like me… I don’t think that it works like that.
I think there’s too much mystique surrounding the calculation. I’m pretty sure they just get an MPS and you’ve either passed it, or failed it. It’s on a scantron for a reason. They need all this time to process, calculate, and deal with unknowns (like one year I remember they lost all the papers from Ghana or something; or they need to figure out what to do with people who got caught “cheating” etc.)
I felt the morning exam was more straight forward in most topics except for quants, on the other hand the afternoon paper was straight forward in most topics except for Econ and FRA.
I did about 4 mocks and i must say the actual exam was more straight forward and less wordy then i had expected.
I’ve heard anecdotally that if you’re on the cusp of passing, your Ethics score will be the determining (so I always tell my candidates to make sure that they’re _ not _ on the cusp of passing), but if you look at the bottom of CFA Institute’s exam results page:
http://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfaprogram/exams/Pages/cfa_exam_results.aspx
you’ll see two documents:
and
http://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfaprogram//Documents/the_cfa_program_our_fifth_decade.pdf
neither of which mentions an Ethics adjustment.
^If you go to cfainstitute.org, and type “ethics adjustment”, it will take you to the page “Tips for Taking the CFA Exam” that does specifically mention the ethics adjustment.
It’s under CFA Program > Exam Details > Tips for Taking the Exam.
I would have copied and pasted the link, but the “paste” option in AF doesn’t seem to be working for me very well these days…
Interesting…
Well they didn’t adjust me up far enough last time. FML.
Just dont fail the ethics. Problem solved
You mean like this:
?
(You have to use ctrl-C to copy and ctrl-V to paste in replies; I don’t believe that it’s directed specifically at you.)
In any case, there’s the confirmation of the anecdotal evidence I mentioned above; thanks, Green!
guyz i am very dissappointed with the exam. it was straightforward two liner basic questions only totally different than schweser or even Cfai mock.unlike many candidates i found Cfai mock easier than schweser exams and i scored 68 in Cfai mock which gave me confidence, so i went deep into detailed questions and topics and kept the basic topics and forumalas to revise on last two days. unfortunately an unexpected event happened with me and i couldnt revise well. i am dissappointed because i could have definitely performed better than what i actually did. couple of questions i got wrong purely because i forgot very easy formulas otherwise. around three months of supersonic work study routine and i ended up with this. its making me feel that in last week instead of doing mocks ,had i just read secret sauce i would have been better off. i think given the difficulty level of the exam, MPS would be much higher and i rate myself in band ten or nine.
PM session was slightly harder than AM. i bought level two stuff, but i am not motivated to start studying in this uncertainty. i,ll plan things in coming two days.
This is probably very difficult to actually estimate… “much higher” given 100,000 candidates is probably a few percentage points… I am hoping it tops out at around 66-67%. That would be nice.
What your strategy in exam taking? How did you manage to finish so early? Was it pratice? Or you just did not waste too much time on a question, you took the best guess and moved on?
I was too careful with the wordings, been careful that I dont’ get tricked by a word. So I had to read it carefully. CFA doesn’t try to trick you, they just want you to answer some basic questions, fast.
But some of the Schweser mocks were tricky, they intentionally changed a word to trick you.
What is your undergraduate background? How many mock did you practice? How did you finish in 2 hours? I ran out of time for the last few questions. Some of the questions need some calculation, weren’t you careful in making sure the deciman places was correct? For example 1.24% enter as 0.0124. I once calculated wrongly and had to redo.
I finished the exam only in 2 hours too. My strategy was doing all questions in one minut and if I doubted, I passed to other question. Then in the review time I did these hard questions ( for me). But all being said, I am not sure about pass!!! 
My underground is a bachleor in finance and now I am doing a MSC in financial mathematics while I am doing CFA level 1
dani789, I was okay with time on worded questions. If interest rate fell, will bond price rise or fall? These kind of questions.
But I took too long on calculations. How did you calculate so fast, under one min, on such calcuations? You know, certain calcuations other than the simple plus and minus?
Question - Just wondering if anyone who wrote the exam in June 13, felt any difference in the December attempt? Difficulty level, time management wise.
I received a band 9 in June without solving any mocks and only focussing on Kaplan notes. I felt that I needed to look at the official material - chapter end problems - to clarify certain areas. I am not sure how people can solve the exam in sub 180 mins. I just finished on time and did find the exam less wordy as imagined.
I think it’s just a function of what you’ve read. There are things that you cannot find in Kaplan but seen as a line in the official material. Whether it is hard or easy, is just a relative concept in my opinion.
I was the same as you (Band 9) and I thought this exam was a lot more straightforward than the June exam. I finished each time with about 30-45 mins to go each time. The problem is with that much time you start second guessing yourself on some of your answers because you think “gee this question is too easy, are they trying to distract you”. I mean i know I missed 2 or 3 easy ones between the two exams but overall, after the exam was finished I had a much better feeling than I did after the June exam.
Maybe on the 2nd attempt, anything will be relatively easier?
.
Okay, I have been busting to talk about this exam…
As some background, I studied on and off for about six months. My strategy was to use Schweser notes and complete EOC questions. After that, I re-did the Schweser Study Session Self Tests to work out where the gaps in my knowledge were, and then in the week of the exam did five of the CFAI mocks (morning and afternoons). Using this strategy I worked up quickly from 60% to ~75%.
In terms of how I found the exams, they were reasonably as expected. As is the consensus, the questions were simpler than the CFAI mocks. They tested similar concepts and in a similar fashion, however the actual exam was much more straightforward, i.e. very few subtleties and less nuance to the questions.
I thought that was slightly disappointing, as I had a pretty thorough understanding of the examinable material (which, especially with regards to the calculation questions, is certainly a specific subset of the material).
The real challenge for the exams, and what I think may fail me is the qualitative questions. Unfortunately the breadth is very wide here, and as has been said before, they really test you on knowing the material thoroughly. I took about 12 educated guesses (50-50s) and about three complete guesses on each exam. Funnily enough, I checked the answers to some of these questions online and in my notes after the exam, and couldn’t always find them. Meaning, that they were deeply buried and probably not something I would have covered even with more time.
As an aside I found that my background (degree and vocation) was very helpful, particularly with understanding the background/context of each question.
Hopefully I didn’t break the code with the above, but please edit/delete my post if I did…
Thanks
Well, my strategy for this test was to take a one week vacation to do Mocks and review them. I got a 80% in the CFA Mock so I was preatty confident to the test.
I won’t say much specifically about the questions so I don’t break the rules, but even though the questions were more straight forwards I found them more tricky. Some questions had traps that almost got me (and I hope I saw them all). I finish both AM and PM in 2h30m and were able to review the answers, where I found 4 errors (hope I was right)
I felt the same. I remembered a lot of questions from the exam after it, specially the ones I had doubts, so I started reviewing them. Some of these questions were really hard to find in the CFA material, and one of them weren’t even in the Schweser material. Also, I felt that the wording in some topics were different from the EOC and CFA Mock. I can’t say I’m confident, that traps worried me, and Ethics also scared my by the difficulty level.