I’m retaker (band 8) from last year but didn’t study this year, due to intense(but amazing) work load, until the last 2 weeks. I had lost all expectations(of course) but still I preferred to jail myself during last week and a half remaining to the exam day instead of giving it up as for the kind of person I am, its not over till its over. In all honesty, I felt this year’s AM was much easier than last year’s, yeah a bit of different wording but no traps like Q#1 of every past AM exam. Ethics seemed way difficult but overall PM also felt easier than last year. Post exam I’m very satisfied that I tortured myself for those grueling 7-8 days and sat the exam and I think I’m on the borderline. Regardless of the result, lesson I learnt from my experience is that you, especially retakers, should never give up writing the exam no matter how unprepared you are(it helps the MPS anyways ha ha). Maybe you’ll be lucky and questions will appear from areas that you’re strong in.
Unlike the previous exams, Level III was unfair: easy questions compared to a deep, heavy content. None of the most difficult topics were covered, only plain vanilla.
Differential performance will come from the morning session.
This exam privileged those that studied way less than me but made more exercises eith focus on practice and velocity. I’ve never used training courses, but for Level III it seems it would have been of true help.
I agree that some things might be plain vanilla but I disagree that previous exams were any easier. You can call 2017 AM easier while writing its mock in your dining room but if you were in the real exam and saw that Q#1 for the first time, your view would have been very different then.
I wouldn’t say “tricks” it was more like “twists”. Like I knew the right answer under certain situations but in the exam there was additional information that added to the question. If that didn’t affect you all then I can see why you didn’t notice.
All three levels I would see people talking about traps on the exam. All three levels I didn’t myself see any traps. So far I haven’t failed yet (hopefully L3 doesn’t decide to be the first). I think my honest conclusion has been that if you really know the material, you see the question as just a question with only one right answer, and not a trap. So if you’re not seeing them, that’s not necessarily a cause for concern.
I don’ think they were “traps” per se, just questions with what appeared to be two correct answers until some obcsure part of the vignette was discovered making it clear which one was correct (like one word or one sentence)
Exactly. They want to distinguish between a well prepared and under-prepared candidate and it is fair if they put something like that. I myself never saw any traps when I was well prepared in earlier levels.
there is a common usage of the word and that’s what I’m doing. Just because you buy into the CFAI’s rhetoric doesn’t make it correct.
From a purely observational perspective what they do is no different than what they would do if they were trying to trick marginally qualified candidates on certain questions.
It’s why I tell people they will do better if they assume CFAI is trying to trick them but not going to extensive lengths to do so.
Nor am I suggesting that it does. (Your choice to call it rhetoric is interesting, by the way.)
What, exactly, to you, constitutes a “trick”, as opposed to a legitimate question that tries to ascertain a candidate’s depth of understanding? I’m genuinely interested.
Personally, I feel ok about it. I followed the advice of Iraf and kept my essay answers concise and to the point. I don’t recall writing long paragraphs and I felt I was answering exactly what they wanted me to answer. I probably had 35-40 min to review what I had written. I felt confident (not overly) after the AM session. The PM was so-so. Historically, I finish the multiple choice questions fairly quickly with time to review those I’m not sure about, but I definitely wasn’t as confident about those as I felt about the AM part. But we’ll see soon enough.
minor wording choices that in everyday usage if you mentioned it to someone as a mistake, they would say something like “come on dude you know what I meant” or would view you as just “picking them up on something “ would be one example.
rather than say they are not trying to trick you or test you on rare exceptions, I truly believe it would be more accurate if they said to expect them but not with unusual frequency. They could even say expect a VAR5 event about 5 percent of the time. That would be more accurate to what they do. So, 3 or so questions on a 60 question test or for Var10 about 6.
Obviously different people will see different things as “tricky” or “potentially confusing if you don’t take your time” and I do think many questions are quite straightforward (probably enough to pass on those alone if you know all topics. 70 percent is not a high bar ) so that’s why I suggest a range around the VAR metric example as each candidate would have to figure that out for themselves (likely implicitly rather than explicitly for most).
Saying they’re not trying to is just disingenuous or they truly don’t “get it” which it could be. They might just buy into their words/logic/rhetoric whatever you want to call it.