I wrote in toronto too. honestly that traffic jam shtshow on the hiway messes with your mindset. I was pumped and ready to go and then all of a sudden I’m debating whether or not I need to leave my car on the hiway. my 15 min drive took 1 hr and 15mins. and I left early on top of that. I went in at about 815 and sat down and got my zone back. really sucks though and I think it was really unfair/unfortunate for the late arrivals into the exam. you shouldn’t have to get there 3 hrs early to get in on time - they need to split the exam at 2 venues and don’t anyone say ‘well you should leave early and be prepared’, that only goes so far.
although I’m happy they had tables to eat my lunch at lol. I heard on the news they called it an accounting exam. and that we were all students. that made me even more angry lol
this describes me. I studied over 600 hours, and I thought it was easy–even the morning. Whether I’m in the first group or the second remains to be seen.
IPS stuff were confusing, im glad i didnt even start with those … i believe i did well on the conceptual parts and flunked up the calculation parts… im definitely sure that i flunked the AM … (ill get a max of 50%) … however PM was kind of “easier” not in terms of tricks though … hoping to get +70% … last year i failed band 4 … i believe i will fail this year but im hoping for a better result just cause i bombed PM last year so hard too.
Morning session was unconventional, but I agree that timing the mocks will prepare one for it. Another challenge is correctly responding to the conceptual questions asked. That was my emphasis this year though and I am okay that.
I considered that PM couldn’t have been tricky enough. I recollect incorrectly adding up decimals and whole numbers and the result was starring at me among the options. I just laughed and re-solved the question.
Felt that the exam was generally simpler compared to past mocks and essays.
But I struggled for time during the AM portion having gone through a couple of timed test myself during pratice. But managed to complete it with like 10 minutes remaining.
PM session was a breeze. Finished with an hour to go and had ample time to recheck every single question. There are some tricky questions that I thought will fool a couple of folks; especially those whereby if you missed certain “keywords” in the paragraphs will determine whether you got the question correct or wrong.
Hopefully this is the last set of CFA papers I’ll be taking.
Morning was easier than I thought, but just more time consuming. A lot of folks around me complained that they felt the morning was too conceptual and not enough direct calculations. They felt it lacked template pages as compared to the previous years exams. Either way, templates or not I always told myself the point of the constructive response / writing was to demonstrate your ability of understanding the concepts. The very fact that there were less than 20 formulas to memorize, of which half were probably just different extensions of tax calcs or how to modify the target duration/beta goes to show there wasn’t much ‘plug n chug’ to be expected.
I thought the first half of PM was pretty easy and straight forward. However I struggled with the latter half b/c they dedicated a decent amount of questions to topics that I thought weren’t considered “core”.
Right on. Reading the situations carefully in the PM was paramount. There were several instances where simply glancing at the exhibits and reading the question were not enough.
thought AM was kind of tough, but not a killer. Spend too much time on the IPS case and then had to catch up. Got into a rhythm at the half way point and made up the time thankfully.
PM was much easier than the AM. I hope performance in PM will make up for AM and push me over the hump.
Definitely AM. No questions about that. But they threw in a few curve balls in PM. Overall was comparable to previous years. Most at this stage more or less knows what is to be expected, so it’s all about time management, time management & time management. The difference between an analog & a digital watch definitely plays a very important part.
For those who are saying ethics was tough, I felt flipping through the CFAI Ethics handbook to be extremely beneficial. I didn’t even read the front half of any chapter but just skimmed through all the applications/examples. I actually though ethics was very straightforward this year. And GIPS wasn’t bad at all neither…
As you may have noticed, the majority of participants on this forum is US-based. I can guarantee that on my test center (Brazil), there were TONS of people talking that they could not end the AM session, that they left MANY unanswered questions. The “native” aspect of language has a intrinsic negative value on foreigners, especially on this “rush AM” session.
Thats funny, because we actually feel that there may be an easier version of the AM out there for non-native english speakers. Which upsets me, honestly - you dont’ choose your mother tongue, but you do choose to participate in this program.
My AM was much more straightforward, I spent time on each question and finished 10minutes early. There were definitely quite a few tricks thrown in, that needed additional factoring - most of my mocks ended around the 2:10 mark.
PM was a different story - felt like a deer in the headlights on some of those.
When I wrote my level III, it felt the same. But I guess is the PM session weighs more in your passing or not.
AM is pretty much the same for everyone - meaning unless you are too bad or too good, you will be just fine. There will always be something in AM that you don’t have an answer until you continue with your journey in another universe:)
