Short version: I’ve found the QBank quite useful and am curious how others’ have scored. Has using the QBank resulted in marked improvement from practice exam to practice exam? If you’ve sat for Level I before, did your QBank score more or less equal your exam score?
Longer version: I took a full-length practice exam two weeks ago, got in the mid-50’s on both morning and afternoon, and decided that, as someone who learns by doing, the QBank would be a worth purchase. I feel like I’m significantly more prepared for the exam after running through ~40% of the QBank questions.
Despite having a fairly strong accounting background, the FRA section is killing me. I’ve gotten better, but there’s still room to improve (65.38% avg.). I’ve skimped a bit on Derivatives, Portfolio Management, and Alternative Investments; I personally don’t find these categories too difficult and, given their weightings, I don’t think they warrant much attention. I’m pretty satisfied with my exam weighted average, as it’s above the magical 70% (72.64%) threshold. Given that I’ve demonstrated consistent improvement since starting the QBank questions and my results are biased downward, I hope to score in the 75-80% range on my final full-length practice on Friday.
EDIT: Delted my table. The format didn’t translate into my post well.
I do the sections one at a time, 50 or 100 qs - FR&A around 85%, Ethics 75-77, over 90 in FI and alternatives, 80 or so in quant and Corp Fin. Econ is about 60 tho…
I have heard in general that the qbank are a little tougher than the real thing - though I’ve heard the exact opposite as well…
First CFA mock i scored exactly 70. I think the 2010 mock was pretty tough. Doing more mocks over the last few days and see how those go.
Its not that Qbank is easier than Mocks. The fact with Qbank you are tuned to think the next half hour for X subject. But in mocks, you need to switch between subjects which means you could probably struggle to retain/remember some formulae.
But dont bother actually, be confident about how you have learnt and what you have learnt. I never took a mock in level 1 and cleared first attempt. I am not saying its better not to write a mock, but I am saying thats perfectly fine and dont let your confidence taking a knock because you havent done a mock!
I was killing it on Q-bank but only translated to about 65% on the practice exams from Schweser. Tbh, I think the Q-bank is less focused than what you see on the practice exams/mocks. They seem to focus on completely different areas. I was doing 75% on FRA in Q-bank and am sitting in the 50% area on practices.
I’ve e-mailed about a few questions in the Q-bank and they come back saying they are outdated. Not sure if that is the issue or not.