Ordering Strategy to answer in different section

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NathanCFA

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Hi All,
I would like to discuss strategies to answer questions in the exam. Which section you do first, second, and etc. For example, you are doing FSA first, then Qual...
Also if someone can share their opinions among time allocation during the exam, I am thinking do the first pass in 2 1/2 hours, that is equivalent 75 seconds per question and leave 30 minutes for the second pass.
BTW, I am a fairly slow reader, any opinions is highly appreciated.

Regards,
Nathan
 
I regret that I did not think about the ordering strategy till about a week before the exam. Now, I realize that it is extremely important and in a sense it may well decide pass/fail!!

I don't know if anyone has the experience that once you get stuck with a question, it may easily happen that a few minutes have passed, but you still think you can get it done in some seconds...I think that is a fatal mistake for CFA exams.

I think it is important to do this: finish all the easy questions in the first round. Within the first round, you can prioritize, e.g. ethics first, then quant, ....that way, you can pretty much achieve "bird in the hand"...then you can try to work on the more time consuming questions. JMHO.



Get over there...
 
My strategy was to first complete the ethics section to gain confidence. Then skip quant and economics and complete FSA, Asset Valuation and Portfolio management. With the time remaining I went back and answered the quant and economics questions.

I left quant and economics to the end because I thought that these were easier questions that I could answer quickly at the end if I was pressed for time. In both the morning and afternoon sessions, I had about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to answer these questions.

This was the way that I did the mocks before the actual exam, and for me it was a good strategy.
 
Time should not be an issue with the exam if you do enough practice tests. Be very careful if you are spending any time thinking about a question move on, answer it by narrowing down the choices and mark the question to come back to it. On the level I there are no ridiculuos calculation that take more than 30 seconds. Think about it the longest possible calculation is either a trianguluar arbitrage or two asset portfolio variance
 
Thanks a lots for the replies, I will try either
1. do the section which I feel comfortable fisrt
or
2. do the section which I feel most difficult first
and see which one fits better.

I think it maybe good to have a "check point" for time/completion ratio during the test to adjust the pace if necessary.
 
Well, I thought Portfolio Mgmt. was cake so I started there first, then moved on to Ethics, Quant, Econ, FSA was mixed in with Corp Fin., and Equities, FI, Der, AI were lumped into one as well. Thats the way I approached it. Get the easy questions first, that way even if you didn't have enough time, you were sure to get at least the easy pts.
 
Do asset val, then fsa, then the other pieces. Ethics isn't a confidence booster, especially if you took alot of the practice questions since hardly any of them are similar.
 
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