June 4 exam discussion

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Kyle Smith

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I think AM session was way easier than PM, but traps here and there over the places. I spotted a few in the second review but I am afraid I was not able to identify all of them.. Some questions were astonishingly simple at first look, which made me wonder that if they were that easy why did they bother to make a question of it, those questions were the ones I paid extra attention to and I did found a few that require deeper thinking. PM was qualitative in nature, that is the best I can say without violating the code. I barely touched my calculator in the afternoon, which made me much more unsure of my performance. (Normally I know better if I scored when calculations are involved). Took around 15 guesses in the entire exam, that doesn’t mean I was confident about the rest. CFAI does have a talent of spotting that 1% of material that you are shaky on and make it into a question when you are crystal clear about the rest 99% of the topic.
Overall speaking I estimated I got 42-45/60 in the AM session and 40 or less in the PM, my estimation could be very far off the truth based on my previous experience on mocks. Took 2.5 hours for the morning session and 2 for the other.
Saw a guy showing up without his passport and another without a calculator. The first almost cried begging for mercy but was eventually ushered out of the testing hall, never to return. I wish the best to the other guy because the proctors in my section were being too jerks to let him borrow one, stating they were just following the policy. I have 2 calculators and was willing to lend a helping hand but they just don’t allow it.
And I believe that my BAII plus caclulator has a serious bug, sometimes when I used 2nd, ANS funtion, the answer returned is not the one I just calculated, it could be the one even before. For example (this is not exam content), if I calculate the future value of 1000 in 6 months with a compunded rate of 1%, I input 0.01—–x—–0.5——2nd—–e^x——1000—–x—–2nd—–ANS, but with 50/50 chance the ANS value is 0.005 which is before the e thing. I have to be very careful, anyone has the same issue?
Guys please share your thoughts and stories, anything, thanks.
And I really have no idea why we are not allowed to discuss specific questions in the exam, what harm could it do? CFAI is not going to use (or is it?) the same item sets in the next year anyway and we could actually benefit from sharing solutions and learning from our mistakes. All the good for candidates. What is the logic behind this policy？
 
I saw so many traps and I hope I dodged most of them. I fell for one by changing from correct answer to incorrect. Hope I don’t fail because of that.
 
It was a tough exam. I feel I nailed ethics, FRA, corporate finance, equity and fixed income. Might have gotten half the questions right in quant and PM, but I had a very tough time with Econ, derivatives and AI, to the point where I was guessing on these. I’m wondering if my performance in the other categories will make up for it. What do you guys think?
 
I couldn’t solve the exact answer for 2 of the derivatives questions. Not sure what went wrong, I just made an educated guess.
 
I didn’t see many trick questions. Either I didn’t know they were trick questions or maybe I knew that they were and solved it as usual.
I was even talking to myself in my head at times to make sure I knew what i was doing.
 
blackscholesvol wrote:
I didn’t see many trick questions. Either I didn’t know they were trick questions or maybe I knew that they were and solved it as usual.
I was even talking to myself in my head at times to make sure I knew what i was doing.
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Then I believe you really nailed it man, good work.
 
Honestly if you show up without the exam ticket or passport, you deserve no mercy.
 
Kyle Smith wrote:Saw a guy showing up without his passport and other without a calculator. The first almost cried begging for mercy but was eventually ushered out of the testing hall, never to return, and I wish the best to the other guy because the proctors in my section were being too jerks to let him borrow one, stating they were just following the policy. I have 2 calculators and was willing to lend a helping hand but they just don’t allow it.
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CFA policy: You may not borrow from or share a calculator with another candidate during the exam.
Pretty sure you can borrow one before the exam starts.
 
blackscholesvol wrote:
I didn’t see many trick questions. Either I didn’t know they were trick questions or maybe I knew that they were and solved it as usual.
I was even talking to myself in my head at times to make sure I knew what i was doing.
Click to expand...
That’s kind of how I feel about it too. I either fell for them hook line and sinker or understood what was being asked so just answered/solved based on what I already knew. Tricks and traps are always the wild card. I felt most of the exam was very straight forward though. There were even some real softballs here and there.
I thought the exam was pretty fair, but broader than I expected to be honest. Candidates who focused on certain subjects and avoided others may have struggled this year. I felt PM was just a bit harder than AM due to it being more qualitatve. You really had to think hard for some questions. I was really happy with how I did on Fixed Income. It’s one of my weakest subjects conceptually but I think (hope) I really nailed it this year. I guess I’ll find out in 6 weeks.
I feel pretty confident that I got it this year unless I made too many stupid mistakes. All the best to everyone on your results.
 
JayWill wrote:
That’s kind of how I feel about it too. I either fell for them hook line and sinker or understood what was being asked so just answered/solved based on what I already knew. Tricks and traps are always the wild card. I felt most of the exam was very straight forward though. There were even some real softballs here and there.
I thought the exam was pretty fair, but broader than I expected to be honest. Candidates who focused on certain subjects and avoided others may have struggled this year. I felt PM was just a bit harder than AM due to it being more qualitatve. You really had to think hard for some questions. I was really happy with how I did on FIxed Income. It’s one of my weakest subjects conceptually but I think (hope) I really nailed it this year. I guess I’ll find out in 6 weeks.
I feel pretty confident that I got it this year unless I made too many stupid mistakes. All the best to everyone on your results.
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I am happy for you man, everyone deserves it when they invested time and effort in it and see it paid off eventually.
 
I felt very confident in my answers on the first half. The PM section was much tougher for me. I ended up finishing with about an hour and a half left in the PM session and went through every single question twice. I changed about 10 of my answers but I changed 8 answers in the AM session of level 1 and the seemed to work out, so hopefully I made the right changes.
Either way it’s tough to feel confident about a test that fails almost 60% of it’s participants. If I had one more month I woulda felt much more confident but that’s the consequence of taking the level one exam in December.
Hoping for some luck and wishing you all the same!
 
It was easier than I expected it to be.Lot of straight forward questions in PM but with few traps.Few were so easy that I felt if I am misunderstanding the question.AM had more calc so we feel comortable if calculated value is one of the options.IMO..There were no calculated answers to compare and feel comfortable in PM that is why most candidates felt PM was tough.
 
Heh yeah. My calculator actually timed out and powered off at one point.
 
i don’t understand how it’s a proctor’s business what you do before the exam.
if you forgot to give your buddy his car keys back, and it’s 8:35 and he’s sitting 3 rows behind you, you just walk there and give him his car keys. Why would a calculator be different.
candidates should be more assertive at pushing rules with proctors. you won’t get a professional conduct issue if you quote a CFAI rule correctly from memory to a proctor who misunderstood it (because they first heard what a “CFAI” was 8 days earlier). there was a story on here about a guy whose proctor told him not to write on the exam book. he had to basically do all the math in the calculator. an hour later the proctor said he could write in the exam book. I would just write in the exam book and let the PROCTOR get the slap on the wrist if he dares to escalate it. no way CFAI would find against a candidate who wrote in their exam book, when they are supposed to do so.
 
Kyle Smith wrote:
JayWill wrote:
That’s kind of how I feel about it too. I either fell for them hook line and sinker or understood what was being asked so just answered/solved based on what I already knew. Tricks and traps are always the wild card. I felt most of the exam was very straight forward though. There were even some real softballs here and there.
I thought the exam was pretty fair, but broader than I expected to be honest. Candidates who focused on certain subjects and avoided others may have struggled this year. I felt PM was just a bit harder than AM due to it being more qualitatve. You really had to think hard for some questions. I was really happy with how I did on FIxed Income. It’s one of my weakest subjects conceptually but I think (hope) I really nailed it this year. I guess I’ll find out in 6 weeks.
I feel pretty confident that I got it this year unless I made too many stupid mistakes. All the best to everyone on your results.
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I am happy for you man, everyone deserves it when they invested time and effort in it and see it paid off eventually.
Click to expand...
Thanks bro. Between the two attempts I’ve put roughly 1,000 hours of study into Level 2 (350 on the first try and 650 this year). If I missed it again I’ll be very disappointed but you pick up the pieces and fight on.
 
Level 1 I had this proctor that got in a heated conversation with me on whether or not to put my middle name or not. This all happened at the 1 hour 30 minute mark in the afternoon exam.
I specfically asked her if I should put my middle name or not when we had to fill in our info. She said no. Then during the middle of the exam she kept flip flopping between whether or not I should put my middle name on the exam. She took my answer sheet for 20 minutes before finally giving it back to me.
Luckily I still passed…but yeah the experience of taking the exam in China is horrible compared to the United States. They make you go through the airport xray checking and then the exam was in a warehouse. It felt like we were in a prison yard. There were security guards walking back and forth on the upper level monitoring your every movement.
Don’t take the exam in China it’s an absolutely horrifying experience.
 
biuku wrote:
i don’t understand how it’s a proctor’s business what you do before the exam.
if you forgot to give your buddy his car keys back, and it’s 8:35 and he’s sitting 3 rows behind you, you just walk there and give him his car keys. Why would a calculator be different.
candidates should be more assertive at pushing rules with proctors. you won’t get a professional conduct issue if you quote a CFAI rule correctly from memory to a proctor who misunderstood it (because they first heard what a “CFAI” was 8 days earlier). there was a story on here about a guy whose proctor told him not to write on the exam book. he had to basically do all the math in the calculator. an hour later the proctor said he could write in the exam book. I would just write in the exam book and let the PROCTOR get the slap on the wrist if he dares to escalate it. no way CFAI would find against a candidate who wrote in their exam book, when they are supposed to do so.
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He diddn’t raise his hand until everyone was sitting tight and the proctors were about to distribute exam books, I guess this already count as during exam time… If he could do it earlier, I don’t think it will be an issue too.
 
I agree. AM was easier compared to PM.
Quant, FI and Derivatives (thanks to prev FRM prep didnt have to spend much time during prep), PM and Corp Fin was easy. FRA was a beast especially one item set in which I guessed almost all 6 questions. Equity was Ok and feel least confident about Ethics (as always).
I caught few trick questions here and there but afraid I could have missed other. Overall I feel confident about this year unless I made too many silly mistakes. Will find out in 6 weeks.
 
That one FRA vignette was brutal. As far as I can tell almost everyone struggled on it. I was super confident about most of the calculations. A few of the qualitative questions were too ambiguous. Don’t get me stared on ethics either..
I keep telling myself that you don’t need a 100 to pass.
 
One of the FRA was crazy tricky. I was like up down up down up down up down up down up down, if you get what I mean. Lol.
 
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