anyone else out there in the same boat? I’ve been able to answer all of the CFAI EOC questions (up to equity) pretty well and am averaging mid 80s on stalla tests as i move through the material (with light material referencing)…
You better knock on wood…
Don’t get me wrong, its difficult but it’s not impossible. It just A LOT of materail, but none of it is “impossibly hard” …you just gotta know your sh*t i guess…good thing I started in November…
Nearly every L2 Candidate has had this same thought when going over the material, and most change their tune either (a) when they have to pull all of the knowledge together at the end or (b) after sitting in the exam and seeing just how difficult the CFAI can make it. http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,831932 http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,1048589,1048589#msg-1048589 You’ve been warned.
JensensalphaMale Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Nearly every L2 Candidate has had this same > thought when going over the material, and most > change their tune either (a) when they have to > pull all of the knowledge together at the end or > (b) after sitting in the exam and seeing just how > difficult the CFAI can make it. > > http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,83 > 1932 > > http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,10 > 48589,1048589#msg-1048589 > > You’ve been warned. Ha! That’s amazing. The internet is great for this, eh? … but now I’m *more* worried and I think I may review some notes.
I certainly don’t under estimate this exam…the material is not that difficult, it’s just not that memorable…I have been over quant twice now,2 weeks ago I had it down… Right now with a gun to my head I could not tell you whether you use Breusch pagan or Dubin watson to test for Conditional Heteroskedascity. This is the problem I find, the weight of material and intricacy of detail that you do not use daily is hard to retain. Yes, it is BP…I looked it up after I typed the above…Tks.
Breusch pagan test for heteroskedascity Perdition…but again I just read it hahahha…I dont think we need to know how it works, that’s outside the Los scope unlike DW. retention is the main problem… Pete says one step forward, one step back…I havent be that driven yet, but I hope to get into this groove asap.
I have a feeling the EOC and Schweser questions are not what we will see on test day. This is what pisses me off. If we need to get used to the vignettes, why are we still answering single questions? EOC and Q-bank should follow the vignette format. I agree that EOC and Schweser ?'s are easier than expected…I don’t expect the test the correspond though, which worries me.
I’ve felt the same way. I’m just about done the curriculum, and none of it is that difficult to understand- it’s just brutal to retain. I’ll review a few more times and do innummerable questions, but it’ll be tough to remember it all at once.
I’m wrapping up Port Mngt this week and at that point I will have gone through all the CFAI text and EOC work(starting in Oct). That being said I wasn’t able to answer the majority of the EOC questions, mostly because they were open ended questions which if you can get through those without looking at the answers then more power to you. From here i’ll just be doing what sbmarti2 is doing - review and questions - for the next 4 months…fml
I have a feeling the EOC questions will give be good guide of what we will see on exam day. EOC questions are vignettes, written by CFAI… The Level I EOC was almost EXACTLY like the exam…so I would imagine that L2 EOC will be CLOSE to the exam. note - i will be doing EVERY SINGLE EOC in May a part of my review (but I’ve been doing all of them to date as i read. I will not move on to a new reading until i finish the EOC).
It’s not that ridiculously hard. Just that when you have 6 CFAI text in front of you that are more or less testable, it’s very tempting to think of “smart” ways to “wing” the exam (strategically allocate most of your time in areas you believe are going to be on the exam and allocate less on the rest). What a lot of people found out happened last year was that they got nailed by the many curved ball questions on the actual exam and what the topics they allocated time on either do not get tested or tested by very small portion. As I told another CFA L3 candidate the other day. In the end, there are just so much materials / steps you need to go through when preparing the exam. The strategy part, while important, does not replace the actual “stuff” that need to be covered. So when you factor in all the curved ball questions that would be on the actual exam, there are a non-trivial amount of tiny details that you could miss or thought you knew but you didn’t until you found yourself in the exam hall in June. Historically, L2 pass rate has been fairly low. So if you assume the pass rate is going to be roughly 40-45% every year, you should develop the mentality that your goal is to beat the guy who sits next to you, with ease. If you can’t reach that goal, statistically speaking your chance of passing isn’t very high (unless you are very lucky). (Basically, view the exam as a competition.)
jjenkins- have you went through everything just once at this point? Pretty impressive. I was considering just trudging through, but I find I’m constantly going back to previous books to review. I have a 1 month lag note taking mission to try to sweep up material I missed on the first review. Then I review material before class which is on like a 3 month lag. I’m shooting to have everythign done by late March, early April at the latest. For review, I’m very uneasy about this vignette format. L1 was in the form of the Q-Bank, and although the Q-Bank was usually easier, it still had some semblance to the actual exam. I haven’t starting playing with the Q-Bank yet, but I’ve been doing the EOC questions for both CFAI and Schweser. There just seems to be a shortage of CFA L2 formatted vignette questions to practice with. What are the plans of attack to acclimate to the vignette format?
I have found the FRA and later quant material quite challenging.
mcaval08- i started in october with the cfai text then this weekend i’m going to start with the schweser texts and include the video classes and some qbank then with about 6 weeks left i’m going to try to get my hands on as many practice exams as possible - schweser, cfa, bsas, etc. i think six weeks of doing practice exams should get me used to the vignette form, hopefully.
Q banks stinks on its lack of vignette format.