Given the number of Level III candidates who have mentioned how difficult the December exam was – especially the morning session – I thought that it might be interesting to hear from candidates about the mock exams they took. Specifically, which, if any, were similar to the actual exam and which, if any, weren’t.
I’m not looking for kudos here; I’m looking for honest opinions that may help future Level III candidates.
I didn’t take any mock exams and found essay portion relatively easier than PM. Blue boxes and EOCs prepared me 
for essay portion. The only issue IMO was the number of questions v time - aka time management.
For am mocks, I only managed to take 3 of yours and reviewed solutions only for the fourth. I must say that each of your 3 mocks was probably consistently more difficult across your ten or eleven questions than those on the exam. But, there’s one thing about all of your mocks that I wish had been different or could be changed. Yet, if I were to say what that is, I wonder if I might be revealing something about the actual exam that i’m not supposed to reveal.
Unfortunately, I did not practice much AM session. i know it is the dumbest mistake. I practiced MM mocks (but not like under exam conditions and all) . That’s all. I believe the mocks were of high quality, and of a good level of difficulty… and solved CFAI’s one mock too.
I took the 2016-2018 exams from the CFAI website and 5 mock/practice exams through Kaplan Schweser. I think they did a good job preparing me as far as content and format goes, but they didn’t sufficiently capture the time constraints for whatever reason. I was easily able to complete the mocks within 3 hours (with time for breaks!) but the real exam was a lot tighter on time for whatever reason. I could speculate on why (and I have a theory) but as @burton says, I fear I’d risk violating the standards if I went into further specifics.
I didn’t thinks the AM exam was so tough in general though a few questions threw me. Nor the PM so tough either, in general.
I used Meldrum’s mocks. They were impossible. Very, very tough. I did 12: 8 AM Mocks and 4 PM mocks plus all his question banks 2 times over the course of 18 month. So I was well prepared.
Also, the best advice he gave for the AM was “There will be questions designed to waste your time esp toward the beginning. Skip it or just put down SOMETHING and move on. If you have time later, come back and put something in.” Fantastic advice. He has one student who didn’t do the last 2 AM questions and passed.
I finished w/ about 10 min left and was able to fill in a few things toward the end. However, I know this about myself, writing comes 2nd nature to me. I’m generally a fluid and effective writer. So that may have helped.
Afterthought: Yes. I’m a good writer. But I’m not as quick and bright as many of the folks on this and other sights. Peter Olinto said to me when I was taking a LII live course, “I’m not so bright, but I work harder than almost anyone.” That resonated deeply with me.
by 2 questions do you mean two ‘whole’ question sets or just 2 subset questions?
I’m thinking the last two pages, not topic sets. It was in the context of leaving some pages blank, so I suspect he meant pages/questions. His point was, no big deal if you leave a few pages blank if you do well elsewhere. Then, if time, come back later and at least put something down.
The whole thing was difficult and I studied for months, Did 4 of MMs full length mocks then reviewed them several times.
I expected the AM on the real thing to be difficult so wasn’t really that much of a shock like some others have said. For me, it was the PM that I felt was way more difficult than the CFAI Mock and even more challenging than any of the MM afternoon ones I took.
Ethics though however wasn’t very hard on the real thing, just plenty after it.
I disagree on the PM… I felt it was sort of easy and definitely easier than MM… But hey, you never know! Sometimes you think something easy and then it turns out you didn’t see through the tricks ( I hope it is not the case 
)… But AM was really time pressured… I mean, I can’t even tell whether it was that the exam itself was difficult, or the fact that I didn’t have time to think so I felt it was difficult.
You’re correct: sometimes you think you did well and you’ve completely overlooked something obvious. I like to think your gut, right after the test, is a good guide. It’s often the second guessing after the exam that creates the uncertainty. So, I’m just trying to forget it all.
BTW, another thing I did was to print out the formulas and every day write some down and repeat over and over for the last 2 months. I kept doing that, and adding margin notes after mocks when something dawned on me. I’m sure that helped esp as I had to go back to the BBs and notable examples in the text to remember what the formula was for!
But this curriculum is impossible. The amount of information is beyond belief. I’ve often noted that not one of the authors of any of those chapters, if s/he were given the exam we had on the 5th, would pass (unless each had months and months to prep).
I hope you don’t equate your writing skills to constructive response of Level III. The test is designed for non native mediocre skilled crappy English writers to pass. Otherwise and as always this the biggest hallucination that the Level III candidates suffer from
Great observation. And tempting it is, you’re right.
My response to the exam was rather that I thought I had relevant answers to most of the questions bcz they were familiar from study. And I wrote quite tersely and quickly bcz the answers came to mind pretty quickly. (And that has its own danger.)
You do, however, raise a great caveat. My confidence isn’t overweaning by any means.
And one more thing: many of those ‘crappy, non-native English speakers’ are much quicker and smarter than I. I know that for a certainty from interacting with them during these study years.