Hey Guys, quick question:
Am i right in saying that the time you have per question of this exam is a minute and a half?
If so isn’t that a very short amount of time?
What is the best way for preparing for this if the time for each question is so short because it does worry me?
Thanks
Yes, you have 90 seconds per question. It’s not a particularly short time. I used all of it but it typically takes me 30 seconds or less to answer a question I’m familiar with. I spent at least 3 minutes per question on about a quarter of the questions trying to eliminate at least one of the options. A lot of people ended early, but I’m not sure if that’s because they did well or terribly.
Thanks for the quick reply Aaron. I’m from a non finance background so I just worry myself about the time it will take me to do the calculations.
I suppose the best thing for me to do is just practice them over and over again until i get faster at them?
Luckily I’m taking the CFA Level I in Decemeber this year not June so I will have plenty of time. I still have my concerns though which is why I asked
I can’t speak for every manifestation of Level I, but there are almost no real calculations to do, even in the quant section. You’re almost never (relatively speaking) asked to calculate TVM values. I don’t remember the quant section very well, but that is probably a good sign; I use a scientific calculator almost exclusively (I hate the BA II Plus for anything but TVM keys), and I wasn’t frustrated taking the test, so it must not have been very computational. *Most* of the questions on the exam overall are either purely definitions/qualitative application or very basic arithmetic in the financial analysis section (given a set of account values, calculate some basic thing, etc.).
Generally if you have a stong english background, 90 seconds per questions if quite sufficient. A lot of people do finish the exams quite well before time since about 40% of the questions would take less than 30 seconds to solve as long as you are well-prepared.
The CFA mock exams are a really good indication of the difficulty, time and type of questions that would appear in the actual exam so therefore, when the time comes I would suggest to do the mock exams like you were writing the real exam. Time yourself while and make sure you have only a 2 hour break between the morning and the afternoon exams(fatigue does play a huge role).
Yeah, you gotta realize a lot of the questions are not calculations, but simply hypothetical you know it or you don’t concept questions. So you’ll answer many of them in 20-40 seconds, and even do most of your quick calculations in much less than 1.5 minutes. Occasionally you may mark a question and come back to it and do a 3 minute calculation or something using the time you saved elsewhere. Keep in mind, if you decide to skip a question, always mark in a circle with your best guess then mark the question sheet so you know to review it at the end (as opposed to leaving it blank). Otherwise, you risk forgetting and accidentally filling in the wrong oval and then having your whole sheet get screwed up as you go along. Also, if you run out of time, at least your best guess is filled in.