I thought this year’s papers (both AM and PM) were both very easy. I finished the AM paper in 1 hr 45 mins and PM in 1 hr 20 minutes. After that, went back and elaborated in details on each point for the AM essay paper. And for the PM, I redid the paper 3 more times to make sure I did not make any careless mistakes.
Out of all 3 levels, I think I have never been this confident.
@MYork : Seriously, where did you take the test? I didn’t hear a single human-being said that (no alien neither)
I tested in Denver. The CFA society had a mixer afterwards and I heard a couple people mention they didn’t finish. I am also on a FB group that has a fair amount on international candidates. I could imagine taking the test in a second language.
Twice I wrote an AM answer in wrong template and had to scratch out and redo. Stressed me out but got it done. I feel okay guess. Put my best performance on for the amount of pressure I was feeling. I don’t think it was too bad but who knows. This is first time im not grading my own AM exam so hopefully short, blunt, to the point is what they wanted. From what I’ve read around different forums we all have the same questions about the tricky ones but nothing we can do now. Just pray.
I’m not sure what AM exam you people had, but in New York there were some insane questions and others that were plain out to get you. I fully guessed at–at least–2 and made a couple dumb errors.
Also, I won’t say the topic, but the first 2 parts of the first question in the AM was total BS. Hardly covered and should never have been an essay question.
PM, however, was a joke. I thought it was incredibly easy.
I felt OK in the AM session. Not great but ok. I barely had enough time to finish but gave it my best. when I returned to the PM I then started to panic. I thought the PM was brutal. I was nailing consistent 70+ on my practice test. I circled every question that I wasn’t 100% sure and when I finished I count 29!!! I about passed out right then and there. I finished about 45 minutes early on the PM and went back over the circled questions and started second guessing my self horribly! Oh well, nothing can be done now!
Lots of topics that should have been tested but weren’t tested but rather some of the obscure parts of the curriculum that was already covered in previous levels…
I agree with you blackscholesvol
i thought the AM was brutal. i whiffed on 2 questions. i wish the morning was a little more diversified. if you can’t execute on just one high point value question/related questions, it can be crippling. i didn’t think PM was too bad.
Totally agree. Felt like the time I spent drilling formulas was a waste.
AM was very rough for me, I left about 20-30 marks on the table because I couldn’t finish.
PM was a different story, I felt very confident walking out of that session. Hopefully it can offset my terrible morning session
AM caught me a bit off guard and made me burn precious minutes, indeed it felt pretty much like ****. With respect to PM …well I ***** it.
So … I do not expect much for AM (50ish), but I am expecting to get about 85 from the PM section.
i feel exactly the same way, wrote my exam in NY also, and reading all this post about AM being simple is just surprising to me. AM was for sure difficult. the first two parts knocked me off my game, it came out of nowhere.
PM was the easiest exam ever,. i am hoping my pm would make up for my very horrible AM performance.
100% this. Topics that had zero presence in the previous years (and I’m going back to 1999) to now (2016 on CFAI site) AM mocks that magically showed up on this years.
We all know what L2 topic came up. The one that sounds like [deleted by admin]. Oh and how about [deleted by admin] questions? That was certainly covered more than the [deleted by admin] or [deleted by admin]. Definitely strong essay material.
The exam was about what I expected from a difficulty perspective. I did not have time to complete one 6 point AM and made a handful of mistakes that I’m kicking myself for (isn’t that always the case?!). Feel like my score is likely in the 60-70 range which puts me at 50/50 to pass. Slightly disappointing given the effort I’ve put in but we’ll see how the field does. That being said I’m calling bs on properly finishing in 1 hour 40 mins. Regardless, we are all better for the experience and it feels good to have it in the books. Best of luck to all, enjoy the summer, and don’t make any silly ethics violations over something you can’t change. Cheers!
AM, finished with about 20 min to spare but don’t feel entirely confident given my highest AM mock was 64%.
PM, Felt 90% sure on 38, 50-70% sure on 17 and punted on 5, so I bet I got high 60s low 70s on PM. I truly don’t know how to feel, a band 10 wouldn’t shock me, a band 9 maybe would. Will I do it again next year, unfortunately if I have to, I will.
Man my prep was pretty comprehensive and I really do feel a lot of the questions stem from or are extensions from actual examples, EOC, or references from the official CFAI curriculum. Ultimately there were no questions that caught me off guard and none that really surprised me. Did fairly well in the PM I think.
However made a fucking rookie mistake, overconfident after the first few questions in the am, got to the 4th or 5th question and struggled. I don’t know why, but I refused to leave it. When I didnt get to the desired answer, felt like I could quickly spot a clerical mistake that I made, and when I couldn’t, I reworked it from scratch. Next thing you know there’s an hour left and I have 6 questions unanswered. So here I am flipping through each of the questions, skimming cases, totally disregarding what I’m sure might have been some hidden details, looking for some low hanging fruits wherever I could. Writing became messier the more frantic I became. Skipping questions that were fully attainable, and that I was extremely confident in, because they’d require too much time and I had to pick and choose my battles.
Feel like an absolute idiot, really bad way to fail -if I do. Not because of not understanding the material - which I felt pretty proficient with, but failing because of mismanaging my time and not executing my gameplan.
What sucks is, I am usually big on strategy. I tutor Level I and I harp about time management all the time. Man I’m not going to stress out till the marks come out. But realistically, if I could’ve just skipped 1 question, I’d be confident as ****. Now I feel as if I’m on the bubble.
Whatever, 10 weeks, I’ll wait till then to see if I need to crawl into a hole and cry hysterically. Till then you can find me at the local bar!
For me, the morning was very much what I expected in terms of difficulty. I finished the Institutes 2016 and 2015 old exams with a 78 and a 77 and about 3 minutes left at the end. As with the old exams, two parts of questions totaling about 7 minutes left me thinking “first time I’ve seen a question on this topic”.
For the PM, it seemed considerably harder than Institute or Schweser mocks. Mid to high 70s on Schweser and Institute PM mocks. I had about 5 minutes to spare on the actual exam, versus 45 minutes or more on the mocks. Two topics I had struggled with earlier were on the PM. I think I got both, but it was a slog on those. I was running out of energy in the last half hour.
I will never know my actual score, but as someone who does tons of stats and analysis, if the passing score is 66 or less, it feels like a 95%+ chance of passing. No AM or PM mock was that low, and I feel that I upped my game the last few weeks. I checked a few questions where I had doubts and think I got right answers.
For anyone who might want it, my best estimate is for a particular person scoring in the 70s on mocks, their standard deviation of scores is about 4% on a AM or PM mock, and about 3% for a full 6 hour exam.
I am gonna be honest here. This is my 5th time taking this exam. I sped through Level 1 and Level 2 in succession and just can’t pass Level 3. I left 4 sections blank in the AM and didn’t finish a [deleted by admin] question because I just couldn’t calculate the [deleted by admin] for a problem (you know the one). PM I feel like I did well on, at least in comparison.
I have taken 3 day seminars. I have taken mock exams. I have tried multiple study providers. Everything I learn I forget when I come back to it a few weeks later. I happen to think I knew a ton of the curriculum, more than I ever have. I try to learn everything but I never can do the exact question when it comes up on the exam.
So thought, suggestions, etc would be great, but the most frustrating thing is not knowing how to do better next time.
I took 3 past AM exams (2014-2016) and the 2 CFA 2017 Mocks - scored 70% to 79% in all of them, hence I was relatively confident going in.
I found this exam more challenging than any of those I took above. I think I did pretty well on the AM - left 7 points out of 180 blank, but felt fairly good about the rest. The PM - yikes. I expect the PMs to be almost locks, but let me just say, I don’t think I’ll ever just gloss over Ethics again. Like someone else said, I don’t get how large chunks of the curriculum are nowhere to be found - important concepts - but then you get a large % from a relatively small section. It just doesn’t seem fair.
I was hoping to be more confident in a pass, and now I’m thinking it’ll be tight.
Also, worst feeling when you check 2 MC questions after exam that you erased and changed last minute and your original guesses were correct, sigh.