So overall I scored somewhere between 66%-68%. My overall looks like its right around the 82nd or 83rd percentile.
In regards to the AM section, I left 20-25 points completely blank, but felt good about a large majority of my answers. I think its important to point out that its okay to leave some points on the table if it means providing higher quality answers on the topics you are more comfortable with. I took this approach and accepted there’s going to be some things I wont know, so rather than waste time and stress about just filling in bs that I knew was most likely wrong, I just left it blank. This saves you time and energy to really focus on getting the max points on topics you actually have knowledge on. Reading through these forums I always see people stressing the importance of answering every question and not leaving anything blank and I just don’t think its really all that important to write nonsense just to fill in the box. Remember in the end the test is measured out of 360 points so leaving some sub questions entirely blank on the AM is really nothing to worry about. It doesn’t make your test look worse just because you left some things blank, its all in the points and if you don’t know something getting a zero by leaving it blank is the same thing as getting a zero by filling in garbage except now you’ve lost time and energy.
Regarding the PM section, I think it is very fair and can be mastered by doing plenty of mocks and EOC questions just like level 1 and 2. Honestly for me the PM section of level 3 was one of the easier parts of any of the three CFA exams, especially after having to deal with the item set questions in level 2.
Based on the assumption that - Adobe Reader 200% size of the PDF, 2cm from 50% to 70%, 1mm for 1%, candidates actual score are pro-rata determined
AM: 67%
PM: 85%
left 17 points blank plus a stupid calculation mistake, I’m satisfied with AM results. I’m very afraid of some calculation error (OCD) so all cals. questions I double check the results, which costs me running out of time…
Item sets are pretty easy but I still didn’t score well in Ethics, from the graph, I only scored 67% in Ethics which means 4 questions were wrongly answered. According to total score and Ethics results, I did 5 other questions wrong, however I cannot figure out where were they. PM result reflect what I did in mock and topic tests.
AM: around 50%; PM: around 80%, slightly above 90% percentile;
My study plan: 1. Read Schweser once and jot notes along the way; 2. ***jot notes***: the way I make my own notes allows me to rethink and write the most simplified wordings i.e. keywords for complicated concepts, you don’t need a super lengthy notes like a book, it’s the key for AM, I missed more than 30% of the points because of unbearable anxiety but seems I did give the correct wordings for those questions that I answered as per the result; 3. Do all topic tests and past 5-year mocks for both AM and PM, check the answers and explanation even for those I answered correctly; ***for AM session, remember to time yourself***;
For those who haven’t completed level 3 this time, don’t give up, I have spent 10 years since my first trial of level 1 in 2008, tried multiple times for level 2 and finally passed level 3 at first attempt (I got married and 1 kid), the differences between my pass and fail are to makemy own notes AND do past mocks and topic tests.
Essay ~67%(close to 90%tile) Item Sets ~ 85%(More than 90%tile)
< 50 - Equity (And I thought I am good at it Lol)
50 -70 - Bhv Fin + PM
70 + - Alt inv/Derivatives, Econ/Asset Allocation, Ethics (L2 Revenge, got at least 10 qs correct), TMR/Port Eval (~100% :D), Fixed Income
left 12 points blank in AM, 8-10 marks straightway error - ~20 points left at the table
Time Given : ~250 hours over 3.5 months (would not recommend it, go by what CFAI says ~330 hours)
Primary Resources : Schweser + David Hetherington Videos + IFT summary Videos + At times used to refer CFAI text
Practice : EOCs/BBs (You can skip essay type EOCs) + TTs (avg 70%) + Few times I did Schweser sets from their mock PM papers
MOCKS : Took last 8 years papers printed out, took the relevant portions section wise. I always used to grade me brutally, often had 40-45% but that helped me to master the CFA jargon, For PM I found TTs should be enough
[No 3P AM mocks ( i realized they are not close to the reality), could not take a full mock exam at a stretch.]
Strength : Fixed Income, Risk Management, Derivatives as I work in the relevant field
Totally discouraged as this is not reflective or all of my practice mock results / confidence / feeling of how it went on exam day.
will have to let the dust settle and totally rethink my strategy… some good points on here… appreciate the guidance from the successful strategies…
Will have to try to decide when to start opening the books… this year seems to early … I already have a lot of knowledge banked, surely january would be optimal ?
I think you are underestimating your scores a little. I think PM should be close to 65 and your AM score too should be around 55. MPS is around 59% - 60%
this is all super helpful. thanks all for the wonderful posts to us re-takers. couple things i wanted to note here
very comforting to see people rip overall scores of 66% or better despite leaving 20-30 points completely blank. i left 25 (still failed) but good to know that you can do that if your other answers are good.
also comforting to know that at L3, it seems like a 50 AM and 75 PM is a “clear no-sweat pass”, very much like how a 80/120 is a “clear no-sweat pass” at L2. i struggle to imagine the MPS being above 61%
question for the thread: what do you think is the 90th percentile in terms of overall score? Im thinking 68% total
second question: what did you 90th percentile PM guys and gals end up scoring in the CFAI Qbank for your first try (before resetting the Qs)? I did all 360, finished with an agg score of 64% and that was apparently nowhere near good enough.
I did find the PM was more difficult (or trickier) than all the practice questions I have done, but that might be due to the fact that I did not study enough. It does seem to be a bit surprising to me that the 90 percentile for PM is so high, somewhere between 80-82%. My guess is that PM scores have a really wide distribution that candidates could either score really well (by spotting the traps) or really badly (by not spotting the traps).
Some advices: Though I registered the exam early, but honestly I did not spend enough time studying. I read the notes relatively slowly and forgot most of the concepts along the way. So I would provide some suggestions for those who do not have plenty of time for preparation or tend to not start working on it early. During the last two months before the exam, I stopped reading the notes and started to work on practice questions for both AM and PM. As many other already mentioned, the best resource for preparing AM is the past AM tests. Believe it or not, these past AM tests were my only source to prepare for AM. I highly recommend doing these tests first as you can get a feel for the standard wording for the essay part, as well as circle the concepts and topics that need more efforts. By doing this, you are preparing for AM and PM at the same time. For PM, there are a lot more resources out there for practice. The calculation and formulas for Level III are definitely easier than Level II. But make sure to nail down the calculation process as you have to show your work in the Essay part.
I knew PM was tough for me. I remember coming out of the exam thinking I got somewhere in the low to mid 60’s in PM. Luckily percentile-wise my AM was much better.
Personally (I know everyone is different) – I found the Qbank to be much less helpful in L2/L3 because item set format is quite different. I would suggest practicing as much as possible on item set type questions and less on stand alone Qbank type questions if you are struggling with the PM section. If there is a particular part of the curriculum that is giving you trouble (i.e., calculating # of futures contracts to hedge) that’s obviously different (and Q-bank is great for this because you can filter by LOS).
So I guess my advice is to use Q-Bank primarily to nail down specific problem areas and focus on item set format practice as much as you can. I think you should take a MINIMUM of 8 full mocks (so 6 Kaplan, schweser live mock, CFAI mock) and then obviously take as many old AMs as you can.
I passed by a razor sharp margin, fully expecting a 50/50 chance of passing upon leaving the exam.
Old format: 2/4/1 (Ethics was above 70%) and the two topics <50 were a hair below 50% each.
New format: ~52% AM, 68% (probably 41/60 since my score is a hair below the 70% line and that’d surely be 42/60)
I like to live dangerously. Also, this was not reflective of my mock performances. I was scoring low 60’s AM and 75ish PM. Nerves, actual exam day conditions, lack of sleep, and just an overall HARD AM session that put me on tilt contributed to this, but I’ll happily take it.
This is my first post (though I’ve been reading the board for two years) so I understand if you ignore my endorsement, but now that I’m finished with the program I’m more interested in helping others than I was before.
I left at least 45 points entirely blank in the AM, yet still scored 68-69 in the AM so I agree with those that have stated focus on getting all the points on questions you can answer, because apparently that was possible. I agonized for ten weeks over my poor time management and it turned out to not matter at all because I was otherwise extremely well-prepared.
On the PM i scored so high above the 90th percentile line that I’m pretty sure I only missed 3-5 questions on the PM (3 ethics questions). To answer TommyJohn’s question, I was scored around 83% on one pass through the topic tests and I was scoring 80-85 on all the PM style mocks I did.
The overall result was probably 95th percentile or higher.
I believe in reading the CFA curriculum. I used Kaplan mocks and the secret sauce book just occasionally on planes/beach and such, but I focused almost entirely on the Institute’s curriculum. I believe on forums like these, there’s not enough emphasis on the fact that the details matter. When you read the curriculum, I suggest focusing on and reviewing every detail because they don’t test general knowledge… they are always going to get you on the details. The answers become more clear when you are so well-versed in the material that you recognize what detail(s) they are testing as soon as you read the question.
In addition to this, I bought Levelup’s full package, watching all of Marc’s videos prior to attending the bootcamp. The bootcamp gave some final test-taking tips that were valuable, and in the weeks following I did another run through the curriculum while also practicing all the past AM’s.