The good news is I felt the calculation questions in PM were extremely straightforward. There was only one that I didn’t know how to do as I never wrote a formula card on it, and another that I flat got wrong as I applied the wrong method and the exam offered that wrong method as an answer choice. Every other time I ran the calc and the answer was there. Outside of the one, I don’t think I made any mistakes or fell for anything but it’s always possible.
There was one question that I was literally thinking about the day before the exam, wondering how you get to a certain calculation. So I practiced it a few times (it involved applying a little bit of algebra) and sure enough there it was on the PM session. Felt good about that one. Ethics though. Man … those are just never cut and dry across the board. Some, sure, but there’s always those where you’re juggling a couple of answers. I just hope my intuition developed from practice was on point.
great description. I knew everything, nothing tested i didn’t know. completely in the zone. answered everything with about 5mins to spare.
PM lots of traps, even now i’m not sure which answer they were looking for. I guess this is why only half of us will pass. Band 5 last year, a band 9 or 10 is gonna hurt really hard. (band 5 again & I give up)
I finished with about 30 minutes to spare in the AM, question 1 threw me off, but got back on the horse and finished the exam. Managed my time, trying to be thorough but trying to move through, because I wanted to review two questions that I was very unsure of. Luckily, when I did, I realized I had skipped two whole questions of an item set at the back of a page. F me… glad I caught it and could put something down that was reasonable. Felt good after AM, as in not feeling totally defeated but not feeling like terrible. PM I felt okay, there were a few questions I think we are all thinking about that threw me for a loop. But, was able to think through them and reminded of some older material from previous exams. Checked after the exam those were right. I would say I feel 70/30 on pass/fail. Glad I could finish AM, and catch the missed two questions.
I felt the AM was manageable as well…but looking back, I made some stupid errors on some subsections due to the time pressure. PM I didn’t find bad…felt good about most questions, but made some mistakes by over-thinking a few of them. Most calculations worked out with the exception of a few where I tried everything and still couldn’t get the answer.
Did anyone else find the last AM question confusing because of how it was worded?
Same here guys. Other than the first item set, and a few other parts spattered throughout, I barely remember the AM exam. I don’t remember the final item set at all. All I know for sure is that I wrote answers for each subsection lol.
Happy to hear this might be normal. I was starting to think I simply blacked out after the first question and handed in a blank paper.
I keep coming back to an afternoon question where one of the choices sounded incredibly out there, but not necessarily wrong. One of the other choices was clearly wrong. I think I had the right answer.
I think the crazy choice was there because it sounds a bit like what would have been a really good answer.
I think the biggest problem is that we overrepresent our negative sentiment solely based upon a handful of questions you know you struggled with. All the while, we fail to give ourselves any credit for all the ones we did really well on. At least that’s how I’m viewing it at this juncture. Trying not to dwell on my faults or follies and attempting to hold solace on strong performance elsewhere. Cautiously optimistic I guess.
mentioned earlier, i rushed through AM and thought it was not easy but fine, I think am is always tricky because you don’t know how the answer is graded and you are always trying to simply answer the questions, finish it but not be 100% correct during the time, so i guess it was fine
I got stuck in PM a lot, thinking back it was nothing abnormal, probably had 5 questions I just don’t know and can’t find the right answer and made guesses, couple ethic questions I was unsure of (i am never good with that section anyway), and realize i made stupid last minute calculation errors, like 2-3 of them i have realized by now, I hope i passed, but if i didnt there is nothing i can do, i did my best.
This is the first time I have felt like a few of the questions were actually aimed at catching candidates sleeping (both in terms of wording of the question and just content overall.) I’ve always thought that CFA wasn’t trying to trick you, this time around not so much. I thought that there were a few sections on the AM portion that were “fringe” at best and found that a bit frustrating, but as always it’s all fair game.
PM felt easy for 75% and then there were a few real tough ones.
I intentionally went back on a couple questions that I didn’t know how to do and changed my answer from what I thought was “close” to “b” or a random choice. My feeling was that if I completely guessed I would probably have a better chance getting it right than doing it somewhat correct and picking an answer that was there to trick you. Hope that strategy worked!
Does anyone know if CFAI has ever had an issue where they lost a large amount of candidates exams? Like, would if the plane carrying the exams crashed or the UPS truck drove off a bridge?
