At first, I was feeling substantially more comfortable doing the vignettes as opposed to the constructed responses, and my practice test scores were reflective of this. But now I am finding (as I get more used to the constructed response style and format) that they appear easier than the vignettes. The questions in my opinion are actually more straight forward and to the point, and even though one big question that you are not good at can hurt you, you can compensate with a couple large questions that you nail.
Any thoughts on difficulty of constructed responses vs vignettes?
I agree completely and, from what I’ve read in the past, that puts us squarely in the minority. The constructed response questions for both Schweser and CFAI guide you to exactly what they’re looking for - there’s very little ambiguity. As far as the item sets, while there’s very little ambiguity there, too, the questions are just harder, plain and simple.
Yes exactly my point. With the constructed responses, if you know what they are looking for, providing the answer is not that difficult. However, with the item sets, you can know exactly what they are looking for, but solving for/providing the “best” answer is often very hard.
I liked the AM portion a lot more in than the PM. I also found it to be more work relevant and a nice change of pace. Thats not to say they weren’t challenging at first, but at least when you get over that initial hurdle, it becomes easier and less random like PM questions.
I’m beginning to feel, after numerous practice exams, that my strategy is shifting from survive AM, dominate PM to dominate AM, survive PM.
Although, there’s something to be said about our perceived comfort with the AM portion, as those are published real exams. At Levels 1 and 2, I felt the mocks were significantly more challenging than the real tests. If it’s similar at L3, and I have no reason to believe it’s not, then maybe we’re in better shape than we thought with the PM section.
Strategy should be to dominate AM and PM portions.
Mentality should always be to dominate both. A lot of people walk out feeling they dominated one portion and bombed the other. Usually they bombed both. Don’t take any chances!
Now that I’m starting to do mocks I’d definitely say that the constructed response questions aren’t as bad as I’d expected. I’m not sure if i’ll have the same view once I’ve done a few CFAI papers.
I still find item set multiple questions easier though and my scores have been much higher for them.