In my opinion, what you can appreciate is the overall impression about the pm - given that the training scores are likely to be an indication about what to expect. The am is subjective to recall and judge what they expect in terms of correct answer and how they ultim. going to grade (correct answer, partial points, etc.).
Overall it took me longer for the am, since I checked most of my answers and calculated the results sometimes twice to make sure that I do not have errors. This took more time and therefore I had to skip some parts because of time constraint (overall missed about 26-28 points). I recall what the CFA exam responsible said in a video… better do the part, which you are sure to know correctly rather than give an answer to all questions and hope to get partial points - because partial points are very hard to get (e.g. for having the correct formula and the wrong input, etc,)
The pm was challanging - but doable. Again I calculated all critical part twice also checking for some the “wrong calculation”, which left me just 5-10 min at the end for review…
I took the exam in Europe, but not London. Lvl 3 was like 35 guys.
AM: felt more straightforward than some of the exams from previous years, I finished with 20 minutes to spare. I first did the sections with more minutes allocated to them, then the rest. I tried to keep my written asnwer length in line with the command word definitions in the command word glossary. I couldn’t look around the test area for obvious reasons, but I got the impression most people did not finish everything before time was up.
PM: I was expecting a rough PM session because AM felt straightforward, and I did suffer a little with the topic selection for PM. I finished with almost 1 hour to spare, so I went through everything again and ended up changing 3-4 answers…when that was over I had 15 mins left and I decided to end there. Again, I noticed a lot of people were still working when time was called.
I think this will either be a high MPS exam or I fell for a lot of traps, but my mock scores give me some confidence.
I wonder how much time you had sitting in the hall observing someone erasing instead of focusing on the actual thing. And on top of that calling them jackass, you probably don’t realize the true essence of education then. Pencils are way better ateast you can correct the mistakes. Don’t listen to the weirdo!
Wrote the exam in pencil, and used an eraser several times, on one question wrote out an answer fully erased it, wrote out an alternate answer fully erased that then pretty much wrote out the original answer again.
Had initial pangs of guilt for the person sitting on the desk with me, but then thought that the CFA state that you should write the exam in either pencil or erasable pen, so I’m just playing by the rules and to be honest I’m not, not going to change an answer just because it might irritate someone else, study too long and too hard to be worried about that.
Not sure what I made of the exam, was definitely thrown a bit at the start of the PM session, but can’t say I feel overwhelmingly positive or negative… just having to wait and see.
I found AM was a quite straightforward for the most part except the first question (most of you have also mentioned) that almost got me trapped and lose confidence. Luckily, I take it slow and take a deep breath and able to complete the question. After that, I found the questions quite straightforward and ,honestly, easier than all the mock exams I have ever done. My past mock exam scores in AM was volatile in the range of 55-72%. So, I guess the actual exam score on AM might be a bit higher given the fact that I could easily tell how much scores I could have got based on my past confidence on the past mocks I took. So, overall I think I did quite OK in the morning. Finished all questions in AM but did not get to review at all…then the time was up.
However, I found PM was relatively tricker and more difficult than AM…but surprisingly easier than the mock exams again. Many conceptual test questions, I can easy without guesssing but I think I am quite messed up on the calculation questions. I just could not calculate and find the answers that match with the multiple choices like 4-5 questions. Before the exam ended, I count on the questions that I have no confidence that I could get it right…there were around 18 questions in total. Assuming I got them all wrong I still could get like 60-18 = 42 correct or around 70% of the test if I was not being tricked.
So overall, I think I have done better in the AM…maybe 75-80%…given I could finish all the questions but surely I won’t get the full marks out of every single questions. And for PM, just like I mentioned 70%. Hope that it will be high enough just to pass. In the end, it also depends on other candidates’ average score…
I popped an Ambien at 10:15 and tried to go to bed Friday night, and still could not sleep. Finally at around 2am I took a second Ambien in desperation for sleep.
I’m pretty sure I was tired and in an Ambien hangover for at least the first hour and a half of the exam. I didn’t know what the fuck the first question was even asking me, and this completely threw me off my game. I remember feeling sick and discouraged through the first 4 or so questions. Finally at 1030 or so, I got up to take a piss, and when I got back (having lost 5-7 minutes of time to use the bathroom), I started to get my head straight and gather some momentum.
Somehow, I managed to finish the AM session with about 10 minutes to spare and went back to try and figure some of the earlier q’s I was having trouble with, but I think I might have scrambled my answers even further.
There was at least one question on the AM that, prior to the actual exam, I felt I had confidently mastered, but on this exam there was a variation that I just couldn’t break through given the time pressure.
I thought the AM had a high variance if difficulty between q’s. The harder ones were gruelingly so and the easier ones were layups (unless i fell into a trap). Overall, given the twists involved I found the AM significantly more difficult than the past exams I practised on.
PM wasn’t so bad. There were some new variations of models that I was accustomed to, but a little engineering and figured out what they were asking. I finished nearly an hour early, and went back and started changing some answers. . .I hope I didn’t shoot myself in the foot there.
I don’t feel optimistic overall because I keep fixating on two larger point questions in the AM that I bombed, and I really cannot even remember many of the AM questions, so I hope I wasn’t too careless when trying to rush through.
For Level I and Level II, I consistently finished in around 60 to 75 minutes on each section so the worst part of the exam for me was the change in policy precluding early departure. Surprisingly, I only finished the AM with about 15 minute to spare. However, I finished the PM in 60 minutes and had to just sit there for two hours.
Felt AM was trickier than last few years, finished with 15 mins to spare. Generally thought AM was tough but fair. First question tripped me up, skipped it for something easy and came back to it when I was feeling good. PM honestly felt like a breeze, as multiple people have mentioned finished early with 90 mins to spare.
take the last couple years AM section and the two item set mocks, then taking the exam. what i did on PM, leave ethics till the end. start on a section i am good at and work from there. i take a few minutes to jot down times and my approach then about 15 mins per item set. you don’t need to read the whole thing, it’s all sequential.
AM: felt it was fair. not enough time. i didnt complete about half a number. im sure i could have finished though if i was given enough time to think. decided to do somethign different and started from the back. i think it helped.
PM: finished 30 min early. felt easy. i scored on average between 75% to 80% on practice exams. so not really worried.
band 10er 2015. i scored mostly 70%+ last year on pm, and the rest in the 50-70 range. failed 7 sections in AM.
anyways i feel confident. hopefully this is the last time i take this.
I circled the proper answer, that’s not a problem. My question is though, as long as template answers properly label which option one is referring to, does it matter if the row itself where one writes in the template is not the correct one? (I had to draw arrows as well, in addition to labelling, just to make it clear which option I was referring to).
(I don’t want to put any further details, but I think someone that took the exam will know what I refer to. Any opinion greatly appreciated.)
Level 3 is definitely a lot harder than 1 and 2. No question about that. It the essay portion that made it hard. I came out of level 1 knowing I passed and level 2 with a positive feeling. Now for level 3, I am not so sure.
AM: A lot of people was saying the first question was hard. I don’t remember it now and that has got me worrying. Was it individual or institutional? There is one topic where I struggled and I expected to struggle so no surprise there.
PM: It started extremely hard with the ethics portion. Middle I was comfortable with and it ended difficult again. I think what made ethics so hard was the choices given. It reminded me of an exam in university I had taken. There were seven choices. First four were different, then the last three was E: A and B, F: C and D, G: A and D, for example. This forces you to know the answer instead of the advantage of “process of elimination”, which is a pro of multiple choice questions.
I know exactly what you’re referring to. There were 2 questions like this on the exam. I just drew an arrow. Hopefully the grader will know which answer I am referring to.
The PM sections was something different. Very well made and tricky on some aspects. This is probably why we don’t get to see past PMs.
I don’t remember stumbling across the first question in AM, in fact, I don’t remember the question at all (unless someone reminds me). I thought it was difficult but still fair. I’d say the second most difficult in the 2010-16 series. Still pretty straightforward. A lot of difficult concepts were not tested, but instead the easier ones were tested harder.
I felt am was easier than all the mock exams. Finished with 45min or so left, was able to go back and check answers…found one I had simply mislabeled after doing my math right hah. There were a few tricks that I wasn’t positive I did correctly but even with that there weren’t any concepts I didn’t know. The tricks were all on questions with low point values or ones where you can easily get partial credit, so they aren’t too punishing. PM was harder than all the mocks I did. I was getting 85-95% on multiple choice mocks, but I highly doubt I did that we’ll on the exam due to a number of 50/50 questions. I feel people always overreact to tricks. We all take the same exam, we all had a hard time on those tricks. Missing a few tricks is fine, as long as you did well on the rest you should be good. 30% of the exam wasn’t tricks, so getting 70% is doable. Lots of no shows… I don’t think they count against the curve sadly. Wish they showed instead!
