Second time L2 taker - failed band 5 in 2014 after coming out the exam feeling fairly confident of at least getting near the band 9/10 range if not passing. Clearly fell into a number of traps.
Felt this paper was slightly harder overall but I was more prepared although like others I worry I did not spot enough of the “tricks” in the calculation-based questions even though I was specifically trying to look out for them.
I think it would be really helpful if we could define these tricks a bit more without obviously referring to any specific questions from the exam. Hypothetically what is a good example of a trick? Are there a lot more tricks in the actual exams than the mocks? Mocks ask harder questions I feel (scored on average 70%) but maybe fewer glaring tricks?
I too am confused by the mention of these tricks. There were definitely parts of the exam where I caught that there were choices for answers if you used wrong inputs, but… if you know the formulas and the correct inputs it’s not a “trick”. It’s just wrong.
There were situations like this on the mocks too, I don’t see how it was any different.
As mentioned above, if you knew the material related to it, and read the question carefully, you would have easily got the right answer.
I don’t think the CFAI is out to “trick” people, they just want to seperate out those that really understand the concepts from those that maybe just have memorized part of it.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you do on the official mocks last year?
All this talk of tricks is making me worried as well. I spotted a few questions, maybe 4 that I thought could be traps…The rest seemed straight forward, if you knew the topic.