POST EXAM: How do you think you did on am and pm?

CFA Level III
#21

As a cautionary tale for future L3 takers but also to vent a little.

I come from a finance/econ background and am generally a quick study / have had a track record of exam success with little studying. I passed L1 with maybe a month of studying, and L2 with a month and a half. Besides Ethics and Behavioral, this year I probably put in closer to 2 months, so I felt like I had a shot going into the exam. I was aware this wasn’t ideal especially for this test due to the essay nature but I had a lot of constraints on my time this year, and I figured it was worth attempting rather than not, as I had already registered for the test and paid for it.

AM was absolutely brutal for me. Whereas I think I got by in L2 by everything being in multiple choice, having to actually write essays for things is a whole different animal and I lost a lot of time on questions that had new twists to how they have been asked in past years. Long story short, while there are one or two questions I think I crushed and I wrote something for everything, I would be shocked if i was able to get above a 50% on the AM. I came back to my room for a bit during lunch to eat and study, but I was just really feeling gutted and I was almost not wanting to return for the PM, but obviously you can’t not, so I went back to take the PM. I fare better with multiple choice and while it was tricky, maybe I’m deluding myself but I’m thinking that I definitely had a shot at getting above 70% on the PM.

I’m just feeling gutted because unless you literally start in September and make sure you understand every one of those 2300 pages of curriculum, backwards and forwards, its entirely possible to study 300 hours for that exam and fail 10 different ways If I fail, the next time I take it, I’ll definitely be starting in September and proud of it.

On the upside though, after the AM exam I was feeling pretty inconsolable, and now, after the PM, I feel like there’s a tiny tiny shot I passed the test. Who knows. I’m not proud of how I ended up approaching the study pattern, but just a big lesson that procrastination doesn’t pay! What’s frustrating is that if you actually spend the time with some of these concepts, they go from feeling like hieroglyphics to pretty logical. but if you don’t put in that time, it’s like you’re two skew lines in the universe never even on the same plane lol.

If anyone has any advice for how to feel not gutted right now, I’d love some!

Thanks.

#22

I thought it was extremely fair the questions they asked. But I did feel like it was a new team writing the exam. The way the questions were asked seemed really different than past exams. Also…ethics sucked like usual omg O.O.

#23

Like most, I found AM the harder of the two. I felt I barely had time to think in order to complete the paper which I know resulted in me making silly mistakes. And as has been mentioned before, the questions were asked in different way to previous papers so I couldn’t feel that confident about my answers. CFA is very inventive when it comes to testing us :slight_smile:

PM felt very nice after the difficulty of AM. But I hope I didn’t miss any trick questions! And I guess something only feels easy if you know the answer. I seriously thought ethics was the most difficult section. Some very obscure questions I thought.

#24

I thought the PM outside of the ethics was really straightforward and hopefully enough to push me over. Thought it was way easier than the mocks but I probably got a little lucky guessing in mocks (80%).

Obviously knew about the time crunch on AM from practicing and finished, but what you can’t prepare for is just the stress that you get in AM that you don’t have when practicing.

Practice AM I would walk away and feel like “I killed it” and results showed that. Real AM I walked away knowing there were some clear mistakes that I made in there and didn’t get that same “killed it” feeling. Hopefully I held my ground though.

#25

The AM portion felt much easier for me. The questions were asked and had small twist to them but I was able to get an answer I felt ok about on most of the questions. I think I left 8-12 points blank and desperately wrote things down for another 5-8 points.

The PM felt really difficult. At the end of my studying my MCQ scores were mid to high 70’s. I thought the PM would be my fall back so I was feeling great during the break and then was humbled by the PM questions. I’m realizing I’m 30 questions in and I haven’t felt comfortable with a lot of my answers. Some I knew for sure and many just had these twists that I could not completely figure out. I’ve also read about how people thought they did so well in AM and it didn’t turn out that way, so I’m 50/50 on if I passed or not. I could have felt like PM was much harder because I was just tired and wasn’t breezing through or maybe I really was messing up and just tanked PM. Only time will tell… definitely nervous.

#26

Lol

#27

new meaning to waiting for test results

#28

AM was OK for me, it was relatively easier than the mocks I have taken. I finished with 10 minutes left. I lost 6 points on a sub question.

The PM portion was tricky and there were a lot of traps. I could finish with 45m left because the PM was less calculation but I felt less confident. I have 3 wrong answers and made educated guess on 3-4 questions.

#29

I was tossing and turning way too long the night before the exam before finally falling asleep at around 02.30 am. The distinctive and glaring sound of car horns kept me awake and ensured a nice build-up to my greatest adrenalin rush to date. I took the test in Zurich, Switzerland and the night before the game Switzerland played Serbia. A late goal by the Swiss sparked wild celebrations across Switzerland that lasted well into early morning hours. Thankfully, I still managed to sleep around 4 hours. Not an awful lot of sleep, but still enough I hope!

I did not have the impression that my lack of sleep impeded my performance in any way. Rather, it took longer than usual in the PM session to answer some questions. Still finished with 15 minutes to spare though. Just hope that I did not make too many silly errors that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

I struggled with the first question in the AM section and definitely took time to get in gear. I was very focused on not spending/wasting too much time on any question, so I quickly moved on. I am pleased that I seem to have managed my time well, because I finished 5 minutes ahead of schedule and used my tailwind to re-address a sub-section of the first question. Time-management wise the AM exam went well for me. By no means was it a perfect paper and it’s very difficult to say whether I did well or not on it. Surely, I will have done some silly mistakes. But if the target is to limit your damage in your morning, I would say I am cautiously optimistic.

Concerning the PM section , I must say that I found it to be a difficult and tricky paper to be honest. Certainly, did not feel like a pleasant >70% paper to me, more like a 65%-70 % one. It was not a bad session, but definitely not a spectacular one. I found the PM session tricky and difficult! Hopefully, some of my educated guessed will have turned right and the CFA gods will be on my side.

Anything is possible, I will know more in two months.

#30

AM: Quite doable, but was really time constraint. I kept writing down the minutes per question to manage time carefully, and ended up with about 5 min spare time after answering all questions. I did a ton of mocks and always had 30 min or so spare time, but the exam itself just feels way more stressful. Plus questions felt different from previous years.

PM: Gave me a boost in confidence after the AM. Fair questions and had about an hour spare time to go over the tricky questions. Found some questions quite ambiguous, i.e. you know one is incorect and then have to guestimate 50/50 which one’s correct.

#31

My thoughts exactly. You’d be quite confident in your answer first, but then keep looking at a piece information pondering whether it changes everything.

#32

Flip a coin… AM was straightforward, finished with two minutes left, PM was a minefield, finished with 20 minutes left, probably guessed on 10 Q’s, about half of those got it down to two choices. My prep was ok, did the CFAI books, EOC’s, and about nine mocks-- six Schweser and three IFT. If I pass, it will probably be an Ethics bump, as I finally got the hang of it, but as we all know, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Enjoy the WC folks!

#33

AM was comparably harder, finished just on time while leaving out one question for 8 points. I drank a coffee in the morning which made it quite difficult to concentrate…

PM was okay, finished after 1:40 hours and went through the entire exam again. But the things I was unsure about were not solvable by more time alone.

I really wished I could shift one hour from pm to am, that would have been fantastic…

#34

Like most people, I felt that the AM was much more difficult and I definitely had to skip multiple questions in their entirety. It was far harder than prior AMs that I practiced with in my opinion and was filled with questions from my weakest areas. I feel like I probably scored a 55-65% on the AM but its hard to say.

PM was way easier but by no means a vacation. Feel like I scored anywhere between a 64-73 on the PM just from counting up all my educated guesses. I feel like I either failed band ten or pass by a narrow margin. My mind is already racing with my dumb mistakes.

#35

Yeah, I wish I was not wracking my brains over some questions as well. It’s probably normal, hope these thoughts will disappear soon.

#36

AM was harder than any of the 10 mocks I took. 2017 and 2016 are a joke in comparison…

I finished PM in 2 hours but I feel like every question was a trick question…

#37

I thought am was hard, questions were asked in a really tricky way for some. I was rushing through the whole exam and barely had time to think for each question. Left 20 points blank and didn’t have time to go back to fill them in. :frowning: so disappointed, I am normally a really fast reader and writer.

PM was ok, some questions were very random and there were a few traps but I feel better about it.

#38

AM was very hard and different from old exams, in particular the way the questions were written.

Didn’t have time to finish everything and after I’ve been stuck in a few questions (I never expected to find some topics…) I didn’t manage well the rest of the exam. I am very disappointed since I scored very well on the 10 old essay and mock exam I did (> 75%) and I was very confident to pass the exam.

PM was better, finished with 30min left, but there were a few question very tricky (knew the answer/concept, but wasn’t sure which one to choose based on the way question was written) and a few I find them to be a bit unfair.

Ethics was really astonishing, unbelievable how bad and different that was…

I guess I didn’t pass, which is really frustrating me.

#39

I was pleasantly surprised with AM session. It being my first go, I was kind of dreadful about it beforehand. Most of the questions I could answer right away, some subquestions I have only made some notes which which hopefully get me some points, but these were for parts of the exam I was less strong in anyway. I had a very good feeling during the break. The PM actually negatively surprised me, I thought that was going to be my banker part but I found it quite tricky. A lot of questions basically left me with two options to choose from. I did have an hour left in the end which I used to review all my questions and I changed 3 answers because I noticed traps that I didn’t see in the first go. I’m 100% sure I’ve changed those to the right answer. I give myself 80/20 chance of pass/fail.

#40

I thought the AM part was significantly different from the last five years, which unfortunately I relied a fair bit on, for my preparation for this section. Firstly, from the topics tested there were quite a few new areas that had not been tested at all that much in previous years and also from the way the questions were asked. In the last years there were quite a few plug and play questions, where if you knew the material you could apply it quite quickly. However, this time even when those topics were tested the thinking process took much longer to arrive at the solution with the result that there was a real time management problem in the test.

Given that I spent a long time preparing I am really hoping I passed. I remember every question from the pm and believe I scored 40/60 after checking the answers in the curriculum and maybe 62% in the morning so hoping for mark slightly above the mps with a slightly positive ethics adjustment, here I scored 8/12.