Taking the middle I am about 62.5% and I think MPS is about 59%. My pass isn’t that close to the MPS line but then its not miles above it either.
Other points
I left approximately 30 marks completely blank in the AM, but the areas I knew well, I completely destroyed
Timing is definitely an issue in AM. I never felt it on my practice tests but the actual day is just a completely different ball game
I did every CFA past paper back to 2007 and felt very comfortable with my scores. The 2018 paper felt wildly different to anything I had seen before.
To be honest, given the hours of work I put in, and my mock scores, my score is quite disappointing, but it is testament to the quality of the questions. They are completely unrivaled compared to third party providers. Do not get complacent in your studies. Every LOS must be learned.
In relation to above, I took some ‘calculated risks’ to not study some small LOS which came up in full force in the AM as 6/8 marker questions.
Hard to judge but I somehow crushed am (~80%+ ) and ~73% PM – I think the most valuable thing for me on AM was doing lots of timed mocks – time management is by far the most important (I think the material in many ways is easier, but time constraints make it very difficult). Learn to write in bullet points.
I remember when I started the exam i was very confused by the first question and I’m so happy I just immediately skipped it and moved on. Got into a groove and checked the time after each question to know where I was at. Was able to go back and answer the question later when I didn’t have the same nerves as I did right at the start. I think it’s super important to keep moving and not get caught up – no individual sub question is that important! As you can see people are passing with sub 60% scores on AM
Edit: Forgot to quote but in reply to doubleinfinity 1) Scores in old format. #cat <50% / # cat 50-70% / # cat >70% 2) I don’t know as I haven’t used it, someone else can no doubt answer this
Wait…how are you guys figuring out these percentages? Or are you guys just eye-balling it from the paper? Because im looking at mine and i’m not getting where you guys are calculating these numbers haha.
based on my result i scored probably like a 38/60 on the PM which is shocking to me. that would be my lowest mock score (and i had done 64% in the 360 questions of the CFAI qbank). i was consistently low-mid 70s in schweser.
gonna take it again. i just think i choked. no other way to describe it. my practice scores are simply not in line with the results.
I think you fell in the trap on 5-6 PM questions and probably got a few wrong. Like I mentioned above I changed my answer to 6 PM questions before circling them. Just bad luck I would say. What did you get on the AM section. I feel if you had just got 7-8 questions correct on the PM you would have cleared. Can’t believe it gets that close. But that’s L3. Most people are smart here and score quite well and do some decent prepwork before the exam
Overall, my score was like 89th percentile (almost on the 90th percentile line)
When you look at the average % it is less than 70%, but significantly above the minimum passing score nevertheless. Talks a lot about the difficulty of the AM this time.
My composite score is almost at the 90 percentile. About 70% on 6 topics (some are slightly above some are slightly below) and slightly above 50% Trading/GIPS topic. My average score was about 50% in the past 7 AM mocks, but got 60% in the 2017 version (the last one I took before the exam). I left out 3 subparts in the exam blank (~30 points) and BS the economics/asset allocation section at the end.
I concentrated most of my time and effort for the AM and barely touched PM. I did one practice exam for the PM and got 40/60. I was very surprised how well I did in the PM.
I guess the moral of the story is don’t neglect PM. Had I gotten 40/60 (67%) in the PM section as my practice, my composite score would have been 61%, which would haven been barely above the MPS. Some years, the exam difficulty could be easier and the MPS adjust upward and 61% could mean I fail the exam.
I did three CFAI mock exams in the week before the exam. My scores were around 55% correctness for the AM mock exams. I find the real AM exam is much easier than the mocks— perhaps because many of them are similar, and I learned the right answers from the mocks. It is very important to learn from CFAI’s answers and guidelines for the mocks.
Retaker: band 7 last year (horrendous score in AM; ~60% PM)
This year pass: AM: 45%-50% (left more than 25 pts due to time); PM: 75%-80% (Was mocking 60-65% and 75-80% respectively)
I used strictly CFAI only (for lvl 2 and lvl 3; lvl 1 was schweser)
Advice: Focus on the LOS. I read from cover to cover on CFAI curriculum, but i highlight only content that is conducive to answer LOS. CFAI gives way more data than required to answer LOS. Then, like what many others said above:
* write with conviction; don’t deviate from answer to widen the range of ‘correctness’
* don’t rely on ethics; it’s always going to be a crapshoot (I guessed 1/2 of Ethics on exam)
* be disciplined about moving on in AM if you do not know it, get the ones you know first
Shocked I passed with that TBH. My overall line was RIGHT above the MPS line. 1st attempt at L3.
My reflection on AM: TIME CRUNCH. I had ZERO issues on my practice exams. Practice AMs would take me like 1.5hours tops. I dunno what happened exam day, desire to be perfect/write neater or something. But i ended right down to the wire but managed to scribble something down for each question. That had me feeling better coming out because SO MANY people in my room were scribbling to the bell and people commented that they weren’t able to finish. As we all know now, writing something down for every question isn’t necessarily the way to do it as if they are wrong they are still wrong and better to have some solid CORRECT answers, but at the time i was feeling ok because of that. But content wise i thought AM was HARD, like it felt harder than the 1st attempt L2 (which i failed). SO overall felt so mixed about AM because seriously so difficult but managed to get something down so thought may have had an edge b/c of that.
PM: Thought it was easy-peazy. No issues. Done in an hour. Went over everything once. Had a nap. Figured I fell for a bunch of traps but b/c i went over it all i didn’t think there was anything i had missed at the time.
Overall wasn’t going to be surprised either way with exam score. Based on how close i was to that MPS line i just got lucky this year!