Doing all previous L3 exams is no longer beneficial

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Damil4real

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The problem with doing all previous AM questions (I did) is that the way the questions are now asked seems to be changing. And the exam is no longer straight forward. A lot of unrealistic scenrios and tricky questions are becoming the norm.

I did every single past AM questions I could get my hands on, separated them into their own binders, review each answers, notes…etc and was still like WTF when I started the 2014 AM session.

Compare the 2014 L3 exam (when it comes out) to all previous L3 exams and you will see what I’m talking about. Look at the way the questions were structured/asked in 2014 compared to previous years. It’s getting more tricky, it’s no longer straight forward. Questions and scenarios are no longer realistic.

The interesting part is that you read the CFA books…, and everything in it is realistic and reasonable…, and then you take the exam which is then full of unrealistic and tricky questions.

It doesn’t mean you still can’t pass the exam (54% pass rate is pretty good), but keep it in mind that doing every previous L3 exam can amount to crap on exam day. It can amount to what I call a WTF moment.
 
Practice exams are just that…. Practice. From my own experience it is how effectively you use them and not how many times you take them the key to success.
If you do a mock and take the time to understand the LOS even after getting the wrong answer, that is time well spent. But if you take them just to see how you score believing that’s a true reflexion of how you will perform during the actual exam then that’s where the problem is.
Many people believe that because you do 20 mocks and score 75% that’s how you will score in the exam but there are many different variables during the actual exam, such as nerves, pressure, etc so you can’t compare one thing with the other.
use mocks to help you understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and take it from there. Always go back and ensure you knows the LOS. In the end it’s quality not quantity what’s gonna get you there!
 
One of the questions in the old AM exam was repeated in the 2014 AM.. I found it helpful as I could quickly solve it as I had seen it before
 
Could not disagree with this more. Old AM sections, going back 3-4 years, are practically the best study item available. It’s the exact test - what more could you ask for!!?! You often can’t focus on the specific concepts presentated in those exams, partly because they do vary the exam from year to year, but also because the LOS changes - there are definetly old AM questions out there that aren’t part of the cirriculum anymore. If an old exam asks about a bank investment policy statement, don’t focus on knowing every detail of a bank investment policy statement - rather use this as an indicator of how they’d like ANY instituional portfolio management IPS question to be answered.
 
Disagree completely. The chance of passing this exam has a positive direct relationship to how many practice exams you solve. It’s not a correlation; it’s a causal dependence and necessary condition.
 
Virtually no one masters the AM. Just aim to tread water in the AM – and then kill it in the PM. In my opinion the L3 PM has a lot of low-hanging fruit.
 
I generally agree that questions are becoming more tricky. A
But I still manage to improve my AM score (with the 40/60/80 deal, and just by looking at my answer matrix going from left to right) by about 5-6% every year, being right below the cutoff mark for 3 years already. I feel like they cant get any further being douchebags with the AM.
My problem is with the PM. It has degraded for me by 3-5%. I think I am losing interest in the PM, underestimating it, and I don’t care that much, that is what has failed me.
If I sit for the test next year, I would still go through a lot of mocks, but be very careful about it, they are much more straightforward than the exam.
 
I would also disagree. though I didn’t take the last L3, the questions are designed to be different in some way. You can’t seriously expect them to ask the same thing with different names and different numbers right?
it’s still all good practice. I did well on AM , and I attributed that to doing many years of all AM’s going back
 
I think 2014 was the hardest AM i’ve seen yet. With that, I will agree. There are some common themes that get hit upon every few years. You can see that if you’ve done 7+ years of morning exams.
But I remember this year, I couldn’t believe when I saw the structure and kind of laughed to myself thinking after 6 years of this stuff, “CFAI, you never fail to be a bastard”. But preparing 3 years for the same exam, I was really confident because I thoroughly synthesized the info, so tackling the questions was still doable even with the new innovative structure.
Biggest takeaway from this thread to me - The morning exams are DEFINITELY getting harder. NO QUESTION there. But, they’re still relevant and you still have to use them to practice and you need to grade yourself as hard as possible.
Shouldn’t level III really be the most challenging? Are you competent? You should be able to apply what you know and you should know a lot by now.
 
You understand the concepts so you can apply them in various problem sets. Haven’t we learned that in elementary school? CFAi isn’t gonna stick the same style questions to you and change the numbers.
 
This is silly - the past mocks are only practice and far and away the best possible representation of what you can expect on exam day.
 
The level of which you listen to this advice is inversely related to your probability of success. I’m surprised to hear so many people thinking this year’s AM was the most difficult. I didn’t find it any more challenging than previous years.
 
Agreed, why don’t we talk about how to ace the afternoon session instead of the morning? Any suggestions/ideas from the ones that passed L3?
 
The PM is becoming more and more of a black box as there are no practice questions, you get 50% in AM and you have no margin of error for PM.
 
Well, you’ll almost certainly have 1-2 item sets on ethics in the PM, and if you can’t get 80% on those you don’t deserve to pass.
The item sets in the PM are no different than the 20 item sets you had to pass at L2. While they don’t make old exams available, I found the mock questions from prep providers mimicked the actual exam pretty closely.
 
titansrulev2 wrote:
Well, you’ll almost certainly have 1-2 item sets on ethics in the PM, and if you can’t get 80% on those you don’t deserve to pass.
Click to expand...
I saw several posted scores this past exam, mine included, that scored 50-70% on PM Ethics and still passed. Ethics was pretty tough this time around.
 
titansrulev2 wrote:
Well, you’ll almost certainly have 1-2 item sets on ethics in the PM, and if you can’t get 80% on those you don’t deserve to pass.
Click to expand...
I scored 50-70 in Ethics, <50 on Alt… and >70 on everything else in the PM.
 
jwn566 wrote:
titansrulev2 wrote:
Well, you’ll almost certainly have 1-2 item sets on ethics in the PM, and if you can’t get 80% on those you don’t deserve to pass.
Click to expand...
I saw several posted scores this past exam, mine included, that scored 50-70% on PM Ethics and still passed. Ethics was pretty tough this time around.
Click to expand...
By no means am I saying this to brag - I’m saying it to show how hard Ethics was (for me) this year (I hated the PM session in its entirety, by the way): I went back at the end of the exam and changed 7 of the 12 Ethics answers I had selected and felt good about exactly 0 of the 12. In the end I scored >70%.
I have no idea what I did.
 
I always scored 50-70% on ethics in each exam. I found this to be the hardest section, but easiest to get through since I was always unsure….. so no sense in wasting time….
 
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