I studied using Kaplan and coming out the exam today I felt as if I got cheated. I found the paper pretty tough. How did other Kaplan users felt?
I also felt that some of the questions were too technical and I hadn’t come across them in my preparation. Feeling pretty low at the moment.
Don’t stress it, quantboy – I felt the same way going into Part 1 in November, in the exact same circumstances, but, I ended up nailing the exam. Of course, I didn’t know that until a couple of months later when I got my results. Check out this earlier thread I started when I got out of Part 1:
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/frm-forum/91316356
About to leave here in a couple of hours to go take Part 2. Wish me luck.
I feel paper is easy though I’m not able to take full advantage of it. I think cut off will be very high this time. Questions are of same level as Kaplan 2 practice papers questions.
Any comments…
ok here is my feedback. I used both schweser and bionic turtle. In the first 2 hours of the exam I was in a state of panick and was skipping many questions. By the end of the 3rd hour I went through the whole paper one time, only having answered 67 questions. In the last hour I realized that the questions althought appeared difficult and intimidating, they could be tackled easily if you understood the concepts properly. So i answered another 25 questions and had to guess about 8 of them. I can say that i really liked the frm exam. It doesn’t ask you straight forward questions, rather questions which really test your understanding of the topics. If I fail it would be due to panick and due to the fact that I went through the first 67 questions quite fast worrying that I would run out of time. Hopefully I won’t fail but if I do, I will just have to change my strategy during the exam.
Also I have to say that having used both schweser and bionic turtle, bionic turtle seems to be more thorough and their questions are a better indicator of the actual exam.
Best wishes
There were a lot of questions that needed the calculator; but many can be answered with a good understanding of the concepts plus some reasoning without touching the calculator. The guy on my left started punching the calculator 5 seconds into the exam - I am not sure where he started - but I don’t remember I used calculator for question 1 - and it took me at least 15 seconds to read the first question!
Personally, I felt I was adequately prepared by studying the GARP meterials and was able to get through the entire test relatively eaisly with 25 minutes to spare; so I guess my “expected shortfall” is low. But you never know - I may be overconfident. The point is that it’s important to really know the materials instead of relying solely on “second-hand” study notes.
The FRM Level I is over so here is my long-ish feedback.
I used Schweser notes and the GARP sample exams for preparation. I started studying at the end of February, but by the end of March I had covered only 20% of the subjects. Therefore, I had to do the rest of 80% during the month of May (besides a full time job of course). For the past 2 weeks I practiced questions and reviewed the material.
First of all, after taking the exam I can now understand why some people feel that Schweser did not cover all the relevant topics. I would say only 5% of the questions were completely new to me. What is a bit worrying (regarding Schweser quality), for example, we had a question regarding “Risk Universe”, well this term was in the Schweser notes of 2 years ago but not anymore. Luckily that was the only chapter I actually studied from the official readings, otherwise I would have been completely clueless. I felt clueless about a few other questions, but not too many. I think it is only fair that some questions can be replied only if you have also studied the official readings, in order to differentiate between people.
During the first half an hour I felt rather uncomfortable, I found quite some questions which I could not answer, for example I got numerical answers which were not in the 4 options. I tried to skip as quickly as possible and try to move forward. I guess my best part of the exam is between question 25 and 75. It appears to me that it is extremely important to skip and move forward and actually solve asap what you can solve and leave the rest at the end. I do not think it is too difficult to return to questions (as it is sometimes said on forums), but u need to have a strategy in this sense and mark well your questions otherwise u end up flipping back and forth, which is of course not desirable. So after I went through about 65 questions I took a break, went outside for 2 minutes – I would strongly recommend that, I completely felt dehydration kicking in (by the way the rule that you are not allowed to drink even water in the exam room is absolutely ridiculous, this is an exam not a short term detention, but whatever…). During the last exam hour I felt how my energy level was decreasing constantly, not such a nice feeling. I guess it was due to the stress and bad sleep the night before.
After going through all the questions I went back and solved whatever was left unsolved. Still I did not manage to reasonably solve some of them…and I had to apply some educated guesses. Fortunately, however, a few other problems I could solve well the second time. All in all in the last 10 minutes I had to fill in about 4 random answers. I would have liked to go one more time through the questions that I was not 100% sure about, but obviously there was no time for that.
I think there were a lot of questions with Futures, Binomial trees, VaR transformations. I found the questions related to Part II quite easy, but perhaps it’s just my background. Only very few (3 at max) and quite common sense questions about Financial disasters (only related to MGRM, Barings and LTCM) and Garp code of conduct. I did not think there were too many questions from “collateral” material, so I would not worry too much about that. The main challenge, besides time pressure, is how you manage to keep your energy level during the exam. I was quite worried the 2 days before the exam and I slept quite badly the night before (woke up one hour before the alarm went off L). Clearly this didn’t help and in more relaxed conditions I guess I could have done better. I know that I did some questions wrong even though they were related to material I knew. For example out of 3 binomial tree questions, I am confident I got 2 right but with the third one I just could not come up with an answer matching any of the options. This is a little bit embarrassing I would say. Normally when you sit for an exam you have topics that you feel more comfortable with and topics that you feel less comfortable about. You solve correctly what you know and try to maximize the “return” on the topics you do not feel so comfortable. Well, unfortunately this time I am aware I did some mistakes also where I knew the material. That’s the main frustration I feel at this moment.
I would say it’s a bad idea that we do not get to see the official correct answers and the questions afterwards online. After struggling for 4 hours there, I am of course very curious to know how did I perform, and not only as a score, or relative percentile, but really what did I do wrong. I would think that is one of the ultimate goals of an exam, besides getting familiar with certain topics. I will now be left in the dark until I receive an e-mail saying whether I passed or not…a bit sad.
As some final conclusion, the take away for future candidates would be:
Do not stress before the exam, sleep well, and eat decently. Think of those 4 hours as a battle, you don’t want to be there in bad shape.
Study the Schweser material thoroughly but also have a quick look at the official readings, it may pay off.
During the exam, skip the questions you don’t know how to solve/can’t get to one of the numerical answers.
Watch well the clock
Write neatly around the questions on the exam paper so in case you need to come back you don’t need to waste time.
I agree with above comments. I also panicked in the beginning of exam. Worst case is when I’m filling omr I find I skipped 5 questions because paper is so thin and I’m not checking questions no. while solving. For all people preparing for Nov exam plz read kaplan material and solve schweser pro questions. I don’t know about paper difficulty in previous years but I just use kaplan notes and there is no question which surprised me totally.
Sorry for the typos
And yeah I’m always more concerned to do those 60 to 70 questions right which everyone can solve instead of thinking about very tough question.
If you go by your strength you have better chances to pass then to worry about question which almost nobody can solve in given time
Thanks
Sorry for the typos
Hi guys thank you for your valuable feedback. And apologies for the late reply but I wish you luck destroyer of worlds.
i agree with you guys that there were quite a few binomial tree questions and questions relating to VaR some I’m sure I got correct. I found there wasn’t much on futures and commodities and hardly any questions on duration and fixed income. It really frustrating be used have studied the GARP exam papers which I felt were pretty text book style the actual exam is a bit more challenging. I guess sometimes you need a bit of luck too because in today’s exam I managed to answer some questions having no knowledge of the material and my only reason for getting them correct was be because I did some last minute reading on some untouched AIMs.
I did my exam in London and the exam didnt start till half hour later then scheduled which I thought was very unprofessional. Almost 5 hour sitting in that hall and their strict policies about on drinks is a bit extreme. Oh well. Enough moaning.
i wish you all luck and it’s now time to wait for the results.
What is past cutoff for L 1 exam. My friend who passed last year told its around 60. Anybody have any clue…
and how GARP calcualte percentile. Like top total marks or individual part top marks.