I found Level II Ethics questions way more ambiguous than those of Level I.
maratikus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I found Level II Ethics questions way more > ambiguous than those of Level I. That’s NOT cool, since I found Level 1 ethics to be very ambiguous on test day!
johnnyblazini ain’t a damn thing changed
blazini- L2 isn’t anything too difficult, you’re right. it’s more you just have to put a lot of stuff together. take FSA multinationals- in L1 maybe you had to memorize a few ratio formulas and then you’re home. now it’s assumed you stil know your i dunno, interest coverage and D/E ratio, but the q asks whether the ratio is increasing/decreasing in yes/no 2 parter. prob here is that you now have to remember the ratio, you have to do the currency translations so remember if it’s historical/ave/ending/all-current or temporal, check to see if what you’re doing in terms of domestic or foreign makes sense or if you need to take the reciprocal of whatever currency they give, and check also if we’re in an inflationary or deflationary environment, etc. none of this stuff is that hard, but now stuff it into a 6 question item set where you not only get the B/S and I/S but some other info also that might be extraneous. so it’s 5 hours into the 6 hour test and the kid next to you is annoying as shit and fidgety but if you look over there some stupid proctor is going to ding you with a PCP investigation so back to work, alright lets answer this 1 question. of course they’re not all this long, but it’s stupid stuff like this- instead of you needing to know maybe 1 or 2 critical pieces of info, you have to string together like 5 or 6 and make sure you don’t get thrown off by extra stuff. that or you get the seemingly simple q you can do in about 10 seconds but is a complete mind-f*ck because you forgot some subtle tricky thing about i dunno, depreciation or using a given P/E or an expected or having all of the pieces laid out but you forgetting to subtract some interest that you have to kind of dig for but the easy answer is right there or depreciating things the right way. i dunno- the stuff isn’t HARD- you can teach it to yourself certainly. there’s just a lot of material and the exam will test it fairly in depth. so it gets hard if you haven’t looked at some minor reading in a month or 2 and then you’re jammed with 6 pretty in-depth questions on it. wow that was one big ramble. you sound like you’re intelligent and starting early. i’m sure you’ll be a-ok. it’s not impossibly hard stuff by any stretch. you just need to know it inside and out. you’ll be fine.
very little highly difficult… but exam is very nit-picky… like “what does an audit committee actually do?”. i think everyone knows it oversees the audit, but what else???
When I first looked at the notes, my reaction was the same as yours. Then came the exam… Don’t fool yourself. It is much more difficult than level I.
supersharpshooter Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > johnnyblazini ain’t a damn thing changed Someone finally gets me…
Bannisja, thanks for the feedback… I’m a poor memorizer, but I get finance… Sounds like L2 is suited for my type of skills… Anyways, we’re bound to find out… Thanks for all the info everyone…!
TheChad Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Johnny, > > I understand what you are saying. I have read and > taken notes through FSA so far and have not found > any material to be as grueling as some have > inferred. I have not mastered all of it yet as > there is a fair amount of detail, but I feel > pretty confident that I will not have a problem > with the concepts come April / May. > > However, I have yet to hit some of my weaker areas > from Level I (derivatives and alt. investments) > and I am very nervous about cracking open those > books…Should be mid October by the time I get > there. Wish me luck as I will need every ounce I > can get 
> > TheChad OK so I just finished going through the question set for reading 21 (Intercorporate Investments) and got completely raped. While none of the material was that hard, there are a lot of subtleties…I am going to have a LONG road ahead of me for level II. Ugh…I am already disillusioned and am still eight months out. Best, TheChad
johnnyblazini Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am taking the puppy serioustly (I’m studying in > september…), but it just isn’t as scary as some > forum members make it out to be… Dude, I remember hearing a lot of this from people, then those same people coming back in fits 3 weeks before the exam because they were bombing the CFAi exams. You’re right, the material itself is not much harder, but they are going to test you very very very specifically on it. I mean, it’s scary how picky they get. Halfway through studying for LII I had the impression I could sit LI the next day and pass, now in LIII I do not harbor that impression regarding LII. LII requires you to be mentally crammed and on point. > > For the sour retakers having epileptic fits > (Fridgy), re-read my first statement, I didn’t say > Level II was easy, but slightly distinct from > lubeless anal rape… Perhaps if you re-read > questions before answering them we woulden’t be > having this conversation…
Really uncool, and putting a winky face at the end of it doesn’t make you any less of a douchebag.
man, this conversation really does happen every year… except with a different level of “i’m really smart so the rules don’t apply to me” geniuses saying that they “get” finance so it will be different for them. so here we go again. it’s a hard test. there are a bunch of very smart people here who took it last year telling you it’s a hard test. (the key here is that they’ve actually taken the test) they really have no incentive to try to scare you or give you false information. take the advice, take it seriously, turn the hubris down a notch. chances are you’re at least as half as smart as you think you are and that might be enough to pass. christ. “ain’t a damn thing changed”? “someone finally gets me”? unbelievable.
I think an example of a specific question from this past exam would be helpful. A PM question was “What would be the effect on the stability of the minimum variance frontier if short-selling was prohibited?”. WTF??? You could read the 200 pages on PM over and over and over again, and have absolutely no idea what the answer is. There were questions like this scattered all over the afternoon session this past year. The answer is in the text, but it is one sentence out of a million. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but in some sense I consider my passing Level 2 as a stoke of luck.
I remember that question and I remember I tried to logically reason the answer out. For a question like that…do you guys think you could have reasoned the answer out if you had the core concepts down cold? Because obviously, you’re not going to remember every single detail. Maybe i just didn’t have the concepts down cold enough…i dunno…i wonder…
cfasf1 is obvioustly an avid hiphop fan… Black Swan: thanks for your comments… And, I never claimed not to be a douchebag… I work in finance for christ’s sake…
Blazini. With this forum I’d recommend taking a more humble approach. There are a lot of people out here like cfasf1 and black swan that are willing to help out and give advice on how to pass L2 on the first go. In the home stretch it’s really valuable to have the insights that they do.
i made a similar thread before the 07 exam. my thoughts were that it was challenging to an extent but not what people were making it out to be. the books were also smaller than for level 1. i wanted to see if the general consensus agreed with me and get other people’s thoughts. the point is, level 2 is deceptively difficult if you don’t gauge it properly.
You will know how hard Level II is, when in the exam 2 or 3 choices seem right and you are pulling your hair to deduct the wrong one … reading the book isn’t everything … you have to be a good exam-taker too …
this is seriously great. i remember last year when I passes L1 and was so high on my accomplishment that I thought I’d rip L2’s brains out and pee on them. that didn’t happen. truth is, L2 concepts are easy - which makes the exam that much harder. think about the concept of winning the world series by buying the best players money has to buy. pretty simple, huh? the concepts are easy to understand. the difficulty is showing up everyday to read, study, and do problems and to do that on a consistent basis so that come exam time you ‘peak’ - and rape the exam without lube and escape with no paper cuts. that is the challege.