Official Comments & Complaints to the CFA 2014 Level II exam

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spidflam

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Hi all,
Let’s see if we can discuss this without disclosing any content from the exam as well as not violating any rules.
Did anyone find any error in the exam and have reported it to CFAi?
I believe I found one, which I have sent to CFAi with reference to Curriculum.
It was in my morning exam. Question ask to compare and choose the best out of three.
The question is lay up for doing a specific calculation, however nowhere in the item set nor question the underlying assumption is given. And it is a very essential assumption for this calculation to be able to apply.
What irritates me is:
*If you have no clue, one option is screaming for being picked,
*while if you know the formula that is learnt out in level 2 material, you will choose another.
*Then if you like me - overthink it - you are forced to choose the one screaming to be picked.
And I really don’t believe CFAi would like that the correct answer is the answer the -no clue- guy would pick??
So before picking and moving on, I spent 5-10 minutes reading the item set and question to find any indications that the assumption apply.
When I came home I could easily find in the Curriculum that this assumption needs to apply, so I sent the complaint to CFAi.
Anyone with same experience? Or similar experience?
 
spidflam wrote:
Hi all,
Let’s see if we can discuss this without disclosing any content from the exam as well as not violating any rules.
Did anyone find any error in the exam and have reported it to CFAi?
I believe I found one, which I have sent to CFAi with reference to Curriculum.
It was in my morning exam. Question ask to compare and choose the best out of three.
The question is lay up for doing a specific calculation, however nowhere in the item set nor question the underlying assumption is given. And it is a very essential assumption for this calculation to be able to apply.
What irritates me is:
*If you have no clue, one option is screaming for being picked,
*while if you know the formula that is learnt out in level 2 material, you will choose another.
*Then if you like me - overthink it - you are forced to choose the one screaming to be picked.
And I really don’t believe CFAi would like that the correct answer is the answer the -no clue- guy would pick??
So before picking and moving on, I spent 5-10 minutes reading the item set and question to find any indications that the assumption apply.
When I came home I could easily find in the Curriculum that this assumption needs to apply, so I sent the complaint to CFAi.
Anyone with same experience? Or similar experience?
Click to expand...
If i was not bound by CFAI standards of professional conduct.I would have openly criticized some of the item sets that appeared in “my” exam.
I was asked to calculate the stuffs which were not the part of CFAI LOSs.
 
What’s this deal by the CFA of not disclosing what appeared on the exams?
I understand if people don’t talk about it for a couple of days so that exams all over the world are over.
Not that they come up with the same paper every year. The exam is held once a year and the syllabus is so huge that they can easily come up with n number of questions with tricks and twists they are known for.
Sigh…
 
rahul roy wrote:
If i was not bound by CFAI standards of professional conduct.I would have openly criticized some of the item sets that appeared in “my” exam.
I was asked to calculate the stuffs which were not the part of CFAI LOSs.
Click to expand...
no s**t rahul or roy……non curriculum material in the exam?! this is big stuff! report to the world!!
IF u can back up ur claims, it will be interesting to see CFAI defend itself…and thats a big IF
 
I have a huge complaint about dependent questions, where answers are dependent on previous one, I believe if you do not get one calculation by mistake, the other question from different topic, which you studied well, you should get that point . Which is not possible if you have dependent questions, hence your actual result does not show your true efforts.
 
I do recall a question where I was looking for an input for what should have been a pretty easy calculation, but I could not find it anywhere. I then spent a good amount of time trying to see if I had to find the input indirectly from another calculation. I could not. I just assumed I didn’t know enough, but maybe it was an unfair question.
Jitendra, I also vaguely a dependent question. Am I allowed to say which topic I believe the question was in?
 
I didn’t have any problems with missing assumptions. I managed to get an answer for most calculations.
 
icetonez wrote:
I do recall a question where I was looking for an input for what should have been a pretty easy calculation, but I could not find it anywhere. I then spent a good amount of time trying to see if I had to find the input indirectly from another calculation. I could not. I just assumed I didn’t know enough, but maybe it was an unfair question.
Jitendra, I also vaguely a dependent question. Am I allowed to say which topic I believe the question was in?
Click to expand...
It was there in CF & PM both where I have missed a sure shot 2 Questions, which I knew pretty well, we cannot name topics tested here.
 
Agree re CF. I was so bad in PM I couldn’t even identify a dependent Q :p
 
spidflam wrote:
Hi all,
Let’s see if we can discuss this without disclosing any content from the exam as well as not violating any rules.
Did anyone find any error in the exam and have reported it to CFAi?
I believe I found one, which I have sent to CFAi with reference to Curriculum.
It was in my morning exam. Question ask to compare and choose the best out of three.
The question is lay up for doing a specific calculation, however nowhere in the item set nor question the underlying assumption is given. And it is a very essential assumption for this calculation to be able to apply.
What irritates me is:
*If you have no clue, one option is screaming for being picked,
*while if you know the formula that is learnt out in level 2 material, you will choose another.
*Then if you like me - overthink it - you are forced to choose the one screaming to be picked.
And I really don’t believe CFAi would like that the correct answer is the answer the -no clue- guy would pick??
So before picking and moving on, I spent 5-10 minutes reading the item set and question to find any indications that the assumption apply.
When I came home I could easily find in the Curriculum that this assumption needs to apply, so I sent the complaint to CFAi.
Anyone with same experience? Or similar experience?
Click to expand...
I think I know what you’re talking about ..
I’ll tell you what I did؛ I made THE assumption, picked my answer, and moved on ..
 
I did not have an issue with not having an assumption I needed or was not easily able to calculate. However it could also be that I didn’t know that particular question, or went about the process wrong. Having passed level 1 in December, I do feel like I should have waited until next June to take level 2 to give myself time to prepare. However passing level 1 on my first attempt, I think I was a little overconfident.
 
I found the exam to be as I expected it with regards to what I found in mocks and to a greater extent in the EOC.
 
To the OP I think I know which equation you are talking about (or perhaps not?).
Just relax, losing one point (especially that one), should be fine - the rest of the exam I thought was really straight and there were few other so called “curve-balls”.
 
icetonez wrote:
I do recall a question where I was looking for an input for what should have been a pretty easy calculation, but I could not find it anywhere. I then spent a good amount of time trying to see if I had to find the input indirectly from another calculation. I could not. I just assumed I didn’t know enough, but maybe it was an unfair question.
Jitendra, I also vaguely a dependent question. Am I allowed to say which topic I believe the question was in?
Click to expand...
I think I know which question you are talking about. I could not figure it out either even though I spent a spare 20 minutes on it after I was done. I felt really bad for having to guess what should have been something very straightforward.
 
My biggest complaints:
1) Ethics should be straight forward. There is no reason that even CFA charterholders can’t 100% answer every ethics question with confidence. The rules should be simple and straight forward that way there is no confusion in the real world (or on the exam).
2) There were definitely some questions which were dependant on each other. I don’t see why they can’t figure out a way to make each one independant (they have all year to figure it out).
3) The amount of material is just too cumbersome. And then on the exam they ask some bizarre question about a topic that I don’t even recall reading about in the CFAI cirrulum? Also the vignette was poorly written I think. (Meaning you could get it wrong just because of the way it was written.)
4) Economics I think is just insanely poorly written in the cirriculum. They really need to simplifiy and make this section clearer.
5) Portfolio mgmt in the cirriculum did not have enough EOC’s to guide candidates on what formulas could potentially be important.
I think those are my top 5 for now.
 
I think I know which one you are talking about too. I made an assumption to calculate the figure required even though I don’t agree that’s the way it should’ve been worked out but I think they wanted us to figure it out that way by giving the obscure inputs to work with.
 
Quant and PM are my strongest topics by far in terms of general knowledge, yet were the sections i struggled with the most on exam day.
The way the test was executed in certain sections had extremely poor construct validity.. meaning what they’re measuring had very little to do with knowledge of their own curriculum nor field.
 
Revul wrote:
Quant and PM are my strongest topics by far in terms of general knowledge, yet were the sections i struggled with the most on exam day.
The way the test was executed in certain sections had extremely poor construct validity.. meaning what they’re measuring had very little to do with knowledge of their own curriculum nor field.
Click to expand...
+1… I even read a Derivatives book last year by Thomas Miller, and felt Deriv’s was my strongest area, but found vignette’s were poorly written.
 
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