^roger that baby girl
greenie, i think its possible to study and fail, i know i did for l2 and i studied my ass off for l3 and could be shown the dreaded “we regret” email
^Yeah, it’s possible to study and fail. Maybe they tested all the stuff you didn’t study. Maybe you just couldn’t grasp the material. I failed L1 once (because I didn’t study) and failed L2 once, because I underestimated how much more was required for L2 than L1. But in neither case was it because “my handwriting sucks” or “I couldn’t make the test grader understand what I was thinking” or “I’m just not good at taking tests” or “I didn’t have time to finish the exam”.
In all exams, time management is part of the exam. And in L3, handwriting (to some extent) and articulating your ideas is also part of the exam.
And I don’t believe the “I’m not good at taking tests” excuse. Not for any test, not at any level.
I think some people are genuinely bad at taking tests though. When I was taking the 7, one guy I worked with failed it twice. Finally passed. Then failed 66 twice. So he quit. He wasn’t stupid, not genius brilliant either but def not stupid, he studied a LOT, just couldn’t take tests.
And I haven’t looked at L3 formats at all, but I hate essay tests, and you have to admit it’s a totally different format than multiple choice. I’m still bitter because my year was the first where you needed essays for your SAT. Pretty sure I could have gotten higher percentage score if I had been a year older and it was 1600/1600 haha.
Anyway, I do hope I passed L2 but more I hear about this, more I dread June 2016.
If the CFA exam was an IQ test, it wouldn’t require studying…
They’re definitely not testing if you can write fast…they’re testing if you can write concise bullets that answer the question. If you ran out of time it is because of one of two reasons: (i) you wrote too much, or (ii) you didnt know the material well enough so you had to think too long before you wrote. There is no testing of writing speed…you say you knew the material, so the explanation for why you ran out of time is that you wrote too much…which is a valid reason to deny you the charter. If you crushed the PM as you thought then maybe you passed, although leaving two AM questions blank is a very rough hit on your score. I remember when I took it there were sections I thought I crushed and I actually got < 50% in those. Net/net I passed but I would say the exam results are more likely to end up opposite of what you “feel”.
quit? he should have been fired.
66 is a bit different. Just a lot of rote memorization with little conceptual knowledge, IIRC. Kinda like GIPS.
I am not a bad test taker by any means.Completed MBA with 1st class (ya hackshaw alright)…Both levels of FRM passed in 1st attempt (material of FRM is much difficult than CFA ).ACCA 70% complete.CFA Both levels passed in one attempt with 19/20 >70% with in 6 months time frame.I have a full time 55-60 hr risk management job too.
The point i want to make is that i breezed through both levels of CFA by just doing pratice exams and mocks.However for L3 i read schweser books 3 times,did all finquiz mocks ,did all schweser q bank and schweser volumes,did all CFA Eocs…so i had nothing more left to study or prepare…Ya i was over prepared for the exam…Still the format of AM killed me.Ramos is correct perhaps i wrote a bit more than needed in questions i knew very well and that caused me to leave questions untouched in AM.However i have done very well in PM and may just be shocked by my results this August by seeing the “Congratulations” mail instead of “We regret” mail.However i am rooting for later more than the former now.
Any ways i accept its was my fault.Instead of doing Schweser q bank and Finquiz…I could have better used that time to practice few timed AM mocks again.
Sorry that was misleading, it was insurance sales so as long as you had a pulse, and could bring in anyone with a pulse, you couldn’t get fired. 
Of course, if you couldn’t get licensed you can’t bring anyone in, so yeah if he hadn’t quit he probably would have been fired sooner or later…
Also, I thought 66 was pretty tricky. At least, when I took L1 the ethics portion really reminded me of 66.
^This…in my last week in addition to timed tests I also just did various essay questions (particularly in my weak areas determined from performance on prior mocks, EOC, and qbank…and emphasis on individual IPS) from previous CFAI exams using the time alloted (points). It helped with concise writing as well as knowing material.
L3 has to be studied a bit different from L1and L2…altho one doesnt really realize that until you see how far off your answers are from the model answers on AM. While it is good to model your answers from CFAI answers (because they are concise) it is good to start with Schweser model answers (because they are overkill). Once you can recall the amount of information Schweser puts in their answers then the next step is to take it down to a couple of bullets like CFAI does.
+1
I’m with you. I wish these people would read up on psychological defense mechanisms. They’re like the mark at the poker table and have no idea.