Post exam - how’d it go?

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For me, AM seemed pretty straightforward with a few difficult questions, but PM felt substantially harder and had some serious curveballs!
 
Exact same for me. Thought the AM was fine, I left one four point question blank and otherwise made an attempt at every other question. Finished up with about 5 minutes remaining
The PM was torture. It actually started out ok but around the 3rd or 4th item set things went a little sideways. I was definitely surprised at some of the topics they covered.
 
Agree with AM, much more straightforward than I expected. Also, now im convinced that MM is the golden standard (never used his mocks for lv1 lv2), crazy, his mocks were spot on. Thank you MM.
PM i thought was easier than CFAI Qbanks, mocks, MM pm mocks, finished all 60 MC in less than 2hr, did i overlook anything??
 
Thought it was straight forward overall.
I used level up and Marc made you go over all white text, BB and past exams - pretty much everything he said happened.
so no question where I thought what the hell is this and a few tricky ones but if you’re aware of the past curve balls the institute threw - you were able to spot those.
Now the waiting begins ….
 
I have to report all of you to the CFA Institute for violating the Standards of Professional Conduct. You should know as 2019 Level III Candidates you cannot discuss the test. Therefore I am reporting all of you and I hope they will fail you so I can pass…..JKing!
When looking around the room I was amazed I wasn’t the oldest one taking the test, I am 35. Then on the other side of it everybody taking Level III I talked was taking it for a second damn time. It was my first time.
I did 11 mocks, and I thought AM went well, but that PM Ethics man! I’m amazed how they can trick me on things I have read like 20 times at this point.
 
Retaker here, sat last year, trying again this year.
I thought AM was all right. Started off good and then seemed to get progressively harder by the last 3-4 questions. Not sure if that’s actually the case or just me not knowing the latter material as well, maybe both. Finished with just over 20 mins left, including taking two bathroom breaks, but I did leave one 6pt question blank, couldn’t remember the material and didn’t want to bother wasting the time to try.
Also thought PM was harder than I thought it would be. Seemed to start off rough but then settled down after the first 2-3 cases with only a few curve balls later on. Finished with about 40 mins left. I don’t think that the change they announced about not all cases having 6 questions effected anything other than taking a little longer to finish the PM.
In the end, hoping to get about 55-60 on the AM and 75-80 on the PM.
 
There were some questions where what they tested wasn’t the hard part, but it was deciphering the question to understand what they were trying to test that made a medium difficult question a hard one.
 
I second this, had no idea what some of them were asking. expecting a band 10 as I’ve sat this before, also with band 10 and overall I felt it went the same way.
AM content wasn’t the hardest, but I can’t say I was familiar with it all
 
I thought the morning was brutal. I apparently didn’t manage my time well and found myself with half an hour left on question 6. But in the afternoon, I cruised through it. I did not find the multiple choice hard at all. I think I had maybe 4 questions that I needed to go back to to double check my response. I don’t think I’ll pass, however.
 
AM not what I expected. For me personally, harder than all past am mocks 2007-2018.
PM in line with cfai mock A and B meaning trickier than I expected.
Passed L1 and L2 first attempt but I am sick when I think about this one.
 
Retaker here.
AM is ok I suppose. Couldn’t figure out a 7pt question, but made a reasonable attempt on the rest. Was quite surprised a certain topic ended up on the last question - if you know what I am talking about. Hasn’t it always been a PM question? Since when did it become AM? Well I guess starting 2019 it has.
PM - ethics…this has always been my strong point, but even I had doubts this time. There goes my ethics adjustment. The middle was okay, and then there were the last 20 questions - holy crap, you have to bring your A game for those.
IMO if you are those that just skim the text and do the past exams over and over, you may want to rethink your strategy. The way they structured the exam this year requires you to know the material inside out. I mostly applied knowledge that I learned throughout Nov - early May. That’s not to say you shouldn’t cram in the final month, but the cramming can only get you so far. They are asking you questions in a way you haven’t seen before, and without a deep understanding of the material behind it you are just gambling on each questions i/o an educated guess. In other words, if you can’t reverse engineer to apply your knowledge, then you better be 100% solid in your plug and chug and the easy marks (e.g. IPS constraints) to stand a chance.
So folks, if you really want to finish L3 off, put in the hours!
 
Agree.
I was pretty pleased with the order of the AM questions, and when i was going into the final 5 questions, i was maybe 15 mins ahead of schedule. Left maybe two or three four point questions open.
PM was fairly straightforward, tho ethics can always mess you up, but i did catch what they were going for with the more tricky ethics ones. Had about over an hour left on the PM, recalculated every question, even caught one mistake. Pretty happy all in all.
Gut feeling wise - I did L1 twice, and L2 twice, first time band 9 and 10 respectively, second time easy pass. My gut feeling is leaning towards passed…
Uuuugggh, 2 months now…
 
Nervous_af wrote:
AM not what I expected. For me personally, harder than all past am mocks 2007-2018.
PM in line with cfai mock A and B meaning trickier than I expected.
Passed L1 and L2 first attempt but I am sick when I think about this one.
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Same situation as you and I echo this completely.
There were portions of the first three questions in the AM that I just did not think would be asked and panicked a little. After that though (except for a certain part of the final question) I gained some confidence back.
PM I felt like I was educated guessing a lot of questions in the first 3 item sets or so after eliminating one option, but felt I made up with the last half. I just really don’t know though.
I caught one real dirty trick though they had in one of the PM questions and felt proud of myself for it. At risk of ethics though I won’t say what section (though I guess broad topic areas would be okay without going into what it was asking?).
 
A certain four point question in the AM was pure regurgitation of a memorized formula. I skipped it in my notes at least 50 times thinking no way in hell would they ever test us on this. Sigh.
There was a certain qualitative question (4 points) that I always struggled with, even though it wasn’t the hardest of questions.
Besides these two, I think AM was fine. It was more quant than past AM exams. It was a race against time towards the end for me - I had around 35 mins to wrap up the last 3 questions, but I finished. Probably 60-70.
The PM was a really well put together exam. The questions tested familiar topics, but you really had to think about some of them, and the answers sometimes made me second guess my original choice. I don’t think any mocks could have prepared you for this type of exam besides a deep and thorough understanding of the core material. I guessed around 5-6 questions. Probably 60-70.
Overall, it’ll be tight, probably a 50-50 shot depending on how some of my guesses worked out. It was a hard test and a grueling day with tight bladder control and internal plumbing management.
 
Tactics wrote:
It was a hard test and a grueling day with tight bladder control and internal plumbing management.
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Definitely. My section was released for lunch break 1st (thank god), raced out the door and dashed along with 10 other ppl to use the bathroom. It’s funny looking back on that now, but at that moment it felt like crap.
 
failed, afternoon was very good and morning was bad, but I marked the afternoon answer sheet using black pen and apparently the Scantron machine only reads pencil… expecting band 10
 
Tactics wrote:
A certain four point question in the AM was pure regurgitation of a memorized formula. I skipped it in my notes at least 50 times thinking no way in hell would they ever test us on this. Sigh.
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part of my daily study ritual was writing out formulas, diagrams and lists (such as things to game ratio, benchmark qualities, etc). happy a lot of the items i wrote down over past 150 times made it on the exam. I think i know what question you’re referring too, and yes without the formula u are toast
 
AM was very straight forward but did require some expanded thinking and reasoning. I feel it was on par with past exams. You had to know the material to get these questions 100%.
PM was more difficult than expected. They phrased and presented questions in a way i’ve never seen. Had to really dig deep. I think it was filled with traps. I changed at least 6 answers after reviewing the text and spotted the traps.
Hats off to the test writers. Every question was well written and understandable.
 
AM: In line with expectations, finished about 40 ministers before and had time to review some of my answers. Left 4 points blank where I had no clue.
PM: initial 1/4 or so was not the greatest experience, but then it went better. Had a tough time with Ethics..
 
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