A fellow CFA candidate has shared with me that you need to achieve 70% or higher on each section in order to pass, i.e. if you get less than 70% on any section, you fail. Can anybody confirm whether this is true or not; and clarify the grading system. Thanks!
that is false.
It’s a mystery what the min passing score is. But if you do get >70 in all sections you will definitely pass… so aiming for that is a good strategy. However, there are many that with a lower score in a few sections, have passed.
CFAI is secretive about its grading and one can only speculate what is a passing grade. But it’s commonly known that >70 means you are almost certainly a pass and <60 is more likely a fail. With regard to your question, yes you can absolutely pass with one or more section below 60. I passed my Level 1 with <60 on alt investment and 60~70 on derivatives. Vast majority of people who pass don’t have >70 on all sections.
one of the stalla teachers said that cfai is now saying that, since they’ve switched to 3 answer choices, they can’t guarantee a 70% is a guaranteed pass. it’ll be interesting to see if they change the grading buckets.
I few years ago my society had someone from the CFAI come in. He said that: 1. They set the passing score before grades are calculated. 2. Passing is based on the total, overall score and NOT on the score of any individual section, except ethics. 3. If you are in a tight range of the passing score (i.e. between 63% and 67% with a 65% passing score) they will look at your ethics score to decide to pass you or not. 4. THey do not remove questions from any passing calculations even if everyone gets that question wrong. 5. Passing is not on a curve or on a percentage of passing basis. 6. I can tell you from experience that if you bomb a section, you can make it up on other sections. I flunked quant on every test, but aced FSA. I passed all three levels on the first attempt. Now keep in mind that the CFAI may have changed these practices.
I have heard #1 before and I think it’s only kinda true. CFAI sets a procedure up before the exam is graded that they will use to come up with a passing score, then they grade all the exams, check out their procedure, and then debate it. Since anything can happen during that debate, I think that #1 is not really true. Ultimately, the board decides on the passing score when all the information is available.
Direct from the source… page 13, section entitled “Setting the MPS”… second paragraph “The CFA charterholders among the CFA Institute Board of Governors set the MPS each year using a combination of performance metrics—70 percent of the maximum points, 70 percent of the top paper, 70 percent of the top 10 papers, and 70 percent of the top 1 percent of papers—and analysis of candidate and examination data.” http://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprog/overview/pdf/IntoOur5thDecade.pdf It’s a good Sunday morning read.
Thats totally false. Anyone who has sat for the L3 exam in recent years can vouch for that one. Willy
WillyR Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thats totally false. Anyone who has sat for the L3 > exam in recent years can vouch for that one. > > Willy I’ve sat for Level 3 within the past couple years - how do you gather that it’s false?
I was responding the to original post. I’m sure I scored WAY below 70% on at least one section of my L3 exam and passed it. That’s actually how I came to believe in the bell curve hypothesis. I knew I didn’t ACE the test…I just did LESS CRAPPY than some of the other plebes I was sitting with. Willy