L2 vs L3

S2000magician wrote:
Y’all may be mischaracterizing the comments about Levels II and III.
I, for one, think that the Level II material is more difficult, but that the Level III exam format is more difficult. There’s a world of difference between knowing that one of a), b), and c) is correct and staring at a blank sheet of paper.
I’ve never encountered anyone who said that Level III is a cakewalk. Absolutely or relatively.
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L2 is like you are going to analyze a company and know it from inside and out while L3 you are going into a meeting with seniors and you will be thrown a carve-ball of questions and u have to answer them precisely at what they need to hear, (short and simple) based on your knowledge
 
In my opinion, Level 3 is more about understanding general concepts and having a “directional” sense of how certain securites/portfolios are impacted by different things (i.e. interest rates are expected to rise –> this will lead to decreased bond prices –> reduce duration –> sell interest rate futures –> or enter into a fixed payer swap). On the other hand, Level 2 is highly techincal (i.e. calculate the yen currency carry over trade profit; analyze and interpret regression output).
I personally found Level 2 more difficult, but I am sure that all the quants out there found it easy.
 
I have been told many times that Level III is the easiest by those Charterholders, which has led me to this “easiest” illusion, till two weeks before the exam when I started doing the mocks. I definately underestimated the difficulty.
Even though Level III is about understanding the material, but it still requires more memeorization than level II. I do better with calculations so this test really kills me.
The other thing that really pisses me off is there is no way you can have a whole picture from either CFAI BB, EOC or Schewser Qbank how the real exam will be. I might have studied differently if I knew earlier in my study stage how the exam was like.
The answers to CFAI BBs and EOCs are way more complicated and verbose than needed in the actual exam, so we don’t even have a standard answer format to guide us through the studies
I’m pretty sure I failed and have to go back next year. I think I’ll have to put in more study efforts than level II.
 
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