Who else thinks the essay questions are highly ambiguous?

CFA Level III
#1

Hey guys!

I started going over some mock exams this week. I took 2 months off work and I went over all of the material and EOC questions. But I feel like these essay questions can be answered in so many ways if you justify your answers, especially with material from the curriculum. And yet, the answers guidelines seem very narrow-minded; they seem to accept only a handful of good answers. I call these the “guess what I’m thinking” questions. Really annoying!

Do I really not know my stuff well enough or is this just a way for the Institute to guarantee that 50% of candidates will obviously not guess how the CFAI “really” wants them to answer some questions?

I guess I’ll need to ace the PM session so that I can average something reasonable for a pas…

#2

I’ve found this in the CFAI EOCs, but then the practice exam (1 Schweser I’ve done) seemed very straightforward.

#3

The EOCs are far more open ended than the practice exam questions but there are still some pretty ambiguous questions in the exams I’ve done so far.

maybe I’m not tuned in enough or I don’t know the material well enough yet.

#4

keep calibrating. They are looking for specific answers, just answer the question the way CFAI recommends if passing the exam is your goal.

They’ve acknowledged that there are different ways to answer the AMs so you will get marks if you make sense but if you answer similarly to the guidelines, you can get full marks instead.