How do you think you did?

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Bobster

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Rob - exactly in the same boat as you, I failed the exam in June and December 2010 (Band 10 - on both occasions). I got caught out by the new material too. If I had sat the December exam last Saturday, I would definately have passed it as it was so much easier. In terms of knowledge I know most of the material and scored over 75% in the CFA 2011 mock in the afternoon and morning exams, and yet some of the questions in the exam on Saturday were so much at the fringes and doesn't test the most important concepts
 
Bobster Wrote:
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> Rob - exactly in the same boat as you, I failed
> the exam in June and December 2010 (Band 10 - on
> both occasions). I got caught out by the new
> material too. If I had sat the December exam last
> Saturday, I would definately have passed it as it
> was so much easier. In terms of knowledge I know
> most of the material and scored over 75% in the
> CFA 2011 mock in the afternoon and morning exams,
> and yet some of the questions in the exam on
> Saturday were so much at the fringes and doesn't
> test the most important concepts


Did the material change a lot between June and December 2010? I won't make that mistake again, I could have cost be big-time unfortunately. :/
 
Day before exam struggled to get sleep, hardly would be able to catch up for 2 hours. But I felt fresh after waking up in the morning. When I was almost ready for the exam, I saw my car had a flat tire. I was happy and sad both as I thought probably this is the worst that could happen to me today. What if something would have happened during exam. And, sad because this may not the day when luck was going to be on my side. Luckily, I had other car in working condition.

I was not worried after morning exam because of the luck as it was like a breeze for me, so I thought worst is already over in the morning, but that made me wonder if MPS of 70% was really a myth. Then I heard someone saying that PM sections are much more harder than the morning session. I thought probably CFAI doesn't want anyone to leave after morning session, that could be one of the reason why they would keep morning session easier and after noon session harder. The other reason would be to test the physical endurance but why would they do that? Anyhow, I was still contemplating how hard an exam could be. Then, I started with Afternoon exam, man I couldn't believe CFAI would be this smarter in designing exams. It was really challenging which always kept my brain muscles working.

However, the most annoying part was numbering of the questions. With respect to numbering, even CFAI mocks were not at par. I would expect CFAI mocks to be exactly at par at least in format with CFAI real exam.I hated that most. As usual, I was almost about to screw my exam as I left 145th question and kept marking few question after that in the answer sheet. I didn't realize when I was working on 145th question, I was actually marking 144th answer. Luckily, I realized and corrected the mistake. I hope I did that just once.
 
andytrader Wrote:
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> Just remembered another question. Looked up
> answer, got it wrong. FML
>
> Up to about 20 questions wrong now. So unless you
> can really miss 70, then no shot.
>
> Of the approx. 20, they were pretty much all of a
> trivia basis (i.e. not a computation).

I see a lot of folks sweating 10, 15, 20 incorrect questions and I just don't understand. Maybe I'm missing something. Let's say you know you got 20 wrong. Let's also say you got another 20 wrong that you were unsure of at the time. That still puts you at 200/240 which is 83%. Want to be even more conservative? Say you got a total of 60 questions wrong. 180/240, around 75%. If the MPS is somewhere around 70% as it's widely believed to be, this is still a comfortable margin of error that should provide most posters on this forum a passing score.

I may be eating my words come end of July, but I really don't think a handful of random trivia questions or bonehead mistakes will make or break the outcome for most of us. Even the most dedicated and well prepared candidate will goof up a few questions and get thrown by a couple curve balls. Unless you are truly on the fence, with around 63-70 incorrect answers, I think the months of blood, sweat, and tears will be more than enough to see us through a couple oddball mistakes or WTF questions.
 
hey guys. i found the first one quite ok. second was a little tough. !
 
i thought some PM sections were harder than AM sections, while others easier. Wasnt expecting Ethics to be so confusing... Overall, I was pretty upset that I wasnt as confident as I had expected to be after 7 months of studying and 2 months of review. I'm seriously scared! This is not my 1st time taking it... can't wait for end of july.
 
Random thoughts:

I failed L1 back in Dec 09. Scored a 60 percent on my CFAI Mock before the test. After the morning session of the Dec 09 actual exam I thought i was in decent shape to pass. The afternoon session had its way with me and I left feeling not-so-confident. I was right, failed band 8.

Got back on the horse Feb 1st of this year and re-read the entire 2011 curriculum. A lot of things that were Greek to me the first go around were much better understood (Pure-Play method, Z spreads, Recording Leases). Averaged 78% on Qbank, 76% on Schweser Mocks and I think I was around 75% on the CFAI mock.

2011 Exam: felt the morning was easy and, yes, the afternoon session was harder but still far less difficult than every Schweser Mock.

My guess (conservatively): 70% of the top 1% pass. 40,000 take this, 400 people average 97%. .7*97=67.9. That means if you got a 71% in the AM you could get a 64.8% in the PM and Pass.

If this scenario holds true I feel pretty good and so should you if you were averaging similar scores on problems/mocks.

Best of luck to you all,

TMC
 
I didn't do any studying, but I did wear my Three Wolf Moon shirt, so I'm pretty sure I'm in the top 1%.

Be sure to read the reviews for this shirt: http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve-Medium/dp/B000NZW3J8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307548283&sr=8-1




*I'm just kidding, of course.
 
I thought the AM session was the easiest test I took throughout my whole preparation process, but that means very little as you don't get any points for perception. Regardless of how I scored on the mocks, I never felt GREAT after any of them and my scores ranged 72-83%.

I took the free ELAN online mock (72%), the CFA mock (A: 83% P: 74%), the CFAI live mock (75%) , the Schweser live mock (A: 73% P: 76%), and Schweser practice exams from their study materials (Avg. 73-77%).

Barring any crazy scantron marking errors or misreading questions I am hopeful I scored ~75+ in the morning session. Assuming a MPS of 70%, I could hypothetically score a 78/120 (65%) on the PM session. I don't think that is likely, but I was VERY UNHAPPY with one particular section on the PM exam (I only knew ~4 questions with 100% confidence). I had so much trouble with this particular section I had to seriously regroup for the remainder of the exam. It nearly threw me into a funk for the whole test.

What I find frustrating is that after all my preparation and doing over 2,000 questions on Schweser's QBANK, I was still surprised by the question format.
 
spunk Wrote:
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> I don't think that is likely, but I
> was VERY UNHAPPY with one particular section on
> the PM exam (I only knew ~4 questions with 100%
> confidence). I had so much trouble with this
> particular section I had to seriously regroup for
> the remainder of the exam. It nearly threw me
> into a funk for the whole test.
>

which section was it ? I think u can say it, it's your opinion to say that FRA killed u for example.
 
hey everyone, first post, but had to chime in!

This was my first attempt at level 1.
I actually thought the test was the other way around, in the morning I thought I didn't do fantastic, but still 'ok'. I thought the afternoon was much easier! Maybe thats a bad sign and I'm in REALLY bad shape! lol

Regardless, the last hour or so in the afternoon, I was just dying..... mentally was feeling completely drained.

good luck to all on the results!
 
About 5 days before the exam, I went to a local Starbucks to do some studying. There was a guy sitting next to me with his CFA 1 books as well and so of course I struck up a conversation with him.

He basically went on to tell me that he has only been studying for the last 2 weeks or so since he has been so busy with work, has done no practice exams, does not use any 3rd party materials, stopped halfway through derivatives and AI because it 'got difficult', and 'didn't really get FRA.' I think there are a lot of people in this same situation which is good for the many diligent, hard-working candidates that come onto this forum.

Oh and before you say it, he did show up to the exam, I saw him there. God Bless The Curve.
 
canuck, I also thought the afternoon was a bit easier, if not comparable to AM at worst.
 
officially, there is no curve. it's some Angoff method where a panel decides with every question if a charterholder should know the answer.

unofficially, you are guaranteed to pass if you get 70%+ and the rumor is that CFAI takes the top 1% of scores, makes that the ceiling, and flows everything downward. So if the top 1% rakes in 97%, the score to pass becomes 67%
 
Got 85% and 76% in the AM/PM sections of the CFAI mock. I'm quite confident I passed the real exam. Keep in mind that the 36% or whatever the pass rate ends up being is only for those who sat for the exam...if say that guy at Starbucks didn't show up then it doesn't affect the "curve"
 
This is my first post. I gave CFA Level I last saturday and was my first attempt. My CFA mock score was around 68% and Schweser QB's were between 60 to 65%.

My feeling was the afternoon session was easier than the morning session but overall both were not as difficult as the Schweser QB tests
 
Well, the kid (just out of college) sitting next to me finished AM in an hour. PM maybe an hour and half. When I aksed him about AM, he said he didn't think there was any question kept him thinking. Pretty itimidating Ahmm..... That's OK.. I have the table all by myself.

Then the woman sitting to my right didn't come in for the PM test...I guess it was because she was writing formulas on her ticket AFTER she entered the test center... even she erased them all, they took her ticket away and gave her back when AM almost over. I guess she didn't have another clean ticket to enter the test center for the PM.
 
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