In case you didn’t know, there are 362 Learning Objective Statements for the Level 3 curriculum. How many of these do you think use the word “Calculate”?
50? 60? 80?
Try 9, or just less than 2.5% of all LOSs.
I understand that Level 3 is less quantitative than the earlier exams, and I have even heard (almost certainly false) stories of Level 3 candidates who didn’t even bother to bring a calculator to the exam. But, c’mon, there is no way this exam will be that devoid of calculations. I have noticed that LOSs that start with “Demonstrate” show up on old exams and the answers require calculations, but these are like Gordon Growth model calculations, which any Level 3 candidate can do in his or her sleep.
I don’t want to give the impression that I think this exam shouldn’t be quantitative, because it should. What annoys me is that the curriculum is full of formulas that the various authors use to demonstrate what they are trying to teach (some more successfully than others). However, there is no hard-and-fast rule for which formulas you just need to “get” in the sense of knowing whether increasing X will lead to a higher or lower ratio, and those that you absolutely must commit to memory.
I never worried about this at Levels 1 and 2 because I pretty much assumed that you had to know everything, and if I didn’t remember a formula completely, I could always “reverse engineer” it by plugging in the multiple choice answers.
But I don’t want to end up in a situation on June 1st where an answer requires a formula that I can’t remember exactly and I end up having to essentially write off all the associated points.
Advice?