I, for one, have written innumerable practice questions for all three levels. Never have I tried to tricky or confusing. Occasionally, there will be questions that I think are straightforward which others find ambiguous; I do my best to rewrite those to eliminate any potential ambiguity.
And I know that CFA Institute takes far more care in their questions than I can afford to do. It’s not a matter buying into anything; I’ve taken the exams, I’ve reviewed every Level III morning exam since 1999, I have worked with CFA Institute as an approved prep provider, and I have several friends and acquaintances who have worked at CFA Institute or have graded Level III morning exams. Their intentions are clear: they strive for extremely clear, difficult questions. Deception requires intent; there is no intent to deceive here.
I see nothing wrong with a question that is, in your words, “potentially confusing if you don’t take your time”, as long as the question is not confusing if you do take your time. In those circumstances, I would lay the trickiness squarely at the feet of the unprepared (or underprepared) candidate, which is where it belongs.
If you want a warning 3 or so questions on a 60-question test might be tricky or potentially confusing if you don’t take your time, that’s fine, as long as the warning includes the fact that if you do take your time and are adequately prepared, they will be neither tricky or confusing. All in all, it seems like a silly warning.
it’s disingenuous because they say they are doing what they say they are not doing. It may not be malicious but in fact it is impossible to conclude there is anything but an intent to deceive.
And it is not a silly warning because they currently say essentially that you should expect a VAR5 result 0 percent of the time to continue the analogy. They essentially have made it necessary because of all of their protestations to the contrary. It is a classic example of thou doth protest too much.
and taking time and a certain amount of care in writing questions does not mean they have been successful. But hearing that you are “on the payroll “ so to speak does give some indication of your bias. I’m approaching this as an outside observer in many ways as this is not my first career and have some familiarity with other credentialing processes.
to be clear, it doesn’t bother me that they do it, I just think they should be up front about it and prep providers would serve their students better if they recognized it. And if they let students talk about specific questions and were more transparent and you are correct about what they are doing , they would see less criticism in general because specific questions could be discussed and vetted. Then more people could see that maybe they just missed a concept, but now it’s too opaque for that and what are people left to think but that CFAI is afraid of the scrutiny. They want trust but give no reason to do so and someone who now openly admits they are part of the system saying trust them doesn’t help.
and in fact I am quite sure that even you would be tricked by at least several questions on any test. It is not just a question of adequate preparation and being careful. Surely you are not foolish enough to think that? It’s nice sounding to throw something like that out there to in effect attempt to blame the victim, or make it sound like people who recognize what is going on just are crying over sour grapes but really it doesn’t strengthen your argument.
If you know the material thoroughly you can instantly identify the correct answer, I’ve felt that way about all three levels. You only get tricked or think that they are attempting to trick you if you don’t know the material.
That said, for any question I get wrong on the AM, CFAI will be receiving an email that reads “come on dude you know what I meant”
it is good to discuss these things as it solidifies thinking or results in reconsideration.
the number one thing people told me when I started this process is that for them the key was doing a lot of practice problems to learn “how CFAI” asks questions. It wasn’t to learn the content really well or to spend time on specific topics. There was some of that of course but it was mostly about learning how the questions are asked. In my mind that solidifies why I and others feel the way we do.
and in retrospect i’ve never spent so little time learning content and so much time doing practice problems to learn how the tester tests the material for any sort of testing. So the advice I got was good, but it really makes the point about the trick/deception issue. Ethics is the worst of course because you need to learn what CFAI expects you to infer from what they do or don’t say.
in content rich knowledge/thought testing, learning the material cold and doing a few problems as icing on the cake is the best route to go. The way people prepare for CFA exams isn’t that way which is symptomatic of the issue . Knowing the material maters of course but learning what CFAI wants is more critical than it should be.
You make money helping people get ready for CFA exams, right? So you have a vested interest in the current system and the process remaining opaque . Yeah, that and your postings pretty much indicate you are a CFAI apologist.
i would be curious to know how many practice problems your students do though. It seems to be the staple of every preparation system including the CFAI itself. The actual content of every exam can be boiled down to a few hundred pages if done efficiently. Yes, you do need to learn it but less so than in other professional exams.
Sort of like the practice problems that my math students do. They call it homework.
And every mathematics, finance, engineering, accounting, physics, economics, chemistry, marketing, biology, and management program at every university on the planet.
you’re good with the glib, not so much the content. I can see why you fit in as a prep provider for CFA exams. Best advice I got for taking the exams was to focus less on content and more on practice problems and what CFAI wants.
I went to the exam location just in time 8.58am but I had to wait the end of the proctor speech to sit down in my place so I lost 1 min. I did simulation of mock exam organized by Kaplan 2 weeks before the exam and I was aware about the time managing in the AM section so I answered very quickly and finished 2min before the deadline. I found 2-3 sub-questions very irrelevant and difficult and I put bullshit on it just to grabble partial points if I’m lucky.
For my preparation I did past mock past exam until 2013 and Kaplan mock and I found the AM part more easy than previous one. The 2018 exam questions were more easy with less tables and comment to analyze but after the reading of this topic I think I’m the only one with this feeling. I scored 45-60 for my preparation mock and I expected 55-70 for the exam.
For PM more easy than PM Kaplan with some tricky question. It’s always more easy than Am part with less time managing. I think I finished 45 before the deadline and only change 2-3 answers. Ethics was also little bit difficult as for L2 but at the end I expect 60-75 for this part.
Hope to score more than 60% with a passing score around 60-63%.
I also found the exam tricky but fair. I (begrudgingly) think that CFAI are master test setters, they seem to be tuned into what students struggle with. The perception that the actual exams are tricky could be due to the stress, plus the fact that we all prepare doing a multitude of questions so the “tricky” ones are averaged out by the standard questions, so the actual exam is perceived as trickier. There have been some instances though where i have missed a question or two purely because of little wording nuances rather than a lack of knowledge, which can be frustrating. However if i am honest its often due to not reading the question properly i.e. really skim reading that first (usually useless) paragraph, not reading table headings properly etc.
actually it went very well. But if that is the conclusion you drew you weren’t really paying attention to what I was saying. My grade mostly hinges on the ability of the graders to read my handwriting (which is atrocious). My perspective is not from sour grapes but rather recognition of what is going on and seeing why qualified but marginally so candidates get very frustrated with CFAI.