Topical Assessments

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tickersu

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I saw we have a thread for practice exams, so I thought maybe people would be curious to share how they’re performing on the CFAI topical assessments.
I’ve read the curriculum and done the EOCs. Now, I’m going through the topical exams (mostly) in order. My plan is to read the topic section in the 11th Hour guide (if needed) and take the subject tests (the exception for quant and most of corporate finance). I review the stuff I’m not totally sure on or get flat out wrong and then move on. I did pretty well in Econ and FRA, averaging above 80% on these (since there’s a lot to remember I’m surprised but happy, FRA especially). Ethics, though, didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. If I can have similarly good performances on Equity, Derivatives, and Fixed Income, I’ll be pretty happy.
Anyway, if we set up a google drive excel sheet would anyone be willing to put in accurate information? This would allow us to compare to one another on the official assessments and even mock exams if we incorporate those. It would certainly be easier to work with than scrolling through a thread to see how people are doing.
 
When you say Topical Assesments, you mean the assesments provided in the Candiate Resources section? Kudos to you for averaging above 80 in FRA if that’s the case.
I’m always willing to share scores and see what others have gotten to know which topics I need to improve on
 
Mosstastic wrote:
When you say Topical Assesments, you mean the assesments provided in the Candiate Resources section? Kudos to you for averaging above 80 in FRA if that’s the case.
I’m always willing to share scores and see what others have gotten to know which topics I need to improve on
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Those are what I’m referring to, but I’m not sure what they’re actually called. I thought I saw “subject tests” thrown around as a name for them also. Before I reviewed, I scored a 2/6 and a 4/6 on the first two of those assessments (so I exlcuded these from my average, since it was before proper review and it’s only 2 vignettes– either way the average is something I feel pretty happy about). Rather than wasting them, I read the 11th Hour Guide and did the EOCs for FRA. So, I will say the rest of these are done after some fresh practice and solid review, but I’ve been able to get mostly 5/6, an occasional 6/6, and an even rarer 4/6. I realize though, that this can change quite dramatically if they give me a weird item set or one that focuses on all the weaknesses.
I think part of my strategy is to refresh with the guide then drill the heck out of the topic with questions and roll into mock exams. What’s your approach?
 
How many mocks do we have from the CFAI? I’ve seen only one on the website, plus the topical assessments. Is there more?
 
Does anyone notice that the assesments provided in the Candiate Resources section are pulled from past mocks?
 
TheLakeHouse wrote:
Does anyone notice that the assesments provided in the Candiate Resources section are pulled from past mocks?
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No, mainly because I haven’t seen any past mocks for L II. For Level I in December, though, I only did the more recent mock exam, since I realized the older mock they provided was exactly as you said– same questions as the topical tests.
Are they exact questions, or are they just highly similar?
 
tickersu wrote:
Are they exact questions, or are they just highly similar?
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Exact questions, at least for PM and Quant. I only looked at mock 2012 (not all, just a few topics) and found out the CFAI pulled PM and Quant questions from that mock to the candidate resource section. I have not checked if it is the case as well for the later mocks.
Btw, I like the google drive excel sheet idea. I have done a fairly amount of assessment questions and I’m willing to share my scores.
 
I’m willing to share my scores also.
And FYI - the online practice tests are taken virually verbatim from the 2014 CFAI mock exam. In fact I think there were only 2 vignettes from the 2014 mock that aren’t presently in the 2015 online tests…and those were a fixed income one and an ethics one concerning soft dollars and old prudent man rule (both of which have been removed from the curriculum)
So take it from me, you are missing out on NOTHING by not having access to the 2014 CFAI mock.
I have CFAI mock exams going back a few years and I can also say that 2012 and 2013 contained quite a few questions that are repeated in the 2015 sectional tests also - and anything prior to 2012 starts to get pretty old and out of date…so again, you are missing out on very little by not having access to previous years mocks.
 
S666 wrote:
I’m willing to share my scores also.
And FYI - the online practice tests are taken virually verbatim from the 2014 CFAI mock exam. In fact I think there were only 2 vignettes from the 2014 mock that aren’t presently in the 2015 online tests…and those were a fixed income one and an ethics one concerning soft dollars and old prudent man rule (both of which have been removed from the curriculum)
So take it from me, you are missing out on NOTHING by not having access to the 2014 CFAI mock.
I have CFAI mock exams going back a few years and I can also say that 2012 and 2013 contained quite a few questions that are repeated in the 2015 sectional tests also - and anything prior to 2012 starts to get pretty old and out of date…so again, you are missing out on very little by not having access to previous years mocks.
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Very helpful. Thanks for the insight.
 
I’m glad we’ve got this going. I was thinking of making the column headings in sheet 1 the name of the assessment and the neighboring column the number of attempts to acheive your high score. Each row would “belong” to one candidate.
For example
“name of first ethics test” | Attempts | “name of second ethics test”| Attempts|….
#1 (Insert highest score ) | (# attempts to achieve |…..
Where the highest score you obtain is the raw number correct out of the 6 questions for the assessment and the # of attempts is the attempts it took you to achieve this “highest” score. You can just write your row# down for reference (to keep it anonymous) and allow for later updates to the info.
Sheet 2 could have a similar format for the column headings, but we could have the mean and median values for # correct out of 6 and for the # of attempts to achieve this score.
Any thoughts on this style or comments for how we might be able to approach this? I want to get a bit of a plan going before many people start jamming information in there that may or may not be very relevant.
 
S666 wrote:
I’m willing to share my scores also.
And FYI - the online practice tests are taken virually verbatim from the 2014 CFAI mock exam. In fact I think there were only 2 vignettes from the 2014 mock that aren’t presently in the 2015 online tests…and those were a fixed income one and an ethics one concerning soft dollars and old prudent man rule (both of which have been removed from the curriculum)
So take it from me, you are missing out on NOTHING by not having access to the 2014 CFAI mock.
I have CFAI mock exams going back a few years and I can also say that 2012 and 2013 contained quite a few questions that are repeated in the 2015 sectional tests also - and anything prior to 2012 starts to get pretty old and out of date…so again, you are missing out on very little by not having access to previous years mocks.
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Are there benefits to having the old mock exams for the Ethics questions?
 
I’d probably tanspose the columns to rows. Having the candidates in the column headers seems to make more sense
 
So can someone just confirm real quick that none of the questions in the 2015 L2 Mock are repeated in the online practice tests?
This was a problem in the 2014 June L1 exam. The online practice assessments were also repeated in the mock exams.
It sounds like this is not the case this year and that the online practice assements are taken from the 2014 mock, but I would hate to do those first and then have the 2015 actual mock not be a true… uh… mock.
 
I only took the AM portion of the CFA Mock, but I didn’t see any repeats from the assements, and I’m about 60% through the assements
 
Mosstastic wrote:
I’d probably tanspose the columns to rows. Having the candidates in the column headers seems to make more sense
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That’s an interesting way to think of it. I was approaching it more from a variable (column) and experimental unit (row, also called observations in data sets) view-point. The variables measured are the max scores on each assessment and the number of attempts to reach the max score. The experimental units would then be the candidates. This is typically how data sets are organized in most database/software packages. Although, I don’t think it would really matter, so long as people don’t switch from inputting in a row then to a column
 
tickersu wrote:
That’s an interesting way to think of it. I was approaching it more from a variable (column) and experimental unit (row, also called observations in data sets) view-point. The variables measured are the max scores on each assessment and the number of attempts to reach the max score. The experimental units would then be the candidates. This is typically how data sets are organized in most database/software packages. Although, I don’t think it would really matter, so long as people don’t switch from inputting in a row then to a column
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I had pictured it this way too, with candidates going down the ways with a new row per new candidate entry, and assessments going across the ways in a fixed number of columns. I always find it easier to read by scrolling down, rather than across so I guess if we think there are going to be many more candidates than number of assessments, having the candidates in the rows makes it easier to traverse the data (in my opinion).
 
I agree with you that it makes sense from a database perspective, but truthfully we will probably only have about 5 or 6 candidates who are inputting their scores, while we have over 60+ assesments. I don’t think it’s easily viewable / asthetic to have 60 columns across.
 
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