to 2. So my total expected number of getting correct is: 78+67=145
acwu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > for me… those ones that I knew seemed few and > far between… quite sad… > > it didn’t help that I only had 90 minutes worth of > sleep… woke up at 1 AM and couldn’t sleep > again… even though I kept trying… acwu…I didn’t sleep @ all…not even for 10 minutes. I have never been this anxious in my life.
I have to agree with alot of people on the forum, the morning was easier than the afternoon. I felt that the afternoon session FSA stressed alot of lessee/lessor distinctions for leases, which became confusing when narrowing down responses. Ethics was slightly trickier than usual too. I wrote in Montreal.
FSA was my strongest section on practice exams, but I didn’t feel very confident about it in the real thing. Quant was easier than expected.
I sat in Vancouver, supposedly we had quite a large number for us, the room was huge… Security was a bit too much, I got there an hour early and I just got to basically sit in the room for an hour while other people arrived later… The morning was much worse for me. Usually on the practice exams I got through with plenty of time to spare. So for the actual test I was making little notes about which questions to review. I carefully tracked my time. I was a bit behind before FSA but when I finished that section I was way behind. I had to blitzkrieg through the last two sections. With about a half hour to go I had I think 29 questions to do. I did them all in order. I finished them all but my Valuations in the morning must have suffered. I didn’t do much during the break, we got way less than 2 hours due to security procedures. I was way ahead of things both leading into and coming out of FSA so I took a break went to the bathroom and had some water. In Ethics in the morning I kept thinking I was choosing too many Ds. In the afternoon it seemed like I selected a lot of As. I always think about crap like that when I take test with those ovals. I’d like a nice random pattern not 3 of a letter in a row, but I didn’t change any answers because it, though in the many 50/50 questions where I could eliminate two of the answers quickly maybe it started to play on my mind. I’m not sure I passed. I think I did better than on some of the practice exams, but I was made well aware of my weaknesses. Statistics, accounting for leases, and bonds. In the practice exames the sections I did best on were Ethics, Portfolio Management, and recent Economics. My accounting and valuation score really depend on what they ask the most questions about. There were a fair few lease and bond questions unfortunantly.
i think that the morning session was harder. i felt a little discouraged, but i did a lot better in the afternoon. i will be a close one, a lot of the questions were exactly as in schweser or cfa sample tests which made me regret that i only took 2 of those. can anybody enlighten me if when you calculate breakeven point considerind costs, do you take in account the fixed operating and the fixed financing costs?
damn, im starting to worry about whether or not i also chose all the D’s
muskie i had the same impression although i did good on econ on all tests i felt the morning econ were challenging i was not sure of a lot of answers, ethics, quants and fsa were easier than i thought i had problems with the lease questions and with the bond ones - some bond qs were really easy, on some i could not focus
i’d say, i’m 50-50. having said that, thought the exam would be a lot harder. got the feeling that if someone had really studied hard (i wish i was one of those!), then they would have absolutely nailed it.
Muskie: I am with you. I felt like in the morning there s a row of Ds. and in the afternoon the pattern switched to As. it is weird.
Yeah, I agree morning session was lot easier compared to afternoon session - I had enough time to review at least half of the questions in the morning. Overall I would say the exam was easy compared to online sample tests - but there were couple of similar questions from the sample exams. I am still 50-50, lets see…
Personally, i found AM session much easier, was done in 2.5 hours and was ready to leave the room when they announced the 30 min. mark. So i sat down and went through most of the questions again. Was really confident going into the PM session, had an overpriced sub (at the Expo in Toronto), but was ok. Then the PM session began. First hour was ok, but totally missed that FSA Logo question (still kicking myself bcoz of that). And the the sudden drop in my confidence, which was caused by the increasing difficulty of questions. At one point i was actually trying to remind myself y i’m doing this in the first place. Last hour was a disaster. FSA got me with the lease quiestions (which i’m usually ok with) and then the 12 questions on fixed income in the Asset Valuation section. AM session had no more than 5-6. Was totally guessing these. Expectations: if i pass it will be on a very thing margin, that’s for sure.
I would agree with that, I thought the morning session was a bit harder than the PM. I barely finished AM like 5 or 10 mins before. Was glad I got a chance to go over all the ethics questions. PM, I thought was easier (just like CFAI samples) and I had way too much time on my hand. I went pretty fast on ethics and Quant. Then by econ I knew time wouldn’t be a problem, so I spent more than what I would. Actually for most of the questions after Econ, I had notes with each question on why the other 3 options were wrong as if answering them on Analyst forum…duh…but at the end of it I knew I was sure why I chose what I chose. Even after all this, I was done with everything by 4. Was contemplating leaving by 4 (could taste that devine IPA). But thought, whats another 60 mins as compared to 4-5 months. So I went and redid all the ethics, quant, econ & FSA (found a couple of loose ones). I guess in PM, they were all conceptual questions, if you knew it, it would take 15 sec, if not, you could spend a lot of time on it. florinpop Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i think that the morning session was harder. i > felt a little discouraged, but i did a lot better > in the afternoon. i will be a close one, a lot of > the questions were exactly as in schweser or cfa > sample tests which made me regret that i only took > 2 of those. > can anybody enlighten me if when you calculate > breakeven point considerind costs, do you take in > account the fixed operating and the fixed > financing costs?
I felt the morning test was easier than the afternoon. I started with ethics, FSA, Asset valuation, portfolio mgmt, then econ and quant. I was very conscious of time and when I saw that I was ahead of the time limit I set for myself when I finished asset valuation I started to take it easy, but I can’t believe I ran out of time at the end, I had to randomly guess some questions including the question dealing with EAR. I knew I could do that problem if I had time. The afternoon test is obviously harder, and the test center was so cold! I marked the questions that I was unsure of the answer, and I believe there are 32 of them in the afternoon session. Anyway, I went to the temple the day before, so let’s see if that helps.
I wrote in Seoul and I wasn’t overly surprised by anything. The morning session felt easier, but I think I was tiring near the end of the afternoon session, and that made it seem more difficult. Overall, I was happy and I think I passed. However, the more I think about it, the more anxious I become. It’s going to be a rough 6 weeks waiting to see if I order material for level 1 or level 2. Congrats to all who wrote and put in the time. Everyone should be proud of themselves.
I wrote in Seoul and I wasn’t overly surprised by anything. The morning session felt easier, but I think I was tiring near the end of the afternoon session, and that made it seem more difficult. Overall, I was happy and I’ sure I passed. However, the more I think about it, the more anxious I become. It’s going to be a rough 6 weeks waiting to see if I order material for level 1 or level 2. Congrats to all who wrote and put in the time. Everyone should be proud of themselves.
I thought the morning session was harder, too. When lunch came, I said to myself, “Clearly, they were trying out some experimental questions because I shouldn’t have been that shaken after THREE HUNDRED HOURS OF STUDYING.” The afternoon session was a lot easier I thought. In fact, I was done right as the 30 mintue alarm went off, so I went back and reworked a couple I had marked … still had 15-20 minutes left after checking those out.