Hi all. I have been out of the program for several years now. Did my MBA, worked a few years, recently changed geographies and thought it could be useful to resume the program. Prepared a bit and appeared for L2 this year (my second attempt after a largely unprepared attempt many years back)
I thought the AM session was more difficult. I must have made a 50-50 / complete guess on at least 12-15 questions in the AM while much fewer in the evening.
So whats your take on the cut-off this year?
I found the result survey thread from last year L2, downloaded raw data, did some basic cleanup, pivots etc to come up with a few conclusions. Folks here must already be aware of these conclusions but I summarize below what I noticed:
If you are a high Ethics scorer, aggregate score you need to pass is at best 65%.
No high ethics scorer ends up in Band 10.
Average ethics marks of Band 10 over 13 survey participants is 55%. (One Band 10 participant claims 100% in ethics - left out of the averaging)
Average ethics marks of passers with lowest aggregate scores is 71%
Perceived difficulty order by passing candidates (Assuming even difficulty distribution across topic areas by CFAI): QUANTITATIVE METHODS > ETHICAL & PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS > ECONOMICS > FIXED INCOME INVESTMENTS > PORTFOLIO > MANAGEMENT > ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS > DERIVATIVES > CORPORATE FINANCE > EQUITY INVESTMENTS > FINANCIAL REPORTING & ANALYSIS
Please feel free to comment and disagree with the above, I am sure with the 2014 L2 in rear view and the lacuna created in your lives, this will fill some of the void
Interesting to see what additional conclusions can be drawn and awaiting your darts on the MPS this year.
Yes I agree for persons closer to band 10 couple of extra points in Ethics makes a difference.
However if you go to 300 hours the analsis tolds that MPS can be between 59-63 %. I was band 10 last year with only FRA greater then 70 %. & 4 subjects less then 50 in PM, Quant. Econ & derivatives.
Not sure if that number makes sense although I’m sure 300hours would love us to believe it.
For example my brother was scoring 67-73% in 5 CFAI mocks but end up band 7. Hes the type to get nervous during exams but some in the forum ended up band 10 with such mock exam scores. Also band 7 would imply a 53-57%. Its a big stretch no?
Not sure how 300hours came up with it, but going by the last year survey data analysis in the Excel attached above, an MPS of 63% is believable provided you scored well in Ethics. This year MPS would depend upon how candidates perceived overall difficulty wrt last year and could be even lower.
Interesting that Ethics is regarded as the 2nd most difficult topic. I find ethics to be the easiest topic of the litter and hands down the easiest to see a large ROI for time invested. I spent maybe 5 hours total studying ethics and doing ethics questions and I’m fairly confident I got 10/12 correct or better.
I never feel confident in Ethics no matter how much I study for it. Feels like I can always make a case for two answers being right. Then I have to try and think what the CFA exam wants me to put.
I have a question only for the people who think they have over 80% in ethics for sure. Did you study by reading the CFAI cases or did you try to learn via a provider ?
The overwhelming majority of folks including retakers on this forum’s various threads claim this year’s was more difficult and / or trickier as compared to last year.
Band 9 last year. I was dissappointed with the level of difficulty this year. I know the material inside and out (used a vendor but read all the cfai books / eocs) and i feel the tested material was a poor example of what was actually in the cfai books.
Truthfully, i dont believe people have the ability to honestly rank 2x13 to 2x14. If their memory was that good (and unbiased) they wouldn’t have failed the first time.
