How does it impact total points and topic weighting?
how exams are graded: http://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprogram//Documents/the_cfa_program_our_fifth_decade.pdf
I wondered that same thing. I guess If they throw out a question, on say quant for example, each quant question becomes worth more points. Or maybe the total exam just decreases in points possible (but then other topics would become more heavily weighted). I could see it both ways. And I really hope they throw out lots of Coprorate Finance Questions!!! One of the viginettes did me in.
doesnt seem to be any mention ‘throwing out of qns’ on cfa documentation
“Special focus is given to reviews under any of the following circumstances: multiple similar complaints, exam results suggesting more than one correct answer, or exam results that otherwise suggest that a question was confusing or unfair. If, after investigation, a question is determined to be confusing or unfair, results are adjusted to credit all answers. If more than one answer was correct, then all correct answers are credited.”
aah ok thanks… from this above, it suggests that if a question is wrong, everyone is awarded full marks to that qn…as long as u attempted it atleast (i.e. did not leave it blank)
“If more than one answer was correct, then all correct answers are credited” seems to me that if one answer was just outright wrong, and you picked it, then you wouldn’t get full marks. you’d have to pick one of the two correct ones. Regardless, I don’t think the effect of this would be all that significant; one, maaaybe two points at most.
I’m sure there were one or two errors in the real exam. We all took the mock exam and it was chock full of errors and typos. Without giving away too much, last year’s derivatives section was a bear, probably the hardest on the exam, but a ton of people ended up scoring >70 including myself as you can see from last year’s results thread. There was a lot of talk about multiple errors in this particular section.
IF everyone gets points for a exam question that has an error, it doesn’t help anyone, since the entire curve gets boosted.
iteracom Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > IF everyone gets points for a exam question that > has an error, it doesn’t help anyone, since the > entire curve gets boosted. I would assume that any exam question errors would be included in the MPS. If the CFAI screws up a question then they could just lower the MPS by the appropriate amount. This adjustment does help everyone, but in reality it only helps those candidates who are on the pass/fail border.
I wish CFAI would follow what it teaches in Ethics. “…Using simple and clear language…” I feel it seeks to be overly ambiguous in the exams hence ending up with a ton of errors. I was very disappointed with the amount of errors in the sample exams and mocks. Errors in the final should not be excused at all. A few errors in this past exam caused me to waste too much time since I knew the concepts and formulas related to the questions. This unnecessary stress affected my ability to work on follow-up questions. When people realize this stupid game of being ambiguous to be cool (title of most difficult exam), they lose respect for the program. (That’s probably why interest is declining in the U.S.) The practical financial services business is not as ambiguous as CFAI makes it in the exams. I like and enjoy the material but CFAI needs to be more realistic with the testing. It should realize there are top money managers and analysts who are not charter holders. I just hope credits to the errors help me pass. But can you even trust the institute to do this right?? Maybe that’s why the whole grading and results thing is a black box (full of errors). I still pray I pass…
“Special focus is given to reviews under any of the following circumstances: multiple similar complaints, exam results suggesting more than one correct answer, or exam results that otherwise suggest that a question was confusing or unfair.” I find it hard to believe that enough of us actually remember the questions and the matching choices to file an official and convincing complaints. I don’t know about you guys, but I was so brain-fked by the end of the exam that I couldn’t even really remember what topics were tested, let alone the individual questions. I’m sure some do, but my guess is a very small number.
Clearly the CFAI has a QC process. Part of that process presumably includes looking at answer distributions. They have a trove of exam data that they can filter through and look for any abnormalities. I would guess that most questions have a correct response rate of 50-60%. There’s probably a threshold level at which the question will come under automatic review.
Hmm - one possible ‘devil’s advocate’ position: any QC process is very limited - mainly because they want to limit the number of people with access to the questions before the exam!
QC will be after the exam, not before it