I got very bad scores in mocks and topic test, i was discouraged and accepted the fact that i will be a retaker, although on d-day i found the exam much easier than mocks and Topic Test, it was doable. I Will probably fail but i think band 9-10
How “bad” were your CFAI Mock exam scores? Mine were 58 and 60.
Don’t think the CFA I mock exam is that representative of the real thing.
It’s a different exam and I would not read much into CFA I mock exam scores. They are a rough indication, but it is definitely not an accurate representation of what you will encounter on exam day. The real exam is another exam; it’s neither an extension to CFA I mock, nor a summary of the hardest topic tests. It’s a completely different exam.
Best thing to do is to take as many mock exams as possible and working on improving your weak areas. Going back to reading mode after a bad mock exam and then take another Mock with hopefully higher scores.
Don’t forget that luck is involved as well. You might be scoring 6/6 in one topic on one mock exam and then only 2/6 in the same topic on another mock. Really depends what questions you will get.
I was high 50s and low 60s for the most part. I have a hard time believing people who say they scored in the 70s on their mocks. Could be that they’ve used the same mock over multiple years. I know people who never broke 60 on a mock and passed the actual exam.
I got a 71 on the CFAI mock and had an 80 average on Schweser mocks, and slightly higher for level 1. I walked out of both exams with almost no idea of how I did (pass/fail) though. Seemed like the Schweser mocks weren’t representative of the actual exam, and the CFAI mock wasn’t much better. Fingers crossed folks, we’re all in the same boat for the next 7 weeks.
Both sessions are fairly presented compare to CFAI’s Mock.
CFAI’s mock maybe a little bit lengthy in wording. But most of the questions are very straightforward.
in the real exam, I noticed that about 10 questions, are very tricky.
AM is easier than PM as I expected and I felt the same way out of the testing center.
All the calculation, I say ALL, is clearly less troublesome than any of the Mock exam that I took.
Set the decimal point to 4 is certainly enough.
Good luck to all of us. Enjoy the next month and half because we deserve it.
About the difficulty of Ethics: my opinion is that the topics being tested weren’t all that hard, but just the way CFAI phrased the questions and possible answers was odd. I was doubting so much between answer choices and pretty much had to guess between two options on half the questions, depending on how you’d interpret the vignette.
About the difficulty of Ethics: my opinion is that the topics being tested weren’t all that hard, but just the way CFAI phrased the questions and possible answers was odd. I was doubting so much between answer choices and pretty much had to guess between two options on half the questions, depending on how you’d interpret the vignette.
*** I think you pretty much nailed the issue most people have. While you say that means “the topics being tested weren’t all that hard”, others might say that’s exactly why they were hard. You know the material, studied it, knew the nuances and finer points, but on the actual exam, you were still left to guess. If you got it down to two, your score will be higher than someone who doesn’t know the material at all, but you still might not get as good a score as your knowledge level. I can see why people would be disappointed in the CFAI for testing on that basis.
I found it really interesting when I took 4 Kaplan exams and then the CFAI and noted that in every exam, the PM session seemed more difficult than the AM session. Seemed pretty representative in the real thing.
Had a few moments, like the second quant and derivatives session where I said, “I think I know how to do this, but they really went that in-depth to want us to do that?” I’ll just say I’m glad I took the 3-day crash course because the Schweser Notes did not cover a few topics in depth enough to be able to answer those questions.
Overall, AM, had one “alright I’m guessing b” and in the PM had maybe four or so. I can live with that.
P.S. Something my 3-Day instructor, Andy Holmes said about the MPS. It can be no more than the average top 1% of scores minus 30%. I’d be willing to bet there were some crazy people out there who got 98 and 99 on level 1 (setting the MPS near 68%, but definitely not level 2.
What’s the reasoning behind the top 1% -30% theory?
The guy said one of his colleagues was part of the committee that worked on the MPS. Don’t know the reasoning, and it may have changed (especially considering how pass rates tanked over the last decade), but I think Andy has been teaching the classes for over a decade so he has some street cred. Just something he mentioned during the review which perked my ears up. Hopefully it applies.
Always guess B and move on… to retaking next year lol 
I personally took his online live classes and attended the 3-day review. Andy Holmes says many things. Dont get me wrong, the dude knows his stuff inside and out. Quite impressive actually… At the same time, he loves to speculate and his conviction is driven by his ego/knowledge base.
Few examples: based on the changes in the recent years within the PM section, he believes(d) that it would be given a bigger weighting and the exact opposite with Corp Fin. That was outright wrong. Also, he discussed several valuation methods within Private Real Estate - and he mentioned that he highly doubts the CFAI would test on one given method. That method was on the exam this Saturday. Another one that will really really haunt me til I die is his logic behind “the Jack of all trades fails exams.” Basically saying that if you try to do well on all sections and improve on your weak areas in order to bring them to the level or near the level of your strong areas, you’ll fail. Well, this whole exam proved that logic wrong. Given the weights, one needed to know all the material not know some material like the back of your hand and a few sections not so much.
My point is, I would take his conviction with a grain of salt as it pertains to the MPS.
I mean it obv makes some sense empirically. makes me feel a lot better as I’m almost positive I’m above 70 and would be shocked if i were below 67-68 in aggregate (based on counting questions after finishing, and general feeling compared with to the 8 mocks i took)
Thanks for the assessment on that. I do remember that he was one of the folks who said know a lot about a little and you’ll be fine, and that definitely wasn’t true.
I’ve always wondered if CFAI monitors the prep providers and does its best to keep us all honest to actually learn the material rather than just follow the prep providers who are basically “teaching to the test” based on prior tests. It seems like it could become a bit of a game.
I miss writing level 2… everything was up in the air and it was exciting time in my life… T_T
Good luck to you all!
NANA
Andy does know his stuff, I took his 3-day review last year, and thought it was helpful in his common sense approach in explaining things. He has some funny sayings… you can “know everything about everything” or more practically, “concentrate on the big three FRA-EQ-FI”. One of his suggested “non-testable” items in FI (from last year’s review), showed up this year. “Wweellll”, I learned it anyway. I wish I had a dollar for every time he started a sentence with “well”.
A
It’s hard for me to rate this exam. This is my first time taking it and it was different than I expected. I feel that the material and weighting in the topic tests and mock exams was very misleading. Still, nothing really came out of left field. There were some questions where I recognized the material, but just couldn’t recall the formula or thought process, and some questions seemed so basic that they surprised me. The exception was Ethics, which was a bunch of BS.
I finished with an hour left in both sessions, so I got a good chance to go over my answers. I still found some stupid mistakes after each session though. My guess is that I passed, but I won’t be overly shocked if I didn’t. It was a really hard test.