My AM was a DISASTER. I thought PM was very fair.
i second everything you said. AM was tough
for PM, I think besdies ethics and GIPs, i got 100%
L III confirmed a self-evident truth for me, which nevertheless surprises me every time - there is so much testable material that CFAI does not need to “stress” - there is always enough material to make sure that no matter how well you prepare, things will catch you off guard … While I had felt my prep was good (better by far than L II), I understood that the volatility of the L III test was great enough that the MAR (=MPS) required me to produce a higher expected score (return … LOL).
My personal strategy to do this was to solve the AM according to my strengths, despite the risk of missing section / writing in the wrong place. In the mocks this happened to me, but since I gave myself zero credit when his happened on the mocks and was also unable to write the answer for the original question, I resolved this early on and had no issues during the exam. I also knew that in my weaker areas, it was more a question of whether I knew some sub-part of the area or not.
I did my top 7 questions with no stress, working at a good pace, though I knew I was behind time-wise. With about 30 min to go, I had three questions left (though only 25% in terms of points). I decided to divide my time equally between the first question (on an OK subject) and the last 2 questions (on less OK subjects for me). I did a reasonable job (I think) on the 8th question, though I had only 15 minutes (this was about the time allotted but I was feeling the stress) and then had about 15 minutes for the last two questions, which I split up to 9 and 6 minutes. I was lucky that both questions had subparts that required circling, and even more so that for the 9th question I knew the material well enough provide OK answers, though not in detail. The 10th question, I had very little time. I knew some parts, which I answered / circled quickly and very briefly. I ran out of time trying to briefly answer the last subsection. However, given that this was a section I usually do relatively poorly in, I think my time was better spent maximizing my points earlier.
While I do not know whether the strategy was ultimately successful, I did not experience any stress or first question shocks like others, and I was pleased that I had executed on a rational strategy in a reasonable manner, although I would have been happier had I had an extra 5-7 minutes, but this is marginal.
My PM strategy, which I used in previous levels, is the wave method. I rank questions 1 through 4, with 1 being a question I am confident on (i.e. can eliminate two answer choices), 2 where I think one answer is better than the others (i.e. able to eliminate one answer, though not two and can choose a better/more likely choice), 3 for questions I can only eliminate one answer but cannot choose between two very clearly and 4, where I have no clue (unable to eliminate any answer). Based on my self-testing for L III, I got “1s” correct ~93% of the time, “2s” ~80%, “3s” ~64% and “4s” roughly 40%, which makes sense as sometimes even though you cannot eliminate any answer, there is one that sounds more plausible given your familiarity with the material.
In the first wave I answer those questions I have ranked 1 and 2, which was about 40 out of the 60, with the remaining 20 split into 13 “3s” and 7 “4s”. This took about 75 minutes. In the second wave I was able to change 10 of the 20 questions into 1s or 2s - sometimes re-reading does help! By now, 2 hours had passed. I took a bathroom & drink break, returned to the room and closed my eyes for about 2 minutes. Then I had 45 minutes left. The tactics now was now not too see if I could change a question from a “4” to a clear “1”, but whether I could change it into something better than a 3. In wave 3 I was able to further reduce the remaining 10 questions to 2 questions that had rated 4 and in the final wave I actually recalled the relevant equation and it turned into a “1”, while I had to guess the final one. All in all I had 32 “1s”, 13 “2s”, 12 “3s” and 1 “4”, which should come out, on average, to a score of 48.24 out of 60, or about 80%. This is slightly above my average mock PM score of 77.
If I was forced to guess, I would hazard AM 60-70 (depending on the severity of the scoring), PM 75-80, but you never know …
Magnus
AM was fair. Had 15 mins left to go through my answers at teh end. I thought the PM was tough. Couple of questions baffled me like I knew the correct formulas etc but couldnt get anything that matched the answers on the pages! Guessed maybe 4 or 5. Hopefully it is enough to pull together a pass!
enjoy the summer!
At my test center, two test takers shared one table. The takers who shared the table with me, keep erasing her answers. When she erased, the table was shaking. It was affecting me.
Yes. David Heatherington at Schweser repeatedly makes this point. There is even a PM question I went back and researched that many people wouldn’t get right open book. You had to think through the issues.
Felt AM was ok, aside from Alts which I literally facepalmed like really??? Seemed like great L2 deriv questions, was completely unprepared for that and blindsided me right out of the gate. PM was a challenge for sure, opened the book and didnt see GIPS, was thrilled, didnt realize performance measurement was GIPS. However felt sections of Perf Attribution in the AM & Econ in the PM that could be tough were fairly easy. Fair exam, not sure if I passed or will be sitting again next year.
I left 3/4 sub questions in AM , PM was good although few questions I had to guess as I completely forgot few formulae. fingers crossed
Victoryeo1984 - exact same thing for me! At least the erasing got more reasonable in the PM - in the AM I thought the guy would erase off the table!
Yes, the erasing was seriously bad in the AM, and it did get better in the PM. Everytime she erased in the AM, i had to stop writing… it pissed me off.
I wonder why CFAI couldn’t secure more sturdy table if they want two test takes to share one table?
Let’s call a spade a spade. The PM section had a couple plug and play questions that didn’t have a correct answer. Other than one person who mentioned it, anyone else saying that they “crushed” the PM sections is delusional.
on my case…my person on my right always cough very very hard, sure it distract my concentration. but i just take it as handicap.
idk about CRUSHED, but i felt it was tougher. 2nd ethics vig had a few that were very iffy. GIPS was tough as i suck at GIPS. There were some questions asked that were simple in the sense you either knew the answer or you didnt. Some sections were fairly easy like RM & FI on PM. Equity was all subjective stuff basically could have gone either way on a few. I felt AM was more straightforward all the Individual stuff which was like 30% of AM was pretty cake IMO. The only issue was there was a lot of writing on AM so time crunch was real. Finished with like 20 mins left got a quick review of a few problems but nothing like the extra hour I had in PM.
Wouldn’t surprise me for one of the questions in the PM section where there was one plug and chug formula. However, the question gave you other sets of information that didn’t appear on any of the other item sets for that type of plug and chug question. If you didn’t include that additional information you didn’t get to an answer. I guessed that you had to include that additional information because all the other answers were differentials of a sign flip for one other variable.
I think I know what one of those questions was. However, if you looked at the case there was an additional piece of necessary data. As soon as he realized it, you had the question nailed.
TO Flashback:
Hats off to the effort!! I have to show respect to your commitment!
Hope we all pass!
Joe also had the same realization. Bet we both got this right.
AM-
After the initial kick in the nuts, I found my stride and finished with 3 whole minute to spare. I did not feel comfortable with a number of my answers, but I at least wrote something relevant in every section. I really could’ve used 30 minutes to review, but it is what it is. I feel like a probably ended up somewhere on the good side of 50%.
PM-
I really feel like I Slumdog Millionaire’d that bitch. Every question that came up, I had a flashcard for. And if something was on my flashcards, I knew it cold. I’m sure I got tripped up somewhere along the way, but seriously, nothing caught me off guard. Finished in about 90mins, reviewed the entire exam and didn’t make a single change to my answers.
I have no idea what quesrion you’re talking about. All information was pretty easy to extract from I recall.
Hello from a long-time AF lurker on the other side of my first (and hopefully last) CFA Level III exam. Full disclosure: I passed Level II in my first attempt, but probably the last person in Band 11 and I fully committed to Level III studies as soon as I got my results last year. In fact, I posted my Level II matrix here but felt so bad reading other people had failed with seemingly better matrices that I deleted my post. I enrolled in Schweser’s premium package and then a friend who passed Level III last year pointed me to LevelUp Bootcamps, and I also went through Wiley’s platinum package. I worked through all Schweser and Wiley videos in parallel with LevelUp On-Demand Videos (curriculum-guided) and also attended LevelUp BootCamp in NYC, and there is no way that Schweser and Wiley would have been sufficient for me to pass this exam. Working more with the curriculum using Marc as the guide worked for me.
AM session was “easy” because I was well-prepared (thanks to LevelUp). I’ve dreaded the constructed response session since first reading about it as a Level I candidate, but Marc’s strategies definitely worked in my favor. Took a few minutes to look over the topics and relative point values, and then attacked the exam with time management: I didn’t work the problems in order (after reading about last year’s Q1), so instead I started with the higher point value questions, marked the time at start/end of each question, skipped calculations in two sub-parts as soon as I started feeling stuck, moved on through the lower point value questions, and circled back in the last 30 minutes for the two sub-parts I skipped. I finished with 15 minutes to spare, enough time to make sure I didn’t overlook anything, that I answered the questions asked (caught and corrected a mistake where I was one calculation step away from the answer), and checked my circles and currency denominations (one spot I had overlooked). Also, I worked every question in prior morning exam book from LevelUp (all 2000-2016 questions still relevant to current CFAI curriculum) twice during the final month, and that was key to confidence and speed - I wrote sentences instead of bullets, stating the theory first and then how it applied to the case/question. I walked out for the lunch break feeling confident about most of the morning questions.
Like several of you mentioned, I found the PM session more difficult, but it would have been impossible without the curriculum and LevelUp. There was a “critical mass” of PM questions that Schweser/Wiley alone would not have prepared me for. It seems like CFAI put enough of those questions in the PM to prevent candidates with poor morning performance from pulling themselves up in the afternoon due to third-party prep provider materials alone.
I feel pretty good, but time will tell. Good luck to all - time to enjoy Summer and try not to obsess during the long wait for results.