after taking enough mocks, ive come to realize often times the one answer that I eliminated (was actually the correct answer), so if im not very sure about an answer, i will leave it blank and fill in at the end C-B-A as a randomizing method.
my theory is that many questions have answers made to trick you, so your (best guess) is often enough… wrong. by randomizing the guess you maintain the chance that you get lucky and hit >33%, if you only use “A” its very unlikely they will (all) be correct.
also, another idea is that if there is more than one question that has
A) x
B) y
C) neither / both / all correct
guess the (neither/both/all) option for all of those, because its likely the test maker will have used at least one of those as an answer…
Have you ever gone through a mock and suddenly realized that you’ve answered “A” for like 8 questions in a row and been like uh-oh… that can’t be right.
Then go and check the answers and there should have actually been 10 “A’s” in a row?
First of all I am in no position to give my guessing strategy as I failed last year so clearly they don’t work but my thoughts are knowing which answers are the wrong answers is almost as important as being able to pick the right answer. If you partially know a concept and can figure out a wrong answer you can maybe figure it out from there.
If the question’s answers are all numbers and you are straight up guessing you are screwed.
If the question’s answers are words elimniate whichever one you immediately think is correct or is too obvious.
If you know you are correct on 4 of the 6 questions in an item set and are purely guessing on the other two I would probably scatter the guesses so I don’t have 5 A’s for an item set
Overall you can’t guess your way out of this exam but if you can squeek out an extra point here or there from narrowing it down you never know how important those points can be. I always keep in mind CFAI makes hard questions, and if you don’t know the answer and one of the choices seems obvious cross it out right away because that answer is there for people who don’t know the real answer.
Again, this is all my opinion and the best thing you can do is know the material so you don’t have to guess.
Since its multiple choice, you can ‘guess’ logically for some calculations. If you know there is a tricky step that involves removing depreciation or whatever, look to see if any numbers are spaced out by exacltly that figure. Theres a good chance the one missing it is right. This doesnt always work, but its worth a shot if youre done and going back through.