I’m seeing posts about 15 to 30 guesses. All of a sudden I feel a little better. I would say I made less than 15 straight-up guesses. The rest were narrowed down to two, and the others I knew. 30 straight-up guesses is quite a lot. The only guesses I made on the AM portion were on FI and Derv – I’m talking about straight-up guesses. PM portion was harder but I was able to work out answers for the most part. I think I have a shot at 61%, but I don’t think it will be enough…
Did anyone think that 1 question in port management was actually from level 3? not a difficult one, i did it but not sure if its right or wrong. i googled it and realised that topic has been discussed in level 3 forum. (hopefully i did not violate ethics here)
Does anyone know approximately the timeframe they send out PCP’s? (or whatever they’re called). I’m paranoid about getting called a cheater for some reason.
Last year, I was Band 9 and passed FI, but the AM FI killed me this year, don’t know why I couldn’t connect with the problem set. The last problem looked easy, but I couldn’t get a answer for the choices. What is eating at me though is that I did change two answers from right to wrong on those random trivia-type questions, and if I fail Band 10 that may be the reason. I felt ok on the other subjects though, studied FRA, Deriv and Alt’s hard this time.
I think what i am currently doing is very interesting but i do miss the adrenaline this time of the year from studying really hard to having a lot of free time (relatively speaking) but feeling super anxious about the result so i couldn’t fully enjoy the summer…
I know it’s a very difficult and stressful time for a lot of candidates and I was feeling very terrible too but once you’re done you do miss having a clear objective to work towards!
NANA
+1, the “CFA hangover” is real. Maybe a bit more exaggerated for me as I went the Dec L1 2016 --> June L2 2017 route.
I seem to be in the same boat as many of the others on the forum. I was fairly inconsistent on the Schweser practice exams, scoring anywhere from 58 to 71 on my final mock. I felt the actual exam was on par, if not easier than both Schweser and CFA mocks. PM fixed income and quant seemed tricky considering these were what i would have considered strong subjects. When i went to lunch after the AM section, i felt very confident, but the PM section definitely took that confidence down a notch. going to be a long 2 months!
I totally hear you on FI on the a.m. side. I was stunned. Don’t know what happened as I went in with a very good understanding of FI. Derivatives on the a.m. killed me too. Too much guessing on FI and Derv. on the a.m. side. FI and Der. total was probably 40%. Needless to say, I bombed both subjects. The only way I’m passing this exam is if I scored greater than 70% on FRA and Equity, which I think was doable. I believe I did well on Corp. Fin. and Alts. Ethics is probably 7 to 8 right, 9 tops, as I was left stunned on four or five questions. I confirmed I got at least 3 right on Port. Mgmt. No clue as to Econ. – it’s a blur by now.
I am very bad at ethics, but the only thing I understood is that you are breaching the secret by stating what was not in the exam… 
Like for level 1, I started to prepare very late (first week of may) but intensively (I took the 6 schweser mock exams + the CFAI mock exam) + all the topic tests on the CFAI website.
For mock exams, my results ranged from 70% (volume 2 exam 2 morning) to 93.33% (volume 1 exam 1 PM).
The actual exam was fair (I had more uncertainties in the morning than in the afternoon). However, when practicing, I was going very fast (2 hours to finish the exam) and I did not take time to read again the answers with hesitations… During the actual exam, I also finished quite early, but I spent the whole remaining hours worrying about all my hesitations lol. So I changed my mind I dont know how many times during the last hour on the questions where I had doubts…
I had bought a new calculator (I lost the previous one) and forgot to configure it before arriving (during my mock exams, in order to go faster, i was using excel)… So when starting the morning calculations, I saw that there were only 2 digits after the decimal point. Hence when wanting to calculate something like 0.02²… It was giving me 0;00… i was COMPLETELY PANICKED… I was thinking O MG this is where the story ends… I spent something like 15 desperate Minutes and finally found out how to configure the calculator… !!! But I nearly had a heart attack…
So I dont know if I will pass the exam (quite a lot of answers where I was hesitating…) but my MAIN concern is whether there is a minimum passing mark in Ethics. If there is, it is dead for me… If there is not, I can still hope to pass the level 2. * fingers crossed*
Exactly how I felt! Question now is… how bad was the PM session and how good was the AM session? We will only know in two months!
A little background, I passed Level 1 in December and this was my first attempt at Level 2. When I took Level 1, I finished both sessions with a LOT of time on my hands. This time, much different. I finished the first session with about 5 minutes left. I finished the second session with about 40 minutes left, so had ample time to check my work.
I slept quite poorly the night before, so I’m a little disappointed by that. But I think that’s more the norm for most people rather than the exception. I drank a large coffee before both sessions, so that helped, and ate a light lunch. And I got about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, so certainly could’ve been worse.
Like most people, I was feeling quite good and confident after the AM session. After the PM, not nearly as confident. I thought they were both challenging, I just had a lot more trouble in the afternoon. I remember having a bit of panic at the beginning of the second session because I was clueless about a lot of questions, but after jumping around and answering some stuff I knew, I was able to get my confidence up a bit.
So…I’m certainly not confident that I passed. However, I can say the same thing about Level 1. I’ve been, like most of you, second guessing a lot of my answers, but I’ll nip it in the bud the second my mind drifts in that direction. I don’t, at this point, want to stress myself out over the next few months waiting for my results. One or two answers most likely won’t have made or broke my exam.
Either way, I’ll be taking an exam next June. Hopefully, Level 3, but if it’s Level 2, I’ll have a great background going into my when I start back up (much earlier this time, couldn’t start until February this year due to December test).
Just a troll.
Ok deleted considering the aggressiveness of the next message.
Total BS - you don’t even work in finance I bet. Who the hell allows you to write such lengthy emails? Time is money, and you’re wasting mine.
Ok…
Ok, It is possible that you can pass level II just with 1 month. You must have a very good background (in Finance & Math).
But why a person having already a good background in Finance still needs the CFA certificate?
We dont know… (especially when reading on other discussion topics that there is some kind of “arbitrary decision” on pass/fail depending on ethics results…!). Plus I may have misunderstood some questions like i did sometimes at mock tests… there is always some kind of “pressure” when taking the actual exam compared to mock exams [plus my calculator issue!])
Yes i have a background in Maths (+ a little bit economics and business).
And why trying to be a CFA candidate ? because I understand this is a famous certification with good visibility at international level. Plus it is true that I am learning a lot of things (on equity, fixed income and accounting in particular !.. also on portfolio mngmt/derivatives/etc. but less useful for my work at this stage)
You are in France and are strong in Maths. So, I think I can guess your background.
If my guess is right, it is totally possible than you can pass level II with just one month.
You could be Sheldon Cooper and you’d still need more than a month to memorize all the qualitative crap. Bullshit.