The AM exam instructions said that you need to use Blue or Black ink - Did anybody write the exam with a pencil?
Pencil (and I saw plenty of other candidates bring pencils, too)-- sure as hell glad I didn’t use pen–would’ve been a disaster!
Yes, the instructions do say use pen, but users here have e-mailed the institute and confirmed that pencil WILL BE GRADED. The mods should really make it a sticky.
Real men use pen
After debating myself for a while, I decided to follow the instructions and use a pen. Big mistake. If I have to take it again I will definitely use a pencil for the AM. After crossing things out, making mistakes on calculations, circling an answer on the template and changing my mind, using a pencil is a no brainer. I just I wish I’d listened to the “pencil people” on this board.
if i circled the wrong answer with my pen…i just cross it out and circle another one :)…there is so much lined paper available…no need to erase stuff anyways…just cross out and rewrite…
I sort of wished I used a pencil. Pen is fine, but I like being able to erase. I actually skipped circling one of the answers I was unsure about since I didn’t want to cross it out later if I decided to change it (what was I thinking?). Totally forgot about the unanswered question and never went back to it – doh!
CFAI should just write “Pencil is OK” instead of having us do all this guesswork which may actually hurt some scores.
I saw one proctor telling a candidate who had pencil that pencils weren’t allowed and then another proctor came in to argue this with him. And they can’t even be blamed. The first one said that because that’s what was written on the instructions - the other was a proctor every year and saw people using pencils all the time. The candidate looked puzzled, and I felt no confidence to interject and say that pencils were allowed, since I was using pen to be safe as well.
There have been a few people that have directly emailed CFAI (including me) and pencil is OK, it will be accepted and there is no penalty