How are you making the determination of “most likely” for yourself?
I’d be curious to hear the rational why 60 is more likely than 65 or 55, for example.
I’m not making any determination, I’m just trying to explain how the 40/60/80 simulation works as I understand it. If all of your topics were scored 50-70 it would take the mid point as the most logical likely score. That doesn’t mean that you got a 60 and the MPS must be 60 as was implied in an earlier post. You’ll literally never know what your score was or what the MPS was but I would infer from someone getting all 50-70’s and passing that their score was closer to 70’s than it was to 50’s given that the general consensus is that the MPS is mid-high 60’s
My 2015 result:
Item Set
Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70% - Alternative Investments 18 - - * - Corporate Finance 36 - - * - Derivatives 36 - - * - Economics 18 * - - - Equity Investments 72 - * - - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 * - - - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - - * - Fixed Income Investments 36 - * - - Portfolio Management 18 * - - - Quantitative Methods 18 - * -
2016 Result:
Item Set
Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70% - Alternative Investments 18 - - * - Corporate Finance 36 * - - - Derivatives 36 - - * - Economics 36 - - * - Equity Investments 54 - - * - Ethical & Professional Standards 36 - * - - Financial Reporting & Analysis 72 - * - - Fixed Income Investments 36 - * - - Portfolio Management 18 - - * - Quantitative Methods 18 * - -
Both were band 10 fail
Wow. I can’t believe you failed both times with those matricies. Makes me feel even worse about results day lol.
Seems very odd to me as well…Seen people publishing worse scores, yet managing to pass.
But then again, you never know whether you got 52 % or 69 % or 100 % or 72 %…
For the low weighted subjects you can have a very close guess, but otherwise yes you are just guessing.
If the Ethics adjustment exists I think you have to be very very good at everything else if you don’t score >70% in Ethics.
I don’t understand how someone can manage to score > 70% on Deriv. and PM, but score < 50% on Corp. Fin. and Ethics. It makes no sense to me…
Do you agree with this assumption that 60 is “the most logical likely score” and if so, why is that the case? That’s what I am asking. If you disagree with that assumption of taking the middle value, then no need to justify. I just haven’t heard or seen any logic to defend that choice when people use it.
This is where the argument also breaks down in my opinion. We have no way to know the MPS, so the general consensus is based on conjecture and a garbage “study” done by 300 Hours. 300 Hours could be correct, but they way they conducted their research and wrote it up makes it pretty low on the totem pole for what I would consider evidence. There’s a ton they omitted. Anyhow, whether or not the MPS is closer to 70 than to 50, the logic of “most people think this without substantial evidence” doesn’t hold up in my opinion. The other issue is the MPS may have a wide range of variation from year to year, and again, we don’t know how things are handled behind the scenes.
I’m not trying to argue, but I don’t believe there have been many well explained reasons put forth. I’d be more inclined to take the average score from CFAI online topic tests and CFAI EOCs from people who did them without using notes and see how that turned out against their actual matrices. If it doesn’t fit well, find something new, but I think the MPS “studies” are usually pretty shaky and based on many assumptions. I have also yet to see someone attempt to apply a classification test to see how well the idea of a particular MPS holds up (i.e. how often are we correctly classifying those who pass and those who fail, based on our suspected MPS).
Ya I agree with you that taking the middle value isn’t a reliable estimate and that was the point that I was trying to make to the other poster. I also agree that there is no way to know the true MPS but given that we know 70 is a pass, and that we know people have passed with less than a 70 with the ethics adjustment, it seems reasonable to me that they could give you the ethics adjustment benefit on a max of 5% or one full item set. Essentially subbing in a good ethics item set for a bad item set somewhere else (at least for level 2). Further, I acknowledge that this is pure speculation on my part but speculation that seems reasonable to me given what we know for sure about the test. In all honesty if you’re not shooting for a 70 when taking these tests you’re doing it wrong, yet these MPS discussion posts show up every year and someone always wants to know if they can pass by getting less than at least 4 out of every 6 questions right. Which to me the answer should be no.
Makes sense now!
Where do we know 70% is a pass? I had heard a rumor that there was once a note on the CFAI website that no one has ever failed with at least a 70%, but I never saw it myself, unfortunately.
It’s an interesting idea, though. I think they would have an internal set of criteria for how and when to apply and adjustments, if they exist.
I agree with you. I think too many people focus on just passing the exam rather than actually understanding the material. They want the trophy but don’t want to work. I think if people focused more on real learning, not the crap bullet points put in Sch weser, there would be many more people passing. Without any scientific rigor to this claim, I have observed that people using the curriculum tend to pass in fewer attempts per level than those using third party materials as the main source. Not sure how that would stand up if quantified, and I haven’t even begun to think of confounding variables if that result did show up in the data.
I just sort of hate the topic of MPS. The only objective thing I feel like any candidate has been presented with is that 70 percent is a known raw score guaranteed pass. I have heard stories of high 50s on CFAI mocks and people passing. Tons of things to consider in that grey area. I think 67 across the whole test considering the difficulty of it I probably 90 percent of the time a passing score.
Would be awesome to have a tiered system of something like, “Definite passing students 70 or above get results emails in half the regular time”. Bet pass rates would go up also -_-
Truthfully I have never seen with my own eyes anything from CFAI that said 70+ is a sure thing pass but have seen that quoted many times. I think its reasonable to assume that 70+ is the safety zone though given that the ranges they give you for your score are <50, 51-70, 70+.
I also agree with your second point, I have felt more prepared and came away with better depth on topics when reading straight from CFAI. Schweser and others are best used as a supplement in my opinion.
Right but the fact that you are in the 10% of people who did not pass does not necessarily mean that you are very close to the one who passed with the lowest mark.
There may indeed be in theory a gap between the last guy who passed and the first guy who failed. so the evaluaton of the grade of a band 10 does not necessarily help to figure out what the MPS was.
Part of the mystery is I think everything is relative. On the CFAI website, it states:
“For example, candidates in higher score bands may have topic area performance summaries that resemble that of a passing candidate.”
Meaning you could possibly have someone that failed, Band 10, have results that look pretty much or exactly like someone that passed. So then why did one fail and one pass?
The thing is, I think the way they do the performance summary is that they are also basing that on which group you’re in, the pass or fail group.
Meaning the >70% in the fail group doesn’t equal the >70% in the pass group. So in the pass group, >70% could mean on average those folks got 5 out of 6 right but in the fail group, it could only mean 4 out of 6 right.
Doesn’t sound like much but do that for each topic and it adds up quick. I could be wrong on this, but that is my impression as I thought I read something along those somewhere though I’m unable to find it to reference…
What I think they mean is that even though they may have the same score matrix, the person who passed has higher scores in each category (e.g. if both have >70 in some category, the failed person may have 71 points, the passed person 99), so really it’s the total that counts.
Let’s say it’s an item set and the weighting for the whole exam is 5%, so it’s just one vignette. if you score between 51 and 70 that means you got 67%. 4 out of 6 questions answered correctly. There is no score of 51 or 70, it’s just 67. That’s what I thought anyway.
Agreed, it is entirely plausible that there is an indeterminate buffer zone, just as it is entirely plausible there is not, and everything I said is largely subjective, so band 10 doesn’t necessarily imply that is just below the pass lin, I just think it is. I don’t have evidence other than analyzing the scores of people who passed, and people who were band 10 fails (I obviously don’t have a large amount of data here!) and the difference typically seems to be negligible.
It’s just one theory and I acknowledge the criticism and agree that what say is not necessarily factually correct as nobody can confirm it. Happy to discuss your opinion on the topic too.
Hello folks,
Please understand that 40/60/80 score makes an assumption that you scored in the middle of the range. For example, if you scored between 51 and 70 in EQUITY, The calculation of 40/60/80 assume your score is 60% in EQUITY. However, actually your score in EQUITY could be anything between 51 and 70. So the 40/60/80 score is only an approximate indication of your score but your actual score could be anything below or above your 40/60/80 score.
I think this is all well understood. The issue is that the assumption doesn’t really have a reasonable explanation floating around with it for people to evaluate. Further, no one has taken the method and attempted to classify people as pass/fail from the “estimated MPS” while comparing this with the actual results of pass fail. In fact, the CFAI had supposedly said, at one time, that no one who scored at least 70 has failed. Why not make a simple assumption then that if someone has failed, the highest they scored is 69%, and use this to help in coming up with a potential “score” and eventual “MPS”? At least this would be based in something the CFAI supposedly stated.
Another issue, which I believe may have been brought up in the past, is that we don’t know what >70% stands for on the score matrix… does it mean >70% raw score or >70% of the highest score or of the average of the top 10% of test takers on that exam? I may have missed this if we have actual documentation of what it means, but if not, that throws another monkey wrench into this one.