how do you think you did on CFA Level 1?

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monkeymath

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Hi folks,
I’ve posted a few other, more specific topics here but there should be a general category where people can post how they think they did and what they thought of the test, good or bad. Go for it!
 
I personally found it much harder than expected. I peaked on mock exams (Schweser and CFAI) the few days before wriitng, and was getting mid-high 80’s across the board. I had about half an hour left over for each of the morning and afternoon sessions, and estimated that I likely got somewhere low to mid 70’s on both. I’m reasonably confident that I passed, but was surprised at how much harder it seemed than every other mock I had written thus far (about 12 in total)
 
100% agree. Much harder than expected. For many of the questions, all I could think was “I know this concept and THIS is what you decided to ask about it?!?” Well crap.
 
Me too…..Devastatingly difficult. Felt exactly like ap578. I knew nearly all of the stuff but then thought, “What? Are you kidding me?” And some of the calcuations were going to take way more than 90 seconds….But it wasn’t the calculations I struggled with most of the times but some inane, ridiculously convoluted way of asking about a concept when I knew the concept, knew the formula, etc.
 
I feel exactly the same as ap578… I study to understand the concepts, and felt like many of the questions has very little to do with understanding. I think I got slaughtered in the morning session… felt better in the afternoon but I think it’s because I did so badly in the morning that I just didn’t care about the afternoon anymore.
And I was consistently getting 78 on mocks and practices too. Aiming for above 70 on practices are absolutely no guarantee.
 
Yeh, liuherms, I got 77% on both CFA Mock Exam 1 and again on Mock Exam 2 (though some of the questions overlapped on Mock Exam 2). Will not have gotten anything remotely close on this one.
 
I thought the morning was significantly more difficult than the afternoon. Overall it was a little tougher than I expected. Its going to be close.
 
I thought the morning session was more difficult. It was more difficult than any mocks that I had taken. There were some questions I had no idea and made blind guesses on.
 
Okay I didn’t feel it was hard…but the questions were asked in a way that were really strange. Some of the questions I felt were almost on the line with:
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
But once you figured out what it was asking then most of it wasn’t too bad.
FRA was really really easy. I felt like I got 90 percent if not 100 percent of the questions correct.
Fixed income killed me…I should have spent another hour reviewing my notes I felt.
The other parts were meh..they were okay not horrible not great.
Morning session was much harder.
However, I felt there was no difference in difficulty between the mornings FI and afternoons FI.
 
Here are my general feelings: I feel that I can pass but then I am not sure.
I finished the morning with about 2 hour 20 min and after noon about 1 hour. And I used the rest of the time just to look over the exam and corrected, “hopefully, what I believed at the time”, mistakes.
Ethics and FRA are really easy
Quant: neutral, it was okay. Just okay.
Econ: okay. @PM session, ther eis a really *@&#&! question, a really ugly question.
Equity: Don’t remember about morning, afternoon was easy.
Fixed Income: afternoon made the highlight of my entire CFA L1 experience. It was just mass calcualation that goes beyound 90 second.
Alternatives: okay
Derivative: okay
In short, there are a few question where I just went WTF!!!! I really wanted to write to CFA and complaint over a question because I really thought “unless you are doing business with this thing, who the hell in the world can remember “X” is, and where the hell said this is a learning objective, to know what “X” is”.
 
Fixed income was devastating for me. That has always been my strongest section, to the point that I was excited/relieved when I’d get to it in mocks because I knew my score would improve once I got through it.
I was genuinely astonished at how lost I was on most of FI in both parts of the exam. One question that I normally could do in my sleep took me a half hour and I still am pretty sure I got it wrong.
The rest was about on par for what I expected. I am notoriously horrible at Econ, and my results on mocks were always so inconsistent on it so I can never tell when it comes to that section.
Not feeling particularly great overall, but there’s nothing you can do at this point other than enjoy the summer and (temporary) freedom.
 
I expected to walk out of the exam feeling WAY more confident than I do. I was scoring high 80s-low 90s on the practice exams toward the end and was shocked at the difficulty of the actual exam. Seems like that is par for the course here though as mostly everyone feels the same way. Heres to hopefully not taking L1 again in December!
 
I agree it was much harder than I expected. I felt like I was well prepared going in, but that deflated me a bit.
 
Am I the only one who thought the PM portion was harder than the AM? I seemed to struggle a bit more in Quant that I had before in any other mock – seemed to ask awfully particular questions
 
I think I did ok, definitely struggled on some sections, found Econ harder than I was expecting but Quant and FRA I feel comfortable about.
 
I was quite surprised by the level of difficulty on the exam. I was averaging about 80-83% on the CFAI and Schweser mocks, and peaked at 90% on Exam 2 Vol. 2 in Schweser. So going into the exam, i felt reasonably optimistic. Needless to say, after the exam i was quite upset with my performance. There were quite a few questions that were clearly not covered by schweser and overall it just felt like i was forced to guess 1 of every 3 questions. I found the first half of the afternoon session to be very difficult and time-consuming, though fortunately the second half wasn’t quite as bad. I also regret not having enough time to review the questions i had marked as ‘unsure’, finishing only about 10-15 minutes before the end of each session.
Anyways, not much we can do about it now. Just enjoy the coming two months and take your mind off the CFA exam. As cheesy as it may sound, we’ve all gained a lot of knowledge, and ultimately, that should be the REAL goal.
 
It was a joke, freaking cake. Easily killed it. They need to make it harder.
 
For me afternoon exam was OK, like others i found FI much more difficult and was forced to guess 50% of the FI section. Morning session was really bad as compared to the mocks i had gone through previously. Econ for both sessions was …….< 50 % i believe. Now looking back at the exam i think i guessed 1/3 rd of the exam which includes all random guess, 50-50’s. i just hope about 30% of those are correct and silly mistakes are minimum…..or it will be deja vu again this december :(
 
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