First mock..Total failure, not even 50%! Plz tell me it is normal:(

What chicken said… the biggest problem people have with formula based questions is figuring out where to start/how to build your solution (think back to the first time you built a CF statement…). So naturally, the first time you try them they’re going to whoop your ass.
 
There’s still a lot of time to improve your current scores. Try to make a short list of formulas you tend to forget often as you go on with your revision, then ponder briefly on why the formulas are the way they are. For instance, why is Revenue the numerator in most ratios that involve turnovers but it becomes the denominator in most ratios that involves margins?…Thinking about the formulas this way will help you build a better understanding of how they work and also how they apply to other concepts. You won’t need to memorize them, you’d just simply understand them.
 
Reading the formula sheet a few times a day really helped me. I would also just quiz myself randomly–write down the expanded ROE calc or whatever on demand.
As most others have said, you are fine. I feel like I always got smoked by the mock exams, but it was in reviewing what I missed that I learned the most.
And start knocking out some Qbank!
 
Does the 50% include guesses? I found it easier just to leave questions I didn’t know blank. I felt it gave me a better read on what I actually knew and didn’t know.
 
Judging from the replies in this forum, I would say you are okay since you got 29 days left.
Take a positive spin on it. If you got 80% on your first mock let’s say, you would probably be slacking a bit, maybe a bit overconfident and arrogant. Now that you got less than 50%, you’ll know what to study and how hard to study.
 
Yeah the very important silver lining is that you have 29 days left. The classic error a lot of people make is waiting till the last minute to actually start testing themselves on problems, instead spending all their time reading study notes.
There’s a guy on the level 2 forum that has failed level 2 five times, I believe. He really knew the curriculum well. He could explain the tiniest little details. When we asked him, “How have you been scoring on Mocks?” he responded, “Oh, I’ve never taken one, I never feel ready in time.” Well, that’s his mistake. He failed again this year having not taken any mocks.
You can spend forever trying to memorize the study notes. This is a bad strategy. You need to read the study notes and work problems until you are blue in the face. If you are very practiced at doing all major types of problems on any level curriculum that will translate into much more efficient useage of your time on exam day. You will be able to guess a lot more accurately. You will have more time to work on the lengthier problems. The formulas and ratios will be very easy to remember if you have actualy used them dozens of times.
This does not mean, skip study notes and go straight to the practice exams. It does mean that at some point you need to focus on actually studying questions and not the curriculum.
Most importantly you need to do problems (they can be any problems not just mock problems) and spend a lot of time after you have done the question understanding the answer. Just taking the mock is a relatively useless exercise. The real benefit comes from analyizng each section and each question to understand what you didn’t know and what you needed to do that you didn’t. This also goes for any good guesses you make. Practice in will also help you build up a strong intuition for what kind of tricks and things to look out for. This is very useful in all topics, but especially ethics.
 
What I am finding very helpful is that “studying the questions” either mocks, EOC or Qs is working for me. It helped me practice questions and reveiwing the material at the same time.
The only issue is that I CANNOT do lots of questions a day, because I have to go back after every set of questions/topic and carefully review the material related, referring most of the time to Scheweser notes.
For example, in a 3h period, i did only 40 Qs (1h for questions, 2h for reviews).
Eventually, the number will increase by time as the retention ratio now is much higher than in my first reading..
 
Dear CFA,
I want to start off by thanking you for taking away the next month of my life. I appreciate it. I enjoy the 11 hour days during the week where I work 8 hours and try to study 3 more after work. I love getting home at 10pm exhausted, mentally & physically, I love it, thank you so much!!! Oh also thank you for the 5 hours of sleep I will be getting every night as I toss and turn in my bed because I am too stressed out from this exam to sleep! Also I appreciate the fact that you keep me fully occupied on the weekends banishing me from a social life and causing my gf to constently resent me for neglecting her because i am too busy studying.
I have read all the schweser books (began reading 8/22/12 finished on 10/31/12).
have spent the last 3 days on Schweser Pro reading LOS a couple times for each topic, then proceed to write a 20-40 question quiz on what I have just read. (seems like a good way to pick this shit up!)
So far I covered Portfolio MGMT, Equity, Derivitatives, Fixed Income, MRKT organization, have done 180 questions, getting 90 correct…an incredible 50%…wow good for me!!! I like how everyone says “oh just take a few quiz’s and you will know where your weaknesses are and focus on those”…well great advice, might as well just say “oh you are probably not going to retain anything you read from schweser, expect to fail every topic you review!!!!”
Panic mode…ENGAGE…
These were also the LAST topics I had read in Schweser, meaning it was the freshest in my memory.
My biggest concern right now is how it seems I have not memorized any of the formulas, any question I get to “calculate” i know what the question is asking but forget what goes where etc…I haven’t felt this shot down since my first junior high dance!
28 days to go….
 
My mistake on Level 1 was not memorizing the formulas well enough. There were a few questions I missed that I shouldn’t have, because I forgot to add or subtract one for example.
 
J.R.Gold wrote:
Dear CFA,
I want to start off by thanking you for taking away the next month of my life. I appreciate it. I enjoy the 11 hour days during the week where I work 8 hours and try to study 3 more after work. I love getting home at 10pm exhausted, mentally & physically, I love it, thank you so much!!! Oh also thank you for the 5 hours of sleep I will be getting every night as I toss and turn in my bed because I am too stressed out from this exam to sleep! Also I appreciate the fact that you keep me fully occupied on the weekends banishing me from a social life and causing my gf to constently resent me for neglecting her because i am too busy studying.
Click to expand...
Man, you should freaking happy you only have to work 8 hours a day. I know people in investment banking or research that work 15 hours a day, then go home to study.
 
iteracom wrote:
J.R.Gold wrote:
Dear CFA,
I want to start off by thanking you for taking away the next month of my life. I appreciate it. I enjoy the 11 hour days during the week where I work 8 hours and try to study 3 more after work. I love getting home at 10pm exhausted, mentally & physically, I love it, thank you so much!!! Oh also thank you for the 5 hours of sleep I will be getting every night as I toss and turn in my bed because I am too stressed out from this exam to sleep! Also I appreciate the fact that you keep me fully occupied on the weekends banishing me from a social life and causing my gf to constently resent me for neglecting her because i am too busy studying.
Click to expand...
Man, you should freaking happy you only have to work 8 hours a day. I know people in investment banking or research that work 15 hours a day, then go home to study.
Click to expand...
Job,CFA,gf…many would be happy to be in those shoes.I know I would
 
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