Doing all previous L3 exams is no longer beneficial

Every AM is different in its own way and can be tricky if you aren’t well versed in a topic. That’s basically life bruh.
Each year’s AM poses unique challenges for everyone across the wide spectrum of testable material.
 
I’m being a little harsh on ethics, my only point was it’s the exact same material you’ve been tested on twice already, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise and you should have a very good base in it already. I got 70+ on both ethics sets but I was highly unsure of 5/12 questions.
 
frankly, this is nonsense. doing the past papers is hugely beneficial but no silver bullet.
For level 3, you need to know the material very well and you need to know the exam technique for the morning paper, doing a bunch of the past papers will help you a bit with the former and a lot with the latter.
the papers are definitely getting harder, i thought 2012,13 and 14 had a different feel to them than the years before, more time pressured, less straight forward, broader questions, more of an application of knowledge than before. I don’t think 2014 was particularly difficult compared to the other recent papers, it felt more time constrained but then I sat it as an actual exam as opposed to a practice so that was always going to be the case.
one of the very few things you can take for the granted in the CFA programme is that the CFAI will surprise you, sure, there’s been an IPS question 1st up for 2 decades, but maybe next year they’ll kick off with a derivatives question. maybe they’ll crack out 30 point banks IPS question. whatever they do you have to roll with the punches on exam day.
 
Marathon_runner wrote:
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.
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From reading the results thread, I don’t think this applied this year. a lot of people got a lot of >70 scores in the morning and then a bit of a spread in the afternoon.
Before the exam I had a look through the results threads from the last few years and a lot of the morning scores were messy with the afternoon paper aced. granted this is annecdotal.
I also think that the pm paper this year felt very different from anything I’d done before, including EOCs and CFAI practice papers.
 
I wouldn’t say its not beneficial as you need to practice the format for AM so you don’t run out of time, but I totally agree that you cannot just memorize formulas or past problems like L1 and L2 and expect to pass. For L3 its all about applying the material and executing on game day.
 
I think OP means ALL past AMs.
Going back a few years (3-4, maybe 5) are defnitely the best resources to prepare.
BUT, beyond that, I would definitely agree with OP.
 
doneanddone wrote:
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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I on the other hand found Fixed Income to be my low scoring area. Every result sheet indicates <50. The ethics scenarios at the exam were easy for me and managed to score over 70 in all 3 levels.
 
I think this year’s AM was straight forward for someone who mastered the CFAI books EOC and past AMs. You are definitely not going to get the same questions on previous AM however you will get to know “how” to answer a question based on the given and what you have learned in the textbooks. I disagree with OP about past AMs as I thought they were all useful even if material changed. You can still practice on indiv/instit portfolio questions which really help to cover most of the scenarios you could expect on an exam.
 
Past exams were mighty useful for me as well this time around. Last year most of my AM sessions was in the 50-70 range and hardly not many greater than 70. This time around I did lots of mocks and more importantly learned from the mistakes I made or learnt the way CFAI expects me to answer. This time AM was different, but easier IMHO and I got around 6 questions > 70.
Past AMs are helpful, if we are willing to put the amount of time as you take to write the test to learn from the mistakes. Absolutely not helpful, if we are not willing to learn from our mistakes in the mocks.
 
Past CFA exams is helpful in terms of how CFA can test you.. what type of questions you expect, and most importantly the guidlines the answers. I found them really helpful
 
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