OMFG!!!! GARP Practice Exams!!!

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adavydov7

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Anybody take these things yet?? I just took their first 2009 practice exam (a “simple” 40Q LEVEL 1, not the full version practice exam), and I got raped missed 17 out of 40 questions for 57.5% correct and of the 23 I got right I guessed and got lucky on at least 8! WTF?? Anybody else have these sort of problems or is just me?? I mean this is only over half the material too, not even the full things that we will be taking in one week!!
I am getting a sneaking suspicion that having used Schweser is going to bite me in the ASS on the real exam…the practice questions from GARP just seem so dissimilar from those of Schweser. PS This is why I have never used Schweser to study for the CFA exams.
Very worried now.
 
I have made the exam with open book. still I don’t get question 3 of the level1 exam.
Do you have the Jorion handbook? work all the problems in the handbook. those are extracted from actual exams.
 
Suppose that A and B are random variables, each follows a standard normal distribution, and the covariance between A and B is .35. What is the variance of (3A + 2B)?
 
Question 15 on GARP FRM FULL Exam #1 sucks as well. Guess you have to remember that the delta of an at the money call is 0.5.
 
Are you taking the full exam or only level 1. If taking full exam, I would not use level 1 as an indication of full exam, as they are going to require much more depth for those topics in level 1.
 
guys i am feeling the same way , its really scaring to get such dismal scores even after 1 revision from schweser thats why I am doing Handbook , almost done solving questions in Jorion Handbook and gave a couple of tests ,schweser is a piece of crap for FRM (far better for CFA though) , planning to take FRM sample exam this weekend .
@Rydex
it is a 2007 FRM exam question (given in the handbook pg 61) one of the important property of variance is being used here V[aX + bY] = a^2 V(X) + b^2 V(Y) + 2 * a * b * Cov(a,b)
3^2 + 2^2 + 2* 3* 2*0.35 = 17.2
 
@sherbeer: yea question 3 is absolutely ridiculous!
@Rydex: ran across a couple of those delta=.5 questions elsewhere. I was talking about the Level 1 2009 Practice GARP Exam (just 40q.s). But I am not counting on the full exam not requiring the same amt of depth as Level 1 (both are based on the same readings, only we have extra ones for the full exam), so I think the Level 1 practice exam is a fair representation of the material that we are expected to know from the material that is on that exam .
 
Ya I too feel the Schweser’s Material is sort of misleading I took the Full Practice Exam I and was n’t able to answer several questions and when I looked at the solutions I felt that Schwesers material did n’t explain some concepts deep enough. Relying on Schwesers Material for FRM seems a dumb thing especially if FRM setters want to test the material deep. Lets hope the FRM exam is going to be easy thats only hope I have now. Please suggest me if there are ways to complement the concepts learned from Schwesers Material.
 
Oh man. This is totally not what I needed to see today. I’m STILL working on reading through Books 4 & 5.
@Factor Hedge - Since V(X) = V(Y) = 1, it’s inconsequential, but I’d add that your original generic formula should include SD(X) * SD(Y) at the end of the the covariance term, no?
@ap^y - I too am holding out the same hope. After finishing Schweser, I’m planning to just take practice exams out of Schweser, GARP and the Handbook and check why I got those problems wrong. At this point, it’s too late to actually delve too far into theory. It’s all about triage and damage control at this point. My own fault for letting it get to this.
 
Yea….the GARP questions are insanely obtuse.
Its like they want you to fail. I understand all the concepts, but some of the questions are constructed way out in left field.
 
@wat
yes you are right SD(X) and SD(Y) should also be included at the end of the covariance term , since its 1 i didnt show it in the equation .
 
@Factor hedge - I figured you knew. Just wanted to be complete for everyone else visiting the thread.
 
I agree. I’m just taking level 1 but the GARP practice exam was really tough. Got a 96% on the final Schwesser practice test and then barely scraped by with a 70% on the GARP exam. Made a couple stupid mistakes true but I got nailed for depth of understanding on some of the properties of variance and GARCH/EWMA forumlas. Highly recommend taking these tests for everyone. True, they can be demoralizing but better to learn your weak spots now rather than next week.
 
Dude, with a 96 % pass rate on Schweser I don’t think you need to sweat this exam at all.
 
@wat and factorhedge:
What are you guys talking about? There is no need for any St. Dev. terms when expanding Var(aX+bY). The original answer given by FH is correct:
Var(aX+bY)=a^2Var(X)+b^2Vary(Y)+2abCov(X,Y); note that this formula holds when X and Y are independent and dependent. The reason of course being that when X&Y are independent their covariance is zero and the last term drops out. I guess you could replace Cov(X,Y) with Corr(X,Y)*Stdev(X)*Stdev(Y) and then you would need to have the stdev.s in there, but I don’t see the need to do this since we are already given the Covariance and would have to solve for correlation since its not given (i.e. this adds an extra step that is not needed).
PS After taking the GARP Level 1 only 2009 exam on Friday I spent the entire weekend doing GARP only exam (i.e. I did two Full 2009 GARP exams, three 2007 exams, and two 2006 exams). I have to say the 2009 ones were by far the hardest, but things did get better as I moved along.
Going to print out all the Handbook questions and work through those and then start memorizing formulas, the stupid propreitary credit risk measurement models, and all those other stupid ASS Basel standards for measuring the three risk types and when each can be used (yuck!). Good luck to everyone as we come down this home strech.
 
@adavydov7
See, this is why I needed more review time. 8 hours into studying for the day, and “covariance” looked close enough to “correlation” to me.
 
Locklizard is retarded… I can’t get to print their stuff. I am getting very mad lol. It is pure nonsense to protect this that much!!!
 
@adavydov7
my bad , my bad …i cant stop overlooking important things in the question , hope i dont do it on D Day . that apart I have solved most of Handbook and Jorion CD questions but I will be taking GARP Tests today , do you think GARP Tests are tougher than Handbook /Jorion’s ?
 
@emphase I had the same problem just send email to garp [email protected]. code is only for one computer and I had a new notebook. so they have send me a new code.
 
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