I’ve had to erase and change my answers on about 4-5 questions in the PM after discovering I was tricked, something I’ve never had to do in any earlier exams (L1 and L2). It’s funny how I finished AM 20 minutes before while the guy next to me was still furiously writing… and for PM, I was about 2/3 through at the halfway mark while the same guy seemed to have finished and was flipping through the booklet, occasionally erasing to change an answer.
Not the minority at all I felt the exact same way
could be psychological too. I was scoring 75+ on the cfai PM mocks so I wasnt all concerned for the real thing. the Am really was the big unknown for me.
I finished the AM section, barely and I was not wasting a lot of time… I obsessed over the first question a little bit but other than that I was moving very quick. You have to be nearly perfect on time management and how much you write per question to finish in 3 hours, very difficult. I thought PM was fine, but AM session will kill my chances… too many mental lapses.
I know a lot of people who left whole questions blank or BS’ed through some for time on AM. Luckily I finished all questions being able to think through relatively well. Unfortunately, I spent too much time on the first question and spent the rest of the time playing catch-up. Pretty much 10 min behind, then 7, then 5, then finally on time by the second to last question…this led to not being able to do a double check and I’m sure there were careless mistakes. Hopefully, for those I’ll get partial credit. I thought PM had tricks in some places but some people are exagerrating, maybe I didn’t see as many because I don’t read the question and answers before the vignette…this could lead to noticing a lot of tricks. I read the vignette, jotted notes, then read the question and deduced the answer from all info available in the question…maybe thats why I didnt see or “notice” as many tricks as some people are claiming. Anyway, good luck to all…I hope it went well.
I was okay for time. I usually finished the Schweser mocks in about 2 hours, CFAI mocks in about 2.5 hours. Actual AM section was done in 2 hours and 45 minutes.
I’m sure we don’t get credit for the correct explanation if the answer is wrong in the first place.
Yea, you won’t. You’re justifying your wrong answer…If CFAI follows similar schweser grading then you wouldn’t. Remember how the answers in schweser would say:
“1 point for selecting the correct answer” “2 points for the correct justification” “0 points if you selected the wrong answer”
I thought the am wasn’t very difficult form a content perspective, It just felt brutally long, I had to haul ass thru the last 3 questions. The pm I felt was pretty difficult, a lot of material I prepared for never showed up. I’m just gonna wait for my score and hope for the best…
The AM answer booklet should be separate from the question booklet (same as PM) to avoid the constant back and forth between vignette and answer grids. Not only would this save time and decrease noise it would also allow candidates to more easily organize information. Adding an additional 30 minutes to the AM section also seems reasonable given that real world analysis is rarely that time sensitive and quality/accuracy should be valued by the CFAI rather than speed.
that’s correct you get zero
I found the material on the AM wasn’t that difficult, but due to format and time pressure I had more room for partial credit only, and a few mistakes where I knew the material but F’ed the question.
The PM had a few hard questions and the rest were “normal” you had lots of time to review and double check plus 1/3 chance of guessing for those ridiculous obscure questions.
For the above reasons my PM will be way better than my AM score. I find it hard to believe that so many people think their AM will be higher than PM if that is the case I think this will be the first year where it has happened. Usually the PM scores are way way higher than the AM. My status quo bias tells me this year will be the exact same yet some people will be surprised by it.