#1 reason you failed last year?
Poor time budeting in the morning session
For level 1 & 2 prepared the least(less than 200 hrs) and in fact left derivaties in lvl 2 for want of time and yet went with an attitude ’ if not this time , may be next time’. But last year I guess I put myself under pressure thinking that I need to get it done with. though I prepared marginally better,I could not deliver ont he exam day. No 1 reason : Panick attack. Got stuck in return calculation and Equity collar Vs ETF. when I checked my watch I was doing Q2 after more than an hour. there started the slide…
Great advice…It is definitely important to do time management. Working backwards better?
If return calc looks goofy (and it probably will), move on. Look for the easy questions first. The return calc will take the most time even though it is probably worth 6-8 points.
hopefully i will survive…may have to eat an animal or two in the process
Any other suggestions?
Time management is very critical in the morning session. Last year I ran out of time and couldn’t complete the last three questions. My scores on PM were good enough to let me pass if I got the same on the morning sesssion.
oh FFFFFFFFFF this thread is making me crap my cat pants… yayks… decision made: Im leaving the return calc towards the end… although that will be very hard cause I really really want to get it right!
ya, i ran out of time also last year. a big one I’m going to utilize this year is point form. Be very brief but very specific. Long winded sentences are unnecessary It’s crap that they don’t allow you to accrue minutes from the long answer to the MC section. finishing the whole thing in 6 hours is easy. Finishing the written in <3 hours and MC >3 hours is fricken hard! Yes, this is completely irrelevant at this point. Just ranting…
One more advice - for short essay questions, follow the format layout (ie fill in the answers in the answer box given). I was too eager and make the mistake of writing on the blank page and later realised the answers is to be written in the box layout given in another page.
READ THE QUESTIONS! So easy to just go on a tangent when answering and miss the answer even though you may know it. pvofjezza has some great advice.
I’m beginning to think that leaving the whole inidivual IPS question until last might be a good idea. Ignoring the time factor, struggling over the return calculation is a real confidence destoyer, especially if it comes up at the start of question#1 (as it probably will).
but there is always this Q1 on the back of you mind (over 20pionts), which could be distractive as well…
#1 In a nutshell the AM test. Saw the huge minutes/points total on IPS and decided to spend lots of time on it and focus on it. Took this too far. Spent way too much time on return calc, still couldn’t figure it out and wrote way too much on other portions of IPS. Couldn’t figure out “trick” in attribution which seemed different from way I had mastered in in Schweser. Felt like it was missing something. Couldn’t remember what the heck Black-Litterman was. Knew I had seen it somewhere. Ironically the one batch of index cards I didn’t review one last time before I fell asleep the night before contained Black-Litterman. Internally debated whether to use Equity collar, Exchange fund or Completion portfolio and spent too much time dwelling on it. Didn’t feel confident on the economics question at the end. Couldn’t remember Grinold-Kroner model. Wasn’t sure. Felt terrible about AM. At lunch I felt like I was going to fail. In the afternoon, I felt I did well enough to pass on PM, but alas wasn’t enough to save me over all. It’s a year later and panic is setting in regarding the AM essays again. Highly confident on the PM. AM section is just really challenging to prepare properly for IMO.
I underetimated L3 and was unprepared for it. Also, I don’t think they liked my answer explainations. In review of 2007 essay, I remember putting a lot of the right answers. My scores were mostly 50-70%, so it looks like I missed a lot of points on the justification part. I think there is a fine line in the level of detail you put there.
The Rick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I underetimated L3 and was unprepared for it. > Also, I don’t think they liked my answer > explainations. In review of 2007 essay, I > remember putting a lot of the right answers. My > scores were mostly 50-70%, so it looks like I > missed a lot of points on the justification part. > I think there is a fine line in the level of > detail you put there. Definitely true. I reviewed the 2007 exam when it came out just to see how far off I was. You know what, I wasn’t that far off, yet my scores indicated I had no clue what I was talking about. I actually did the return calc right and got less than 50% on the individual IPS. Really be sure you are answering the question the way the CFA wants you to answer it.
The return requirement might not be worth a lot of marks but doesn’t what return requirement you get determine a whole host of factors i.e. ability to take risk, liquidity requirement, and more importantly the asset allocation which is prob a whole question by itself?
Last year I did not see 4 questions…How stupid!!!There are so many blank pages so I just did not see them…It’s true- I couldn’t sleep the night before but still…When I found out there were 10 questions I threw up…
i’m not a retaker but i am resigned to the fact that a lot of the morning section is luck. sure, you can study really hard and be smart, but at the end of the day, if they ask some weird, vague questions, a lot of people are going to miss those questions, and i might be one of them. agree with saving the IPS for last. no need to burn out your motor on the first question. and personally, i couldn’t give a crap about the return question. i will try to get it right, but i know that it’s rigged anyway. i did 12 IPS questions yesterday and got the return calc right on THREE of them. unacceptable CFAi, unacceptable.