Whatever it takes
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- Jun 18, 2026
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I am a successful L3 retaker in 2016. I have greatly benefited from the advice and insights on this forum and decided to focus on some strategies that worked for me and more importantly not discussed widely on this forum. I failed L3 in 2015 (band 9) and didn’t realize what hit me for almost a month. I had done very well on the PM 80%-85%, knew the material well but scored abysmally on the AM. I went through the same feelings of disbelief, and denial for the first few weeks but as I gathered myself, I realized that AM was the key to acing L3.
Contrary to popular belief that PM holds the key to success at L3, I am of the belief that AM would decide whether your are successful. There are 2 reasons for this:
Ensure that you maximize points on the numerical part of any question. Keep an eye on command words. If you are asked to “identify”, candidates normally end up “describing” wasting time in the process. Maximize points on the template part of the questions. Even if you don’t deliver the perfect guideline answers, you would still grind your way to 51%-70% in these questions if you address the numerical and template questions well. Every question that you manage to score above 50% will disproportionately improve your probability of achieving an average score above 50% in AM and in turn take you closer to the Charter.
For the record, I scored 3 sections below 50%, 6 sections in the 51%-70% and 1 section above 70%. PM score would be between 75% -80%. So I have the score card of an average successful candidate. My PM scores would have been similar both years but my AM score in 2015 would have been closer to 30% while it would have been closer to 55% this year. A swing of 25% resulted in 12.5% improvement in overall score which took me over the line in 2016.
Best of luck for 2017!!
Contrary to popular belief that PM holds the key to success at L3, I am of the belief that AM would decide whether your are successful. There are 2 reasons for this:
- PM scores for a vast majority of candidates till band 9 which is about 65% of all candidates are >75%. The dispersion is low and they are clustered in the 75%-85% range. So the probability of an average candidate to score above 85% in PM is low and empirically one can relate to the fact that you can’t back yourself to scoring > 51/60. Hence outperforming in PM relative to your competition seems wonderful in theory but has low probability in practice.
- AM scores are hugely divergent for the same set of candidates (band 9 and above). If you carefully analyze the AM score matrix of band 9 and above, you would find that the scores are usually bunched up at around 25%- 60% which is a huge dispersion. An average pass score would normally report 2-4 sections below 50%, 1-2 sections above 70% and 4-7 sections between 51%-70%. So if there is a place where you should do better than the competition, it is AM.
Ensure that you maximize points on the numerical part of any question. Keep an eye on command words. If you are asked to “identify”, candidates normally end up “describing” wasting time in the process. Maximize points on the template part of the questions. Even if you don’t deliver the perfect guideline answers, you would still grind your way to 51%-70% in these questions if you address the numerical and template questions well. Every question that you manage to score above 50% will disproportionately improve your probability of achieving an average score above 50% in AM and in turn take you closer to the Charter.
For the record, I scored 3 sections below 50%, 6 sections in the 51%-70% and 1 section above 70%. PM score would be between 75% -80%. So I have the score card of an average successful candidate. My PM scores would have been similar both years but my AM score in 2015 would have been closer to 30% while it would have been closer to 55% this year. A swing of 25% resulted in 12.5% improvement in overall score which took me over the line in 2016.
Best of luck for 2017!!