Not ready for Saturday

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culpritculp

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Coming on this forum always gets me discouraged because everyone seems to have dedicated ridiculously more time to prepping for this exam than I have. I can’t imagine how great it must feel to have finished reading the entire text months ago and be able to spend the last month before the exam on problems and mock exams. Do you guys work full time? After I work a full day, the last thing I want to do is learn about Derivatives.
Anyone else out there in the same boat as me - having taken only a couple mock exams with an average score around 60%? I didn’t read all of the books - skipped Portfolio Mgmt and Econ and skimmed alternative investments.
 
Buddy go and watch the Avengers on saturday. Appear in Dec exams with me :)
 
never loose hope….make sure u r good at major sections…specially ethics.
 
just keep chugging, yes you’re behind, yes you could still pass. If anything consider it a practice round for Dec
 
I heard a rumor that if your score is right on the cusp of passing and your ethics score is very high, they will pass you. I’m sure it is just a rumor, but I reread the ethics section yesterday just to make sure I pick up those easy points.
 
there is always another exam in six month’s time. Besides, Raza, its not like i’m planning to fail this june but if i actually fail would you mind if we can sit together and study? I see you are from my country. If you are from karachi then we can definitely sit together and study.
 
i feel your pain..
although my scores are a bit higher I feel like there are many things i just dont have a grasp on. I also work full time, and have been studying in the office at night, usually with droopy eyes and poor retention.
Honestly at this point with the exam being in a few days I would advise you NOT to skip it if thats what you are thinking about doing. As someone earlier said anything can happen. I know a guy who took 1 cfa practice test the night before and got a 68, who said he passed every section. You also hear stories of people who say they were getting in the 70s that failed…its just a crapshoot.
my advice, dont take anymore practice mock tests. the most important thing right now is that you have the higest level of confidence possible going into the exam. Take tonight and memorize ethics terms, memorize econ terms etc…get a grasp on SOMETHING..take some qbank quizzes, everybody knocks them but they will help you learn terms and they will build your confidence.
this will all be over in a few days, and if you fail, honestly its not the end of the world, you take it again in dec…this is my line of thinking anyway…good luck
 
Yeah mate, definitely give it a shot. You have nothing to lose and it seems like you have skipped over the small sections. I would focus on ethics and the sections that you are good at… And read some of the summaries for the sections you kind of grasp.
I also have read that ethics can push you over(or under) if it is borderline.
 
My advice now would be to try and memorize as many of the formulas as you can. You can hazard a guess at questions that have no mathematical element from what you know, however what I found in my dec sitting was that I was left with roughly 10 questions on each exam where I just didn’t know the formula i needed so was a pure guess. If you know the formula in the question by heart you are in a really good position.
Also remember roughly 61% of people will fail, it’s designed that way so when you do get the charter it’s exclusive, just relax and give it your best shot!
 
study fin rep & analysis, then ethics, then fixed income and quant. Do the largets sections first and get those down.
 
I know how you feel man (did my lvl I in December). I always had a tough time keeping everything organized and concise. I’ve put together some cheatsheets which I hope may help you out: http://tailoredpages.com/NoteSnack/Notepages/index/featured:1
This is a demo for a website concept I’ve been developing. Would love to get your feedback on if this was helpful (and any other comments would be greatly appreciated too!)
 
I also am worried. Scored an average of 67.5 on the CFA mock. Definitely wish I was averaging 75 but I’ll just hope for the best on exam day.
 
oliverk120 wrote:
I know how you feel man (did my lvl I in December). I always had a tough time keeping everything organized and concise. I’ve put together some cheatsheets which I hope may help you out: http://tailoredpages.com/NoteSnack/Notepages/index/featured:1
This is a demo for a website concept I’ve been developing. Would love to get your feedback on if this was helpful (and any other comments would be greatly appreciated too!)
Click to expand...
Hey man this is amazing, thanks for the great link. The site is pretty good too, easy to use, looks good man!
 
I agree - Thanks for posting that. I’ve been trying to write down all of the various formulas I need. Your site is awesome. I printed all of the formula cheat sheets. Exactly what I needed.
 
Thanks guys, really appreciate the feedback! In case you’re interested and the site didn’t explain it too well, you can also create your own custom cheatsheets. Just go to http://tailoredpages.com/NoteSnack/cards/formulas, pick the ones you want and click the red button “Create Cheatsheet” (you can always go back to this page and add more formulas after).
Wish you guys best of luck for your big day tomorrow!
 
@culpritculp: Suggest you go and sit for the exam to get a feeling for it. During the lunch break, you can decide if you want to take the second part or not (depending on how the first part went). Lots of people attempt the exams more than once per level. One of the reasons you feel like “everybody else” has prepared more, might be that in your peer group there are plenty of retakers who booked a couple of hundred hours in the first round last year, and then another maybe 300-350 hours in this their second (or more) round when they really put their mind to it.
 
culpritculp wrote:
Coming on this forum always gets me discouraged because everyone seems to have dedicated ridiculously more time to prepping for this exam than I have. I can’t imagine how great it must feel to have finished reading the entire text months ago and be able to spend the last month before the exam on problems and mock exams. Do you guys work full time? After I work a full day, the last thing I want to do is learn about Derivatives.
Click to expand...
Well, I spent most of my time studying before work (3a.m. study sessions, oh yea).
But I wanted to point out (relevant to the CFA, too) that this forum is a biased sample. There is a selection bias, since only fairly to extremely dedicated people would consider joining a forum about studying ha ha
 
The margin for error is pretty high at L1 - you can get 72 questions wrong and still pass the exam with a comfortable margin.
 
^ exactly. shoot for trying to know everything, but on exam day, realize 1) it’s impossible and 2) you’re allowed to get a LOT wrong..
 
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