Think it’s fine. Only the scantron is graded.
One thing that is really werid is in the morning session everything is OK, in the afternoon session, one proctor saw me using the black ink pen and she put down my pen on the ground which I had no idea why she did that. Why she did not keep my pen when i went throught the reporting process but rather did that during the test. It was a big distraction for me and probably that was the reason I think I did bad in the afternoon session too.
Why on earth would you take a pen in when they are clearly not permitted until Level 3? More to the point, what would possess you to fill out a multiple choice answer sheet with a pen rather than a pencil - what if you wanted to change an answer?! The mind boggles!
Regarding the exam, I generally feel that the morning and afternoon sessions were on par with each other overall, however the difficulty of the various sections varied. For example, I found Fixed Income to be a breeze in the AM, however was more difficult in the PM. Overall, not too sure how I went; rocked up very tired to the exam thanks to an aggravated burglary attempt at my home on the Friday night - the energy drinks helped though and if nothing else I’ll have an exciting story from December! Haha. Fingers crossed as I went in pretty well prepared
Look at what I said. I said i only used the pen for scratch work rather than filled in the answer sheet. I filled in my answer sheet using HB pencil.
Didn’t they check your pencils and calculator before you go in? How did they miss that you brought a pen into the L1 exam?
To be clear, you never actually stated what you used the pen for until now. Regardless, still don’t understand what would possess you to bring a pen in with you, when it is clearly not permitted for level 1?
https://www.cfainstitute.org/about/governance/policies/Pages/personal_belongings_policy.aspx
The following items must be kept on your desk:
- Exam admission ticket
- Valid international travel passport
- Approved calculators
- Approved writing instruments ( pencils for Levels I and II , pens and pencils for Level III)
To be clear, he did state it, 7 posts up:
lol i brought 2 pens with me as well but only used them to sign the declaration.
I have no idea why they did not tell me before I took the test but rather came and put my pen down the floor during the test.
I stand corrected!
If I am not wrong, even the declaration was to be signed by a pencil. At least that’s what was mentioned as a procedure in my classroom.
I just hope you will not be penalized for bringing a pen into the exam hall when it is clearly not allowed… That is a violation of the standard regarding the permitted items on the exam day.
Pray for you bro…
Is watching toward board clock also violation? I think it is silly if it is, but I found that some candidates even on this forum got reported for this.
Well, i dont think watching the clock is a violation, but it may be misconstrued as an attempt to cheat, or thereabout.
That is why it is best to go with your personal stop-watch to eliminate potential near-violation attempt…
But i think you will be good, just calm down.
Hey All,
I also personally thought that PM was more difficult, I was stumped on a few quant method related questions (mostly my fault as I studied in sequence of the topic areas presented and never bothered to review this topic area that I studied quite a while ago), but tried to make an educated guess on them.
My friend who is a L3 candidate told me to relax because there are a few challenging trial/experimental questions on the exam that won’t be actually counted towards the final scoring - have you guys heard this too? I’ve been trying to find support for this, but so far have not been able to. If this is true though and granted that those questions I couldn’t answer are not included, I think I have a decent shot.
Never heard about that
Also, I felt that some questions were actually tricky - when I went back to double check my answers with some time left, there were quite a number of answers that I ended up changing due to not catching the entire wording the first time around.
I did find an old thread that alludes to this:
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/9779791
Perhaps this had been done in the past? Either way, I guess it wouldn’t matter as we’ll never find out how they grade these things…
Ethics threw me for a loop in the am…and then in the afternoon fixed income was a pain. As said before, since the exam wasn’t as difficult as I expected based on Schwewser and even the CFAI mocks, it’s hard to tell how I did. I feel good, but who knows…
Can’t say anything about that. All I know is that either I am going to pass or I will end up in Band 10.