People will sometimes ask if you passed the exam on the first try. A few places will screen out anyone who didn’t pass all of them on the first try, but quite honestly, those are likely not the best places, because there are tons of reasons why people may fail an exam that have nothing to do with how good an analyst they are likely to be. It would be even more ironic if a value shop were this way, since value shops supposedly specialize in finding investmetns that are good despite the most obvious blemishes.
[this is a recurring theme of mine, which is how ridiculous it is for some investment places to claim that “security markets aren’t efficient; that is why we deserve to be paid so much to outperform,” and yet conclude that “your past compensation tells us what we need to know about you, because labor markets are efficient.” Markets may or may not be efficient - that’s up for debate - but if securities markets are inefficient, there is pretty much no way on God’s green earth that labor markets are efficient.]
More often, the question about passing the first time is more of a conversation point than a “check the box” feature. Lots of people fail L1 the first time because they underestimated the work required to pass the exam. And there is a certain amount of respect for people who dust themselves off and then give it the effort that is required, because it shows dedication and adaptability. So you spin it that way.
With L1, however, if you don’t know WHY you didn’t pass (not enough work, a particular section that you bombed, etc.), then that is not so good. The exam is tough because of the quantity of the material and keeping yourself alert for 6 hours, but the material itself isn’t super hard (bits and pieces are). For me, the accounting stuff was the trickiest, because there were all these random-sounding rules (to the untrained eye) that had to be applied in 90 seconds or less.
[this is a recurring theme of mine, which is how ridiculous it is for some investment places to claim that “security markets aren’t efficient; that is why we deserve to be paid so much to outperform,” and yet conclude that “your past compensation tells us what we need to know about you, because labor markets are efficient.” Markets may or may not be efficient - that’s up for debate - but if securities markets are inefficient, there is pretty much no way on God’s green earth that labor markets are efficient.]
More often, the question about passing the first time is more of a conversation point than a “check the box” feature. Lots of people fail L1 the first time because they underestimated the work required to pass the exam. And there is a certain amount of respect for people who dust themselves off and then give it the effort that is required, because it shows dedication and adaptability. So you spin it that way.
With L1, however, if you don’t know WHY you didn’t pass (not enough work, a particular section that you bombed, etc.), then that is not so good. The exam is tough because of the quantity of the material and keeping yourself alert for 6 hours, but the material itself isn’t super hard (bits and pieces are). For me, the accounting stuff was the trickiest, because there were all these random-sounding rules (to the untrained eye) that had to be applied in 90 seconds or less.