My overall mock exam results - stamping it for future pass/fail reference

OK, I have finished all the mocks I have (CFAI AM past 3 years + CFAI PM mocks)

I am getting on average: low 60s on AM; low 70’s on PM. I didn’t grade my own AM paper, instead I found someone (kind enough) who is chartered, passed all 3 levels a and currently at first attempt works in the AM industry to grade my paper.

I hope this can be used as a reference compared to actual, when the result is due.

What I found important given 1 day (or 2 for some) is left:

  1. Time management - Don’t get your answers filled in the wrong place

  2. Read the questions - is it least likely or most likely?

  3. Identify your weak area - look through all your mock exam results… which parts are you weak at? spend your last day practicing questions on these parts

  4. Stop trying to pick up new knowledge points - a bit too late now and it gets you panic. Instead, focus on knowing what you thought you already known… I generally didn’t find “surprise” topics but the way they ask the questions make me confused… that probably means I don’t know it enough!

Good luck everyone!

OK, when I posted this, I really hoped that I would pull it out again to annouce good news. But I failed (under band 10) with these performances in the mock exams…

you should understand all the LoS before attempting practice exams so there wont be any new knowledge points. if you got something wrong, fully understand why you got it wrong if u can get 75% consistently, then i cant see how someone can fail

I was always doing much better for the PM section (Got on average low 70’s on the 3 CFA mock exams) … it is to be expected given I passed L1 and L2. I thought I nailed the PM during this year’s exam but the result suggests otherwise… my AM was actually much better than my PM.

I agree with you Balloon_321. I was testing in the 70s on most mock and old CFA PMs, but really underperformed on the PM on test day. It is the nature of the beast that the wrong combination of 1-2 problem sets can make the difference between pass/fail (substitute two 6 question sets you know with 70%-80% accuracy with 2 sets you know with <50% accuracy and that’s a 3-5 correct question difference). We’ll have to try to completely eliminate those <50% accuracy topics next year.

To be honest, I thought L1-L2 were similar in the sense that if I had taken 7 random exams, I would have passed 5 times. The risk inherent in that strategy is now, unfortunately, apparent.

They key to passing the exam is to master every LOS or most of them. I personally did not pay attention to my score on mocks because no matter how hard I tried to simulate real exam conditions I just couldn’t. I’m sure I failed most of the mocks I did for all levels but I always ensured that for every question I got wrong I would go back to the book to understand the concept and LOS A few of my friends would look at the answer key and memorize them. That doesn’t help. In my opinion mocks are a great way to help you understand what your strengths and weaknesses are but are not necessarily a true representation of how you will score in the actual exam.

i find that a lot of candidates get too hung up on mock exam scores which could lead to overconfidence if they did well on them or panic is they don’t do as well.

again this is just an opinion. Everyone has a different style but that approach worked for me.

for those of you who didn’t pass I wish you all the best. You can do it!