I think I messed up on the FRA section. I just hope I somehow manage to pass. The result should be out by the 29th of January.
I don’t know how I managed to forget! I had 3 copies of my admission ticket, a spare battery, a screwdriver, 3 pencils and no rubber… I only realised as I was trying to get to sleep on Friday night… D’oh! Luckily the proctor had a bit spare.
I did read some questions twice to ensure I fully understood what was being asked but I tended to go with my first intuition rather than go over and over the question for too long.
June 2nd exam results were sent out on July 24th.
For people for whom this was not their First attempt will it be possible for you guys to compare the difficulty level of this paper with the previous one … and would you think the MPS this time would be higher / lower than the other attempt of yours
December 2011 results were out Jan 24th so guess the same this time around?
Ya I felt the essay part was slightly easier than the mutliple choice section but lets see.
The comments here seem mostly positive… now I’m convinced that I failed!
this is the most positive L1 resiult thread yet …lol
Pretty sure I nailed the first half, but the second half was brutal… I may or may not fail, entirely due to the PM.
Took me just under 2.5 hrs for each section. The girl in front of me during sign in had the wrong calculator so they sent her to the local London Drugs to hopefully find a replacement (good luck, they were sold out when I looked earlier in the week). And walking out of the afternoon session, saw one girl completely sobbing into her boyfriends shoulder. Roughly how I felt after that session…
Hello
i am one of those who found am section more difficult than pm section. Finished 2:50 with lotsa guesses in am and 2:10 in pm, so had a chance to recheck answers and changed at least three. but now stressed out at least i had 20 questions definitely wrong mostly in am 
ah well…
not too optimistic now (last 3 3-hr mocks using elan was over 75) but likely i only got 60-67 the real one
Yep, and while I agree that this is great for all the people that took it this time around I am afraid that it’ll be changed to something substantially tougher in June…
well…the MPS is scaled to the difficulty of the exams…if it is more difficult,MPS falls,easier to pass with smaller number of correct answers., If it is easier,MPS rises,difficult to pass with smaller number of correct answers.
So did you all meant to say that cfa level 1 is easier this time. so the MPS woul be higher for dec 2012 level1?according to me it was REALLY HARD… i answered 15 questions wrongly infact i thought tht it was correct but after coming home and seeing it wasnt… so questions r twisted in such a way tht it looks easy BUT it was not… In short its like "ILLUSION " 
but actually something else
Behaviour like this makes me sick.
Everyone knows roughly how well they know the curriculum before even entering the exam hall (based on practice tests), and therefore how likely they are to pass the exam.
The difficulty of the exam shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has at least read the material once.
Alladin: My hypothesis would be along the lines that substantial differences between June and December exams can been observed and that I would expect an exam with good passing rates to being followed by a year with poor pass rates. Just an observation. MPS scaling is still a highly subjective exercise, I guess.
june 2012 pass rate was 38 and previous years have been 38-39%.
what do you suggest or think it will be this time?
it was easy 
1st Timer’s Take: My overall impressions were that I was feeling really good after the AM session. I went to lunch wondering why the pass rates have historically been so low. The PM session was not as bright as the AM. For the PM exam I found myself intelligently guessing by process of elimination on way too many. No amount of additional studying could have prepared me for the PM session. Due to the fatigue, I had way less energy in the PM session and on one or two occasions could not even calculate simple stuff that I went in knowing. The PM session was grueling. I finished the AM session in 2.5 hours and yet in the PM session I had about 30+ questions to go with 30 minutes left. As far as how I feel, I think it can go either way. I left it all out there on the field. Now I wait the results. One thing is for sure, I’ll be back in there in June for Level I or II. Below is what things looked like for me going into the exam.
This was my first attempt at Level I. Going into the exam I really didn’t know what to expect. You never want to go into something expecting to have to take it again but for this exam I said to myself, it the exam is as brutal as the Schweser mocks (I don’t think I got over 60% on the few that I did), then I am prepared to take the exam again in June.
Thursday was when I started to wrap things up. I said to myself “At this point, I’m going with what I got”. Stressing out about stuff or trying to learn new concepts was going to be counterproductive and would dilute any solid knowledge I had. On Friday I followed the advice of many and read the entire Schweser section on Ethics and GIPs. If I end up passing, it will because I devoted Friday to Ethics alone. I think I did really well in Ethics.
I barely slept the night before. I slept for 4 hours and woke up at 3:40 and tossed and turned till 6. I tried to keep breakfast super simple so as to not upset my stomach. I ate two slices of bread. I took a few swigs of the water and oh man, at that moment I realized just how nervous I was because I almost got sick. I had that “oh I drank way to much I’m about to get sick feeling” without the alcohol! I prayed and asked for me not to be sick and I didn’t end up getting sick but got close.
After the exam I felt really good! Glad that’s over and taking a few days off. I’ll start studying for Level II next week! Good luck to everyone on here!
Count me as one who had a much easier time with the afternoon session. I finished my initial run-through of both sections in about two hours. I spent just under 30 minutes checking flagged questions in the morning and fifteen or so minutes doing so in the afternoon. I changed a lot of answers in the morning, which I typically don’t do during tests. I definitely caught some stupid mistakes, but I hope (particularly re: ethics) that I didn’t overthink a few and change correct answers. The afternoon was a relative breeze, IMO. I got a 79% on my final mock and just over a 70% on the CFAI mock. I was confident that I got over 70 on the real thing until yesterday, when I realized that I made a silly errors. I made some forehead-scratching mistakes on the mocks too, though, and I generally tend to outperform my practice scores on standardized tests. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think I’ll be OK.
When I look at the stats on the CFAI website I get a weighted average of 44.2% for June and 36.6% for Dec exams since 2003, when they started with semi-annual exams for L1. Overall average unweighted of 40.9% The obvious thing is that a good exam is followed by a bad exam. It’s like it goes up by 6-7%pts and than down again by that. It seems to be consistently June / Dec for whatever reason. What concerns me a bit is more that a good exam is followed by a not so good exam. To some extent I believe that this is due to the MPS adjustments, which are subjective. A tendency to increase the hurdle after an exams with a higher pass rate.