I thought the AM was pretty fair and thorough…was iffy on about 2 sub questions but think i nailed it…finished 15 minutes early and went back to check on stuff
Apart from the first 6 questions on the PM, i thought that was a breeze…finished in about 1 hour and 30 minutes…rechecked some of my answers and walked out feeling like a boss
Overall i’m feeling pretty confident
AM was what i expected…but still difficult. left 2 subparts completely blank and the rest i think i got some good answers to…especially the conceptual questions
PM i left after 2hr 15min…thought i destroyed it but i will be kicking myself in the face if i dont pass while leaving early
I thought AM was harder then last year and challenging from a time perspective. I have always been a fast test writer and although I finished all the questions in full it took me the whole 3 hours. PM was straight forward. Couple tricks in both sections but there not really tricks if you read the question. Failed Band 10 last year, felt well prepared this year and that the test was fair
When I say “the a.m. was a cakewalk” it means I was able to answer every question with 33 seconds to spare. If I fail, it’s because the p.m. owned me.
Exactly my opinion. AM was tough for me. Not because of time constraints (I finished 15 minutes early), but because with at least two questions I had the feeling you could have answered either way (given the choice). Even now, with complete insight into the material for one particular question I still don’t know the correct answer. How you guys can be so sure about all that is beyond me.
PM was OK. Finished it in 1.5 hours and had another 1.5 hours to recalculate leading me to straighten out 10 of 15 unsure questions. However, there were some questions in the PM that were poorly written and required some prolonged thinking and graphical representations to even comprehend what was going on. My guess is 65 on the AM and 75 on the PM, but who knows how often I overlooked a double negative.
#soundslikeBand10
#sorrydude
If it’s two questions that bothered you in the morning… you’ll be fine.
whatever you think you got right on the AM, typically take that down by 5-6 questions to get the real number. THat’s the general feeling I’ve seen from a lot of people.
#kissofdeathcomment
#rememberwhatyousaidLASTyear
#ANDtheyearbefore
I didn’t finish the AM… left about 10-15 “points” blank. Other than that, I thought it was manageable. The PM was sneaky tricky. Anyone who thinks it was easy is either a total beast or missed all the tricks.
First time L3 taker, i struggled with time on the AM for sure, i only had ~40min to do the last 4 qs! Ended up skipping a lot … really bad time management … i think i definitely underestimated time pressure having been too focused on memorizing all the material.
PM was much better, though ethics / GIPS i didnt find too straight forward
overall quite sure i failed, will have to better prepare next year
5-6 SUBquestions you mean?
I definitely didn’t budget my time as well as I should have in the AM. Felt like I could have done better.
The afternoon session was straightforward and I’m hoping that carries me through. Not overly confident though.
Also, I definitely didn’t do well on ethics…WTF was that…
when u say pm was good… how much you think you can score? seriouslly
Yeah, it was a demoralizing situation for me. I felt like I really knew the material well but just didn’t adequately prepare myself to actually take the AM exam. This year I did a lot of timed practices but obviously still had some issues. On the bright side I made it through just about every question but if I came across something that I knew I was going to have to try to BS for a point or two but would consume substantial time I just moved along. So the vast majority of the questions I attempted were ones that I felt really confident about. I think a lot of people have the same approach and although it’s frustrating to leave any blanks, most of the ones that aren’t answered are ones where you were likely to get no or a very small amount of partial credit at the most. This is a much much different situation than if it were multiple choice.
Band 10 retaker and I felt like the AM was tougher than last year but definitely manageable. I did a lot better on the AM last year than the PM. Ethics sucked and really worries me after being Band 10 last year and only scoring 50-70 on ethics. Hoping I won’t be relying on an ethics adjustment again this year. The rest of the PM was very fair IMO.
If I had to put a number on it… I would give myself a 30% chance at passing. Not happy with my performance.
Yeah I believe that’s what he meant and it’s a pretty good rule to follow I think. I usually assume 20% of the questions that I believed were answered correctly were not.
I thought the AM was no more difficult or easy than the average of the 2010-2014 AM’s. I was able to finish all questions but it was a struggle to get it all done in time. I normally never get nervous for tests, but when your mind draws a blank on a question or two on the AM and you know the clock is ticking on a time sensitive exam you can only take once a year…stress mounts very quickly!! I was thrown off by the Individual IPS question (this is giving nothing away about the exam b/c it’s on every L3 exam). I considered that a strength going into the exam but I just didn’t have much practice answering the specific questions it asked, but maybe it’s just me.
The PM felt a lot more simple. Some of the item sets were a breeze, and I had plenty of time to re-work some of the problems I thought were easy (checking for tricks). PM felt easy, but let’s be honest…ethics is a total crap shoot on some questions and it’s easy to get 50% or less in the topic if a few questions go the wrong way for you. I also thought the last item set was hard, but overall the PM felt like Level II.
The morning session of Level III is the real deal, though. Arguably the toughest exam I’ve taken all things considered.