I wouldn’t call it as a great move, unless your exams went exceptionally well. Also can you do that ? I mean does the CFAI allow you to do that prior to passing Level 1 ?
No you cant
During the exam the questions I thought I knew 100% for sure, I ended up check-marking those and towards the end of the exams I counted the check-marked one’s. Turns out for each session I got total correct answers of 142 atleast (just my assumption). So that leaves me with 98 questions that I assumed I got wrong. With 33.33% probability of getting a question right based on completed guess (1/3) since there were three options, 98 X 0.33 = 32 questions that I may have gotten right. Total assumption = 32 + 142 = 174/ 240 = 72% score. Now that was me being on the conservative side. Even questions I knew only 60-70% sure that I got right, I left those and included them as part of the “guess-work” calculations. Offcourse, all the questions I thought are correct may not turn out to be that way. But then again, I did not include the one’s with 60-70% of right answers just to be on the conservative side. Maybe this can help you guys guess-timate your scores. Just sharing what I originally did.
If you are confident about getting 172 you are going to pass it by a good margin. I didn’t study that much so I will end up somewhere between 155 and 160. I hope that’s enough to cross the line.
I think with 160 it should be very good chances of passing.
Lol I’m trying to get my mind off the CFA exam, cause what’s done is done. It’s been such a major part of everyday life for us the past 6 months (well at least me haha). We all deserve a break.
Agreed. I actually like studying for the thing, but it really does start to consume you.
I believe how ppl think about the am or pm exam being relatively harder than the other because it depends on where each persons strength and weakness is,
I think the exam covered a great portion of the material, i took more than too much time in the beginning of both exams which resulted in me panicking and filling up like 30 to 20 questions on the go without too much thought at the end because i had 30 minutes left and big part of the exam not attended too.
So, all in all, i mismanaged big time, and that most likely messed up my grade as well,
I find it weird that all of you guys had so much time left, i heard that all around even where i was taking the exam and yet it took me so long thinking about the questions, I felt a lot of trick q`s where there and i went through a conspiracy theory panic that questions couldnt have been so obvious!
So… yeah, im seiously thinking of registering for level 1 again and start studying early, especially when I see how everyone is so come and believe they atleast have passed the MPS, I wouldnt know how to calculate or even guess my score, since I might have answered a lot of the q`s wrong, since i only remember like 30 questions out of 240, and those are the ones im positive i got wrong and was stuck on.
I wish everyone, that deserves it passes!
I hope im one of those that do 
Cheers all
I was surprised by how basic it was. The Schweser exams were far more difficult and misleading I found. Their questions were a lot more complex, difficult, broader in topic, etc. It’s my own fault but using this as a guage I didn’t focus on some of the easier topics/material because I thought how hard of an exam it’d be and no way that easy material would be on it. I barely glanced over that material and focused on the harder topics I figured would be the majority of the exam. Turns out these harder topics weren’t even on the exam or only had a few questions. While I knew a majority of it I found myself looking at questions I knew, but didn’t know. You really need to know everything and not just focus on the stuff you have trouble with or expect to makeup a large portion of the exam. I’m disapointed in my performance but we’ll see how it goes and now it’s just the waiting game.
I was doing the same thing on the mocks and it turned out that of the ones I was “100% confident” in, around 85% turned out to be correct. The ones I was not so sure - 55-57%. I also came to a conclusion that this 100% sure/choosig between two/guessing completely does not have much predictive power, as there is always a chance you misread a question, memory fools you, and also guesses are different - some are more educated, some are less.
Also, I now respect Kaplan Schweser even more - they must be honoring their ethical obligations impeccably as they do not have a bloody idea what can be on the exam. If, after five Schweser mocks, I hadn’t gone for CFAI mock and their topic questions, it could be nasty on the exam.
First part was way easier for me than the second one. Lots of traps, fairly recognizable ones though (but perhaps I didn’t notice ones I fell into).
But you could start studying/request the materials and sign up before you’ve received results…
Not to say that this will happen with you… but in June and one of my issues was time management. I panicked when I heard 30 minutes and I rushed through the questions I had left. I walked out of the June exam with a giant “?” as to how I did. I failed, band 10.
When I got my results I purposed to become more efficient at answering the questions and the only way to do that is practice. So for you, whether you will be taking L2 or retaking L1, practice will help your time management tremendously. That and now you know what to expect on exam day.
This time around I finished with about 30 mins left in both the AM and the PM and fingers crossed, I did better than I did in June. For now, try and relax just knowing that your first CFA exam experience is behind you and now you know what to expect!
I’m a little confused as to what the different bands are for failing the exam. Does the band you rank in mean how close you were to passing or how good/bad you did relative to other people that failed?
e.g. Let’s say you failed band 10. Does that mean you were really close to passing or you just ranked the highest out of the people that failed (but you all could’ve done horribly lol).
The higher the band, the closer you were to passing.
Band 10 is the closest to passing… the top 10% of people who didn’t pass. It sucked and I honestly would have been happier being in a lower band instead of a few questions away from a pass.
@ abashtavy I agree with you about the fact that the questions you thought were 100% correct dont usually turn out to be that way. Thats y for my realistic calculations I assumed I only got 50% of the questions correct and the rest I am basing the calculation on the probability 1 over 3 choices which surprisingly still turns out to be in the range of 66-67%. Let me know if my calculations are out to lunch.
I’m pretty confident I failed – the test was completely fair but my preparation wasn’t sufficient in hindsight, despite clocking in over 300 hours. I took the Schweser course and primarily used their materials to study - while it’s obviously been sufficient for many people, I think it gave me a false sense of security regarding the depth to which we would be tested. I had been doing fairly well on Mock Exams (both Kaplan & CFAI), averaging 70+%, but on Saturday I encountered too many questions I ended up having to guess on either because I couldn’t remember or they threw in enough distraction pieces that caused me to second guess something. It also doesn’t help when your co-workers who have passed level 1 constantly downplay the difficulty of the exam and convince you not to stress too much because they mainly test you over basic concepts - should have gone with my gut instead! Here’s to Level 1 in June!
Same exact feeling. Was way behind on time in the afternoon after a surprisingly difficult handful of questions at the beginning, and then caught right up + some once I hit corp finance and equities.
Econ was most different than mocks from my experience. As was Ethics.
I’ll agree with the consensus regarding Schweser. While it wouldn’t be fair to say the program didn’t prepare me… I feel like you could make the case that it was a little overboard. I’m mainly referencing the practice/mock exams as they seemed to be far too detailed.
Morning session is way more easier for me than the afternoon one. I had to guess some questions that involved in calculation in the afternoon cuz I really had no idea how to do them. Both session I finished about 30 min earlier. I changed some of my answers in the afternoon sessions and it is always not a good sign for me of changing my answers too much during the exam. I have a question, is that OK that I used black ink pen doing the scratch work? I still filled my answer sheet using No. 2 pencil. I hope that is not a violation. Wish everyone good luck and get a good result!