For Level 1 and 2 I did not find time management an issue on the exam. For level 3 I finished the morning session with only 2 minutes to spare but had finished the afternoon session with a full hour to think about life…or probably something more shallow like football. For any L3 candidates my advice mirrors a lot of others, practice that morning technique early and ever word needs to add value.
Just curious did anyone smash the morning session and finish it early?
I found myself in a similar situation. My AM mocks afforded me 30+ minutes to spare and review my work. In real life, it was a frenetic race against the clock. I finished with just 5 minutes to spare and that was after racing through the last 1.5 hours. It is so incredibly easy to fall behind on a question (different questions are allotted different amounts of time), but it’s likely best to move on and return to it only if you have time. Since partial credit is awarded so strictly, the chances you come up with the right answer after wasting 10 minutes struggling to recall are slim. Of course, that is easier said than done. No one wants to skip a question and so we all waste precious time.
To provide some context, I finished the PM section with roughly 45 minutes to spare. Nothing compares to the AM beast except tons of practice in actual exam-like timed conditions.
I don’t know what smashed means in this context but I only got to question 8 in the am … the second time through when I was checking my work. I also crossed out a few unclear words and rewrote them more clearly (or in some cases with about the same clarity, but hopefully made the point to the grader that I was trying). On one question I even wrote out an alternate solution more in line with how CFAI teaches that topic. I had always used a shorter approach that is mathematically equivalent and easier to understand (for me) but since they give you no direction on how grading is done and I had the time I wrote it out the long way.
That and $3.00 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. How much time you take is mostly irrelevant as long as you get through it.
Level 3 AM is the most difficult exam from the perspective of time management. Only solution to it is to practice multiple previous AM exams from CFAI
Or really well-written AM practice exams from third-party prep providers.
Granted, they’re rare. But, I hope, getting less so.
I wouldn’t hold your breath for that one Bill lol
I finished the AM section in about 1:40 and the PM in just under 1:30. Finished LI and LII quickly as well, but I was surprised at my speed in AM for LIII. All those practice tests paid off
Think about it.
(Here’s a hint: I’m not suffering from the illusion of control.)
Psshhh…good for you. I know I was at least when I was a L3 candidate 
Time management is definitely a challenge for AM portion. I only did the last 3 AM exams (2015-2017) and was impressed that I managed to finish them with 20-30 mins to spare and scoring between 60-70. I was also writing a lot and not just bullet points so I was feeling very comfortable.
Now come exam day, by the time I finished the first question, I was a couple of minutes behind, no biggie, then after the next couple of questions, I became 5-10 mins behind and started freaking out. Unfortunately I didn’t really practice writing in bullet points which is probably why I was behind on time. I hoped for the best and just started writing as quickly as I can, giving myself literally 10-15 seconds to think about each question, and directly writing whatever answer popped in my head. I got lucky and finished right on time without leaving any blank questions and to my surprise, I scored a lot higher than I expected.
He is writing AM exams… in case you are still thinking.
As we speak.
Things can get worse if exam doesn’t start exactly at 9 O’clock and starts at odd time like 9:18 or 9:26. It happened to us on L3 AM exam. Time tracking becomes more challenging in such cases.
Ha, that would definitely be a mindfuck right there!