CFA LIII result..dont know what went wrong

P1

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Hi All,
I am CFA LIII candidate. I failed in the exam mostly because of morning sesion. I had worked hard and solved maximum mocks. I found morning session answers not very difficult. Still I had lowest score. Does anybdy know key to clear morning session
 
I dont have the key but nailing the PM definitely helped me and I know many have passed by doing the same.
 
Maybe you can give us more insigh what went wrong.. how many hours u plugged in? which band? - fail is fail i understand.. but you have to know how bad did u do in morning compared with others? - given that you studied alot and practiced.. Maybe you had squeezed in morning, or maybe you felt it was easy but you didnt answer what CFAI wants.
Again, i encourage you to download past CFA AM exams when you register for 2016, try to take notes as much as you can, write in bullet points, short answers (maximum 10 words) this will help. Also, PM can be easily aced and getting at least 80% can gurantee a pass even if you scored less than 60% in AM. Read those CFA answers, do as much as possible AM exam (Old CFAI exams only), Take notes, use Flashcards if needed (didn’t use them though), Watch videos (I watched IFT videos for L2 and L3 and they were very helpful). Do as much as EOC/and Blue Boxes from CFAI books..
 
Here is what it helped me most in passing the examt- You take whatever you want.
For morning - time is the key -
Try to answer every question in 2/3 of the allocated time. I got a digital watch and before Start a Question - i used to write beginning time and time need to complete it by. If the question has 10 points, i used to write the current time 9.36 and 9.36 +7 =9.43
For the afternoon - study ethics and gips well. Thats 30% of your afternoon exam and that will make the most difference.
Good luck
 
The thing about morning session questions are that they are quite deceptive. A seemingly easy question can in fact be quite complex. Plus, it is very difficult to guage your proficiency as far as the morning session is concerned due to the subjective nature of the questions and the fact that you are grading your own self.
I remember that I always end up feeling quite good when solving mocks but when i got around checking, I was constantly cursing myself for being so naive. So, the bottomline even if you feel that you have done well in the morning exam, you can NEVER be sure.
As far as my two cents go, i think it is very difficult to do well in the morning exam. Hence, the key lies in trying your best to complete the mornign sessoin in time and not mess. The, you can make up for it by doing extra ordinarilly well in the afternoon exam.
From all that i have read on the forums and other resources, the PM session is the savior of many. Focus on it.
I wish you all the best for your next attempt.
 
Since you can be questioned on any topic in the morning session, I think it’s best to practice written questions from the start. I believe writing out answers from the get go increases your overall proficiency and leads to higher marks in both the AM and PM sessions.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very important to practice the PM item sets to make sure you’re sharp, but because you drilled a million of these item sets throughout your Level II prep and Level I was all objective questioning, it will take less time to be in shape.
End of the day, writing is the key not only because it’s critical to being effective on test day, it really helps you internalize the curriculum which is equally critical on exam day.
Best of luck!
 
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