Good Luck To Everybody. Here Are A Couple Tips That Helped Me Pass Last June

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CFA.Rhythm

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1. At this point you should be taking full three hour sample exams. Remember, this is a speed test. You should be able to do 120 questions in three hours. The only way to learn time skills for passing L1 is practicing COMPLETE SAMPLE EXAMS. Seriously, you need to know how you will react when you come to a question or two that blow you away. Will you get flustered or stay calm and move on?
2. When you get to a really hard question, move on really fast. Don’t waste a single extra second on that question. The guy next to you will get hung up on that question, and will spend five minutes on it. Then he’ll be behind on time for the rest of the exam, and will get really stressed out. Don’t fall into that trap.
3. Your job is to find all the questions you DO know, not waste time on the ones you do not know. When you get to question 120, go back and look at the ones you didn’t know. Each question is worth the same amount, so you might as well find the easier ones.
4. Be sure to take all the CFAI sample/mocks exams. They will prepare you for the CFAI type wording, and CFAI expected concepts.
5. Take many Schweser sample exams, too. Keep in mind that Schweser’s questions can be rather time consuming, with a lot more math than CFAI questions.
6. At the exam center bring your own lunch, and don’t talk to anybody before, during the break or after. You’ll be glad you didn’t, especially if you say hi to some guy and he says something like “This test is easy. I’m 21 years old, and studied all these subjects in college for the last four years.”
7. Good luck, God Bless
 
Cheers for advice.
I found this today on a 120 mock….only managed 109 questions……..(not easy going forward on the simulation without giving an answer).
In had to trudge through the 3-5 min questions hoping the next was a 30 second one.
Lesson learnt!
 
hey perdition - did you take the samples? i’m just curious. I haven’t done the mocks yet (planning on doing one this weekend) but in the samples, i didn’t have a time issue at all - finished with lots of time to spare.
Just wondering if the mocks are more time consuming then the samples were (per question i mean as the sample is 60 Q’s vs 120 for the mocks)
 
For those of you whom English is your first language, timing should not be a huge concern. Many questions on the actual exam are not lengthy or complex, but they do test the concept hard and fast.
Plenty of candidates finished with 30+ minutes left. Personally I took the water and bathroom breaks I needed without worrying about time.
I agree that one should not get hung up on a tricky question, but time constraints are not the reason. I have found that if you sit and dwindle on a question for 5 minutes (as I did several times), you’re confidence starts running and soon you get a nasty gut feeling that you are going to fail the exam. This self fulfilling prophecy may have been what happened to me.
Bring your lunch (running around worrying about if you’ll eat is additional stress that is not needed), and talk to people at your own risk. You are not supposed to talk about the exam and while me and a few friends did anyway, you only get p!ssed off when you realize you got this and that wrong which further erode your confidence.
In June I ate a Subway Sandwich in my car and read through the Secret Sauce briefly. Do this at your own risk too since you really get p!ssed when you begin realizing that you got this and that wrong.
Relax and keep your composure.
 
jut111 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> hey perdition - did you take the samples? i’m
> just curious. I haven’t done the mocks yet
> (planning on doing one this weekend) but in the
> samples, i didn’t have a time issue at all -
> finished with lots of time to spare.
>
> Just wondering if the mocks are more time
> consuming then the samples were (per question i
> mean as the sample is 60 Q’s vs 120 for the mocks)
I did the free sample which was a bit of a shock…53%…….first exam, learning format etc…then the second (paid) sample = 68%….no problem with time on either 10 minutes spare.
Today paid for both mocks and did the first one…….started off ok, usual ethics…then just drudged into FSA…..I don’t know if I was taking it easy as I had a 3 hour marathon ahead, but, there were quite a few calculation questions where you needed both parts, e.g. sd & mean absolute deviation, some questions you get 1 and it is then obvious….
Came out with 56% (109/120)….still struggling on FSA, even though it didn’t feel too bad at the time.
I was also writing down questions I specifically didn’t get at the time for later…a couple were, non descript one line mentions in the book, that I may have read and not noted„won’t give the game away„but a couple of times I was totally clueless on a detail..not a concept…what was I tested on?…..seemed a bit pointless to be fair.
I will go over the Los for the next few days and do the 2nd mock next week…Good luck!
 
thanks perdition. i’m planning on banging out one mock this weekend and the 2nd the following weekend.
 
Perdition, how did you make a 56 if you got 109 questions correct in the mock?
 
Have a read back through the thread in the previous post, where I stated that I was surprised to run out of time and only managed to 109 out of the 120 questions in the 3 hours.
If I got 109 out of 120 questions do you honestly think i would be on here looking for advice on how to get the last 11 questions right? :)
 
Answer D;
Guys it does help if you follow the threads!
(answer D does not relate to anything?)
 
I have a question about Schweser Volume 1 vs Schweser Volume 2 practice exams. I don’t have time to do all of both books, so which do you recommend I do? Volume 1 or Volume 2??
 
i’d say do volume one. from what i’ve hear, volume 2 is way more calculation intensive and in depth then the actual exam.
I’m only planning on touching volume 2 if i run out of everything else - which is unlikely at this point.
 
agree on book 7. its meant to be way too hard to be a valid testing tool. although doing questions and learning from your mistakes is always going to help. just dont get too hung up on bad scores from it.
this is a great post. thanks rhythm and others!
 
Guys, I was going to take the CFAI sample tonight but should I just skip and go to the mock? Is there a major difference other than one takes 2 hours and one takes 3?
With the Schweser book 6 I probably have more practice exams than I can get to.
I’ve been putting off taking the CFA sample/mocks just because they are online rather than real printed paper, but maybe that is stupid?
 
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