How CFA maintain confidentiality of the exam content accross timezone?

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escoleru

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As the exam is now in the same day time (Saturday only), candidates in China/India will take the exam 12 hours before candidate in America. How can CFA ensure that the exam material is not leaked to some candidates in America giving that gap in time? A simple topic concentrations leak can alter the entire exam results bell curve because we all know CFA exams are mainly testing unexpected/non-traditional stuff in the curriculum?
 
I speculate CFAI wiretaps your phone’s and internet till ensure no breach occurs.
 
Yeah there must be some vilations for sure.
One brother in India and One in USA giving same exam
 
What makes you think the questions in the AM and PM sessions are the same the world over.?I believe there will be subtle and/or small changes in the questions themselves enough to make the papers sufficiently different.
or maybe different question papers of equivalent difficulty.
 
confused2010 wrote:
What makes you think the questions in the AM and PM sessions are the same the world over.?I believe there will be subtle and/or small changes in the questions themselves enough to make the papers sufficiently different.
or maybe different question papers of equivalent difficulty.
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Papers are identical, of this I can confirm. As to how they monitor, wiretaps, and hired hitmen obv.
 
This kind of pisses me off as well, but at the end of the day I doubt a few hours heads up will really make all that much of a difference if you don’t know something.
 
I heard that the CFAI counters this by computer generating personalized Level II exams for each individual based upon any weaknesses uncovered during their Level I exam. Since each exam is uniquely designed to include the worst possible topic distribution for every candidate, cheating across different time zones is of little real concern.
 
In all seriousness though, with the amount of material covered in the curriculum it would be VERY easy to make 2 or 3 different tests for the different timezones. But alas, the CFAI certainly is too busy to do so- what with offering the test one whole time a year and everything.
 
monkeyCFA wrote:
In all seriousness though, with the amount of material covered in the curriculum it would be VERY easy to make 2 or 3 different tests for the different timezones. But alas, the CFAI certainly is too busy to do so- what with offering the test one whole time a year and everything.
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Making 2 or 3 different test for different people will not be consistent with fairness and equity unless you can prove that all 3 tests are EXACTLY of the the same difficulty, which no one, not even the CFA can.
 
There maybe different versions of the exam to ensure fairness
 
Timezone differences won’t matter much. It’s 14hrs difference from Sydney to NYC, but by the time I’m finished the exam if I were to text someone in NY they aren’t going to have 14hrs to cheat.
The start to finish of the exam is closer to 9 full hours, so when I get out at 4:30pm it’s 2:30am in the US. Now suppose I grab my phone, violate the CFA code of ethics and text him some of the topics, he’s really only 4 hrs to study up because he’s got to get up and actually head to the exam.
But those 4 hrs of “study” come between 2:30am and 6:30am. You’d be forgoing sleep and to be honest, how much studying could you possibly do in those four hrs that you haven’t done in the past 4 months.
And this is of course one of the largest time-zone gaps.
 
Don’t forget there is a lunch break!!!!!!!! If I have a brother taking the same exam in Sydney, I will definitely have advantages than others. The lunch break in Sydney is 10PM in Toronto and I will definitely have time to cover everything in the AM paper with so much time left
 
The CFAI gods will hear those who cheat and not allow them to pass.
 
escoleru wrote:
Don’t forget there is a lunch break!!!!!!!! If I have a brother taking the same exam in Sydney, I will definitely have advantages than others. The lunch break in Sydney is 10PM in Toronto and I will definitely have time to cover everything in the AM paper with so much time left
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Dunno about others but I could not live with the idea of having cheated for the rest of my life even if given an opportunity to cheat and 100% guarantee of not being caught.
 
bloodline wrote:
monkeyCFA wrote:
In all seriousness though, with the amount of material covered in the curriculum it would be VERY easy to make 2 or 3 different tests for the different timezones. But alas, the CFAI certainly is too busy to do so- what with offering the test one whole time a year and everything.
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Making 2 or 3 different test for different people will not be consistent with fairness and equity unless you can prove that all 3 tests are EXACTLY of the the same difficulty, which no one, not even the CFA can.
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I agree. But at the same time, wouldn’t that be no different than how the test differs year over year? If you were truly following the “fairness” argument, wouldn’t they have to keep offering the EXACT same exam? I mean if it’s unfair that you got a topic you hate because you took the exam in the U.S. as opposed to Australia, than it would also be unfair that you got that topic because you took it in 2013 as opposed to 2012, etc.
 
There’s no way to physically prevent people from calling across time zones.
 
thats the main reason why they canceled the Concorde a few years back, rich analysts were taking advantage of this during the cfa season
 
I thinks these are the factors which are beyond our control, we should be bothered about. What we can control i.e. our score, chances that some body will do that will be remote, it will be pretty negligible.
For people who earn CFA charter by unethical way like this, will they be able to have the knowledge which is required? Purpose is to gain the knowledge & competency.
 
itera wrote:
There’s no way to physically prevent people from calling across time zones.
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The only true way to have an edge is to have some braniac in china take the test and memorize the answer key and they call you after their exam. then you go in with that answer key memorized…. highly unlikely
If someone calls you with info on some test questions, I think the edge would be extremely marginal.
 
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