MPS Cutoff dart board for 2014

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fordprefect

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Hi all. I have been out of the program for several years now. Did my MBA, worked a few years, recently changed geographies and thought it could be useful to resume the program. Prepared a bit and appeared for L2 this year (my second attempt after a largely unprepared attempt many years back)
I thought the AM session was more difficult. I must have made a 50-50 / complete guess on at least 12-15 questions in the AM while much fewer in the evening.
So whats your take on the cut-off this year?
I found the result survey thread from last year L2, downloaded raw data, did some basic cleanup, pivots etc to come up with a few conclusions. Folks here must already be aware of these conclusions but I summarize below what I noticed:
  1. If you are a high Ethics scorer, aggregate score you need to pass is at best 65%.
  2. No high ethics scorer ends up in Band 10.
  3. Average ethics marks of Band 10 over 13 survey participants is 55%. (One Band 10 participant claims 100% in ethics - left out of the averaging)
  4. Average ethics marks of passers with lowest aggregate scores is 71%
  5. Perceived difficulty order by passing candidates (Assuming even difficulty distribution across topic areas by CFAI): QUANTITATIVE METHODS > ETHICAL & PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS > ECONOMICS > FIXED INCOME INVESTMENTS > PORTFOLIO > MANAGEMENT > ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS > DERIVATIVES > CORPORATE FINANCE > EQUITY INVESTMENTS > FINANCIAL REPORTING & ANALYSIS
Please feel free to comment and disagree with the above, I am sure with the 2014 L2 in rear view and the lacuna created in your lives, this will fill some of the void :-D
Interesting to see what additional conclusions can be drawn and awaiting your darts on the MPS this year.
The spreadsheet link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_gP9shuWL2LejE0WEN4M0NZNVE/edit?usp=sh...
 
Yes I agree for persons closer to band 10 couple of extra points in Ethics makes a difference.
However if you go to 300 hours the analsis tolds that MPS can be between 59-63 %. I was band 10 last year with only FRA greater then 70 %. & 4 subjects less then 50 in PM, Quant. Econ & derivatives.
 
jitendra179 wrote:
Yes I agree for persons closer to band 10 couple of extra points in Ethics makes a difference.
However if you go to 300 hours the analsis tolds that MPS can be between 59-63 %. I was band 10 last year with only FRA greater then 70 %. & 4 subjects less then 50 in PM, Quant. Econ & AI.
Click to expand...
However I think i would have scored in equity , cf & Der in around mid 60’s.
 
59-63%?
Not sure if that number makes sense although I’m sure 300hours would love us to believe it.
For example my brother was scoring 67-73% in 5 CFAI mocks but end up band 7. Hes the type to get nervous during exams but some in the forum ended up band 10 with such mock exam scores. Also band 7 would imply a 53-57%. Its a big stretch no?
 
Not sure how 300hours came up with it, but going by the last year survey data analysis in the Excel attached above, an MPS of 63% is believable provided you scored well in Ethics. This year MPS would depend upon how candidates perceived overall difficulty wrt last year and could be even lower.
 
Interesting that Ethics is regarded as the 2nd most difficult topic. I find ethics to be the easiest topic of the litter and hands down the easiest to see a large ROI for time invested. I spent maybe 5 hours total studying ethics and doing ethics questions and I’m fairly confident I got 10/12 correct or better.
 
I never feel confident in Ethics no matter how much I study for it. Feels like I can always make a case for two answers being right. Then I have to try and think what the CFA exam wants me to put.
 
I have a question only for the people who think they have over 80% in ethics for sure. Did you study by reading the CFAI cases or did you try to learn via a provider ?
 
How does anyone know what the MPS is for any of the exams? Is it published anywhere, or purely conjecture?
 
BlueTrin wrote:
I have a question only for the people who think they have over 80% in ethics for sure. Did you study by reading the CFAI cases or did you try to learn via a provider ?
Click to expand...
I passed L2 Ethics last year, and relied on CFAI exclusively. Never looked at 3rd party material.
 
Notwithstanding your level of preparedness this year compared to last year, how do u rate level of difficulty this yr compared to last yr?
 
The overwhelming majority of folks including retakers on this forum’s various threads claim this year’s was more difficult and / or trickier as compared to last year.
There are a few outliers too who claim otherwise.
 
love_lord’s wrote:
Notwithstanding your level of preparedness this year compared to last year, how do u rate level of difficulty this yr compared to last yr?
Click to expand...
Much harder this year IMO.
 
Band 4 fail last year, but thought L2 was easier this year, but was better prepared. It felt more like an L1 exam, more breadth than depth.
 
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