I thought that the answer choices on the PM section were surprisingly in order this year. I.E. the short story has three statements 1, 2 and 3, and then the coresponding choices for the question where A) 1 B)2 C)3
I actually think this is a very visible part of the exam that the CFAI plans for. That’s why you get those huge formulaic questions + concepts with 2 or 3 questions each with three answers. If you’re going to get them right 100% of the time because you got lucky, or 50% of the time because you studied “enough” you are golden. But then there are the people who almost always get at least 2 of the 3 wrong because they don’t know it
Not unless you have thouroughly gone through the CFA actual past paper exams and familiarized yourself, additionally reperformed them several times under time constraint…
Ethics was bogus. Otherwise, pretty fair though difficult.
Exam was rough… especially depressing since i studied harder than at any other level.
For AM:
Time constrained me significantly so i did not finish. Probably left out 2-3 entire questions in total (perhaps more).
For PM:
Basically guessed for all Ethics, GIPS, and the derivatives sections (with several other odd guesses).
Not confident at all about exam, but not gonna dwell on it…
Lesson learned- focus more on PM next time
I also cancelled two template answers and then circling the supposedly right ones.
Will I receive credit? Please can someone guide
i did as well
i don’t think there’s anything wrong with changing your answer as long as you clearly crossed out the “wrong” answer and circled the “correct” one. the CFAI is not trying to find ways to not give you credit - let’s throw some common sense in here.
Haha, I did the same thing.
Except after I crossed out the initial answer and circled the other, I drew a big arrow pointing to the new answer with a label “MY ANSWER ===>”
Does anyone remember the weightings on AM, like highest weighting and lowest weighting of questions? Recent past exams had the highest weighting at 20 and lowest at 9…
Highest was 20. A few 17-19s. Don’t think there were any single digits.
Thanks, me neither. I think this time it was more equally weighted.
Did you do the Ethics portion of the exam?? I with CFAI would have thrown some common sense in there. Some of the CFAI policies (and exam questions) are purely ridiculous. That said, I think it’s completely valid to wonder if they would count an answer when another had been crossed out.
Yes, CFAI is not trying to find ways to rip us out of much deserved credit…just the fact they ignore any answer you write in the answer sheet if it turns out that there is a well engineered table for your answer few pages later. Its like ‘How dare you not use our table! Now go wait in line for next exam registration’. Very fair and takes into account exam stress and time management.
L3 re-taker here (band 9 last year)…
It’s tough to say which year (this year or last) was easier/harder. My perception of how easy it was is based on so many different factors…BUT I felt I performed better on the AM this year.
Last year I was 1/2 way through the AM paper when I realized there was only 30 min remaining. I had crossed out several answers in my answer sheets, changed my answer on questions where you have to circle an answer and provide reasoning, and barely finished writing something for each question.
This year, the AM section (like them all in my humble opinion) seemed tough…not any individual question, but the time with which you had to think about the question and articulate the detail scrambling through your head. So, I answered all the questions and had about 8 min left. Did I get all my points down clearly? I don’t remember. Did I write two answers on a question and put the incorrect one first? I could have out of rushing or sloppiness. What I did do was put something down for every question and felt that I had a solid answer for many (sufficient detail without too much wording).
I have read a lot of posts saying PM was “easy”, “very easy”, “I got at least an 80”…this may be, but I find it surprising. There were definitely questions that I think the answer came to me quite quickly and was “obvious”, but there were also some where I noticed details that could be easily overlooked.
In the end, getting the “easy” questions right will just be the ‘buy-in’ so to speak…it’s the tougher questions that I think will determine who passes and fails.
Generally, after having wrote this exam twice now, I have been surprised both times about some subjects which were NOT tested and seem so applicable to my job (buy-side) and others which were given a heavy weight and don’t seem nearly as relevant…this exam baffles me. Fingers crossed I can get the new business card stamped and be done with it this year.
The AM section was tough. I never settled into a rhythm so I am sure I made a lot of silly mistakes. I had been finishing the mocks in 2 hours easy, but the exam took me all of the 3 hours.
If I repeat next year then I will definitely do more AM mocks under real exam conditions.
The PM section was pretty much as expected.
If you made it clear which one you cancelled and which one you chose, I don’t see why you wouldn’t get full credit.
The graders have some intelligence. I’m told.
I am a re-taker.
I saw a lot of people telling that AM was easy. From my experience, anyone writting like this is in really deep s**t and probably will fail.
Speaking from the experience might be the right thing to do but not always… I personally found the AM session interesting and quite challenging, first time taking the exam, but was able to complete 30 min earlier and fine tune some questions!
Good for you and best of luck.