My scores to mock exams before passing - Giving back

I don’t usually comment a lot but i have read a lot from this forum. I would like to add a very different type/level of prep to above…
• I only did 2 mocks (both from schweser)
• I was still reading GIPS until 5 days before the exam (yes for the first time)
• I don’t think i spent more than 300 hours
• My minimum score is atleast 67% based on 40/60/80 in AM (adjusted for 4 marks that i left completely blank) and worst case scenario in PM (i had 8 x 70% plus, so i counted that as 5 correct questions per set).
I honestly feel, there is a profound risk of OVERDOING in AM. For example, i was reading suggested answers from schweser and i was like, “is that it”. I think some of the morning answers are so straight forward that one thinks, hmm cant be that easy. But it really is at some places. The key is knowing how to answer.
Instead of doing mocks, i printed a pdf with all LOSs list and i would read a LOS and think - do i know what is covered here and if i can recall bullet points for that concept. Once you know that you can answer most of the questions.
2 out of 5 people in our wider team passed (i work for IB). To each its own but the pattern i observed was this:
- They over emphasized on AM and under-estimated PM
- Started way too ambitiously like doing huge amount of questions for main areas like IPS, Fixed Income and kind of parked 5% areas on a side - the likes of AIM, GIPS etc.
- Subtly hedging their answers for AM. Because they had done 20 mocks, there was so much in their mind that there answers reflected some confusion.
Example: saying above risk tolerance but hedging it with justification for both average and above average risk tolerance. In general, answers that subtly tries to cover more than one decision point. Reading through the CFA guidelines for level 3, they only read your first sentence (if they have asked for one reason).
- they were learning concepts by doing mocks, rather than learning concepts and then taking mocks.
Going from 55% to 65% in AM is twice as hard as going from 70% to 85% in PM. And 55 in AM and 85 in PM as we know is a definite pass (i believe MPS is not more than 65% if that).
Lastly, its interesting to note that inspite of Grrreg’s level of prep, he has less than 50 in the most important and almost 100% expected area of the exam. The point is expect that to happen in the AM even for your strongest area/s.
After first few weeks of study, see what is working for you and thereafter just stop reading these forums and get on with “your way”. Unless you have specific questions…
Good luck to everyone.
 
Aha, very neat @Grrreg
Like you I OD’ed on past questions and mocks though I did not keep records. I had my wife marking my AMs to reduce my bias in evaluation myself. I recommend an early start. I think I got to mocks by February/March and continued till 2 days before exam.

Also did the online CFAI topic test twice. I think I took the 2015 AM three times. Possibly counterproductive, but I am extremely pleased with the AM scores on my actual exam.
 
I think CFAI should suck it up and release at least the graded L3 AM exams back to candidates. As an independent body, I rarely say the CFAI should or shouldn’t do things…they can do whatever they want. But I think they owe it to candidates to show the grading on AM.
When you have multiple topics that you could literally teach you know so well…and get possibly 0 scores on, you deserve an explanation. We don’t know anything about the graders, their background, competency, disposition, etc. Hell, we don’t even know for certain if we got the scores from our own exam.
For all we know, we could have ALL got someone else’s scores and NO ONE would ever know…
 
cfal3letsgo wrote:
Some of you are crazy. 400, 500, 600 hours studying? 250-300 is just fine. I feel that some of you stating such huge #’s aren’t using those hours effectively. its only 2,000 pages for the CFA material, thats 100 hours at 20 pages per hour. So that leaves you ~200 hours of review. Break that down into something along the lines of ~50 hours of flipping through the material a second time to cover the hard/weak spots (review IPS stuff, etc)….then all that is left is sit down and crank out practice exams. They are 6 hours each at most, realistically more like 4-5 to take…especially the schweser ones where the vignettes are sometimes just 3 paragraphs (a few PM practice exams took me under 90 minutes from Schweser). Then you obviously want to spend a few hours reviewing each exam, so consider a typical practice exam plus review is 8-10 hours. So call a dozen practice exams 120 hours (conservative) and we are at 100 + 50 + 120 = 270 hours using very conservative estimates…so even if you want to hit the ‘magical’ 300 hours you still have extra review time left over to read through the material for your weak spots a third and fourth time, spend time doing the topic reviews on CFA website (which, by the way, are just old PM mock exam questions), waste time on analyst forum, etc.
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I don’t mind being labelled “crazy” as long as I got the charter. So go and study your 250-300 hours, and see where that takes you.
 
Topperharley wrote:
I think CFAI should suck it up and release at least the graded L3 AM exams back to candidates. As an independent body, I rarely say the CFAI should or shouldn’t do things…they can do whatever they want. But I think they owe it to candidates to show the grading on AM.
When you have multiple topics that you could literally teach you know so well…and get possibly 0 scores on, you deserve an explanation. We don’t know anything about the graders, their background, competency, disposition, etc. Hell, we don’t even know for certain if we got the scores from our own exam.
For all we know, we could have ALL got someone else’s scores and NO ONE would ever know…
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Well we know the graders are US CFA chartherholders who volunteer to do so.
I absolutely understand your point, but I am not sure if they should release the exams, the administrative burden to have a system in place to do so would mean increasing the exam fees quite a lot. About 13,000 failed the lvl III this year, I don’t think they have the team to support sending the exam back and face the discussion about whether the grade is justified for each one
 
Portfolio Manager wrote:
cfal3letsgo wrote:
Some of you are crazy. 400, 500, 600 hours studying? 250-300 is just fine. I feel that some of you stating such huge #’s aren’t using those hours effectively. its only 2,000 pages for the CFA material, thats 100 hours at 20 pages per hour. So that leaves you ~200 hours of review. Break that down into something along the lines of ~50 hours of flipping through the material a second time to cover the hard/weak spots (review IPS stuff, etc)….then all that is left is sit down and crank out practice exams. They are 6 hours each at most, realistically more like 4-5 to take…especially the schweser ones where the vignettes are sometimes just 3 paragraphs (a few PM practice exams took me under 90 minutes from Schweser). Then you obviously want to spend a few hours reviewing each exam, so consider a typical practice exam plus review is 8-10 hours. So call a dozen practice exams 120 hours (conservative) and we are at 100 + 50 + 120 = 270 hours using very conservative estimates…so even if you want to hit the ‘magical’ 300 hours you still have extra review time left over to read through the material for your weak spots a third and fourth time, spend time doing the topic reviews on CFA website (which, by the way, are just old PM mock exam questions), waste time on analyst forum, etc.
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I don’t mind being labelled “crazy” as long as I got the charter. So go and study your 250-300 hours, and see where that takes you.
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I did, and it took me to a 90th percentile based on 300hours results. 250-300 is more than adequate.
 
ltj wrote:
Maybe you’re just really smart. Congrats, man.
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I really don’t think that’s it. I think people here just assume if they throw a ridiculous amount of hours of ‘studying’ at the exam they will pass regardless of anything else. The results thread has a bunch of “man this sucks, spent 400/500/600 hours studying and failed”.
I think people should really change their strategy. Less hours of more effective studying is much better than more hours of ineffective studying.
 
cfal3letsgo wrote:
I did, and it took me to a 90th percentile based on 300hours results. 250-300 is more than adequate.
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250 hours seems quite too much if one can reach 90th percentile of a highly biased sample ( toward people who passed)
Based on your result, I would suggest 150-200 hours for the 2017 candidates to target a more reasonable 50th percentile of this biased distribution.
 
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