^ Indeed. I call it " P ast Y ear Q uestions" but “Prior” works too.
One thing I noticed after writing Level 3 this year was a lot of people talking about how there were a lot of ‘confusing’ questions or that there were a lot of tricks in the questions.
To be quite honest, if anyone felt this way, I’d say with a higher level of confidence that they failed. Having written and passed all three levels now, I can say that I’ve never been confused or felt ‘tricked’ by ANY of the CFA exams.
What I have noticed though, is a very intentional use of “red herrings” - additional information that is meaningless to the question, but will mislead the unprepared. Simply put, if you know your material well, you’ll simply ignore the red herrings and those that don’t will answer questions incorrectly because they used the wrong info.
A – if I may be so bold – men!
I’ll second this. I took AM exams going back to 2007 as practice. I focused much less on the PM item sets. If you overprepare for the AM and the active recall necessary to succeed, you’ll know to write only what’s necessary and you’ll easily be able to passively answer multiple choice questions in the PM.
My score matrix suggests the same happened to me. My AM looked clean, my PM not so much.
^ You sure you didn’t see the scores backwards?
Just about to start Level 3 prep. Pls advise, if its better to start with CFA Institute books directly and later on review Schweser? Or start with Schweser to get a grasp of the syllabus?
^ Whatever has worked for you during L1 and L2. Just follow the same.
Though more effort is required in solving the EOCS/BBS in the CFAI text for L3 imho.
As many have said, I’d highly recommend doing all AM past papers from 07 onwards when the time comes. Also do 06 if you’re needing a bit of a confidence boost.
You’ll probably notice a difference between the 12,13 & 14 papers compared to the ones that came before.
As for the PM session, I was very well prepared for the exam and found the PM to be tricky. It’s just another way they can shake it up and catch you off guard when you’re expecting an easier paper in the afternoon.
It’s the same format but very different to Level 2 due to the material being different. Took me less than 2 hours to finish but I came out of the session with no idea how i’d done, ended up with most >70, 2 double item set sections 50-70 and 1 item set <50.
Some of the questions did feel like tricks because, in my honest opinion, they are running out of ways to make these papers harder so some of the questions are just ridiculous. And then there are a lot of questions that would easily lull a less prepared candidate into an incorrect answer.
Start with the Institute books. It will push you to study more early on.
+1
Agreed. This seems to be the majority’s opinion, I’m following this strategy. Aiming to finish the CFAI’s textbooks by end of year and diving into Schweser Jan 1…
If you clear level II, you can certainly think of III. It has to be a calculated long term plan.
dirkan = edupristine
I failed the exam last time and I just used the Schweser for this one and the other 2 levels. I would say try to look at the CFAI books at least for the Portfolio Management sections, since it sounds like the markers are looking for the CFAI book’s buzz words or sentences.
You can be highly knowledgeable about the materials, but not using their own words could be a bit risky in my opinion……
r u retarded?
+1
You are right. 2199 pages.