My Confidence Level; and is Blinxbuckles a retaker, genius or naive?

Thank you captain obvious. If I got a 55% on the AM session I am in trouble!?!?!?!?!

Some quick math. There are 180 points available in AM session. To get a 70%+ your margin for error is 54 points… If you 1) finished the PM session in the allotted time (I did) and 2) confidently answered each without having to resort to just making stuff up I feel that that 54 point cushion is quite large. That said I am not 100% confident but I have been sleeping comfortably.

I, for one, am pumped about the release of the AM in december. I have some strong opinions about 2 questions in there and can’t wait to vent my anger…

100% on PM…nice work.

Your words not mine

After the exam, I wrote down all points which I made and every single topic, which I screwed up (knowing that it is going to get blurry after 2 weeks or 2 months). Reading this discussion I took a look to recap: I figured that I had 15 topics on the positives and 4 on the negatives… So if I do simple math as a proxy for what to expect overall I get 78% on the positive side. Considering that I might still have some additional mistakes, I would substract 8-10%, which brings me to 68-70%…

hope this will do it, since I invested a lot of time and mocks till it drops… What helped a lot was that I was inspired to take a look at tax topics in the morning on the way there…

Phoenix, I’m impressed that you were able to recollect every single topic after sitting for the exam. I definitely would not have been able to do this.

Me too. Unless I pass, in which case I could care less about it.

I thought the same last year… Then, when it was released, I read the first question and almost fell asleep so decided to accept the victory and move on.

… The positive ones were more general like GIPS, Derivatives, Behavioral Finance etc. and the negatives which I recollected were single questions, which I googled after the exam and I figured out that I was wrong. Some of the topics were also discussed by exam takers during the break and after the exam. I am sure there were much more than the 19, which I could remember… However, I took this as a proxy! Let’s hope the best…

Wow, reading this has crushed my confidence to zero. I studied for this a month (maybe 150-200 hours), then I reflected on it for 2 months which is exactly why it created an expectation of miracly passing.I must drown it with lots of alochol this weekend. Quite impossible that I went through. One for the team or so.

My base case scenario : (67AM and 70PM )/2= 68.5 x probability .5 = 34.25

My high case : 73AM and 75PM = 74 x probability .2 = 14.8

My worst case: 63AM and 67PM = 65 x probability .3 = 19.5

Weighted average score = 68.55

Potential outcome : “Pass” with 87% probability !

Why cry over spilled milk? In any circumstance it will not influence your exam result. What are successful black people telling themselves?: We must be better than others to accomplish equal things, and not blame somebody else. corollary: dont allow yourself the luxury of excuses

The things that have me the most worried are the following;

(i) I don’t know how my written answers will be graded. I heavily practiced the AM and was able to finish all questions, but I worry about missing a key word or other things that lead to lots of lost points on topics I felt I knew well.

(ii) Ethics is a total wild card. I will gladly, gladly, gladly accept 7/12 in Ethics, even 6/12 is cool. CFAI needs to get rid of this topic at Level III, or test it another way. The multiple choice questions introduce a lot of randomness to the exam score. I can’t believe I think this, but it may not be a bad idea having Ethics in the AM if they insist on testing this topic. At least that way, you don’t have the chance that someone clueless on the topic will score as well as, or better than, someone that was knowledgeable on the topic through the randomness of multiple choice. Ethics in the AM allows potential for partial points if you’re in the right ballpark which is a major frustration w/ multiple choice.

For as much as I hated Ethics at Level III, there were a few item sets in the PM were quite easy if you knew the material.

^^^^

Agree with this. I also think the weighting should be dropped. The emphasis of ethics is great but the way it is currently tested is flawed IMO.

+1

I’m worried about losing lots of points in the AM by simply not being able to write exactly what the answer wanted, despite knowing the subject well. In the mocks, far too often I encountered a situation such as:

  • List three reasons, other than Obvious Reason 1 and Obvious Reason 2, that supports this conclusion

  • List two reasons for, and two reasons against this conclusion

And despite understanding the situation, not being able to actually write them out. Somehow, mock exam sample answers were always able to stretch out what I thought of as one thing into 2-3 separate things.

Bump…for daring to question my confidence

How’d you score blink?

AM: 7 > 70, 2 50-70 and 2 less than 50 PM: 6 > 70, 2 50-70

had slightly better results (one set higher), and still didn’t have the full confidence of passing. What if it all came to missing some key words?

In Ethics , to my utter surprise, I’ve got >70. I don’t have a clue how. I bet if I repeat the exact same questions I’d get a lower score