Well, that was quite a difficult task! 1. I complained about the quality of the test questions in another thread - based on my experience on September and the comments of the other test takers. Honestly, I didnt really find it to be the case. Maybe I had a luckier draw of questions? Maybe I was better prepared than I was in September? Regardless, I didnt have any problems with the wordings or quality of the questions. 2. I really do not like the essay format. I dont see the point in putting such high weightings on randomly drawn topics. Everyone has some topics that they know better than others. Adding the essay component only adds to the randomness of the result relative to the knowledge of the material. 3. I wish they had been more straight forward about which calculations would be provided and which wouldnt. I dont understand why the association isnt consistent with their policy. 4. I really enjoyed the curriculum in general . I like the current/integrated topics a lot more than the textbook material. I think it made the studying experience more interesting and practical. 5. Six weeks until results? Ugh. 6. Time for a beer! Hope everyone did great.
Sounds like you did ok, Phil. Good job. Here are my thoughts: 1. Last September’s MC were much easier. This year’s questions were trickier in wording and really time consuming in application. I studied less last year and i felt i had more of a chance on the MC. 2. This is the part that really bugs me: The study guide does not clearly relfect the association’s expectations in the test. Especially in terms of calculations, but also in terms of theory as well. I can accept challenging questions that result in an exam fail. But to fail because of a vague or poorly written study guide is just plain lame. 3. The essays this year were easier than last year. They were straight and to the point. I think i scored a 20-27ish on them depending on how strict/lenient they are. 4. I enjoyed the curriculum because CAIA is interesting like that. But the APPLICATIONS book is horrible: a. can that thing have any more errors? i actually wrote them on a consistent basis to make them correct it b. some of the questions are so poorly written in terms of errors, vagueness, and other things. 5. Final thought: I hope they don’t change the books for the 9/2010 exam. Just in case…
My thoughts: 1. Compared to L1, MC questions were a lot harder. Not all of them but maybe one third were consuming a lot of time. Also, there were more calculations. For comparison, I finished L1 questions in 1 hour and had another hour to go through each of them (some of them more than once), i.e. time was not a constraint and I just clicked through them. In L2, I had about 20 minutes spare time and only had time to go over the flagged ones. 2. I had a few calculations that could not have been solved based on the official texts or the study notes. Here is an example that is NOT from the exam but an imaginary example just for illustrative purposes (the question in the exam was NOT even from the same topic). Suppose that you are asked to calculate a value of a convertible bond with callability. In none of the examples or in the formulas in the book it is explained how to incorporate callability into your binom tree. Could you figure this out yourself? Maybe, if you had 20 minutes but probably not, if you have never thought of it before and have 2 minutes. You try to do it, then just click one of the choices randomly, move to next question which is about putability in binom tree… Again, please note that this example was my own and had nothing to do with the exam or even the topic in the exam. 3. I found the essays relatively easy, at least compared to the MCQ. I think I could not recall the right keywords in only one of the subpoints in one essay but otherwise they were very straightforward. I had about 10 minutes to go over the answers in the end (and would have had 15 minutes if not for the keyboard layout I whined about in the other thread 
Philbak - agree with you on 3 & 4. JaRvEy agree with you on 1-5 Shootingstar - agree with you on 1, 2 (broadly)& 3. For reasons which I cannot clearly explain (most probably got to do with tricky language) I came under severe time pressure in the MCQ. In all it was fun studying for this exam and a great learning experience. I think I will have to retake in September but I think I am 85-90% there in terms of what it takes to acquire this designation. Cheers & good luck for CFA L2
shootingstar : 2. I had a few calculations that could not have been solved based on the official texts or the study notes. Totally agree with this, was going to write something similiar. Some of the Calc question I got 3-4 also on convertible bonds. I’d never seen before. I just ended up guessing after having spend 10 minutes trying to work something out on each question. Like you said if you are sitting at home with 1 hour you’d work it out but I felt the panic creeping up on me and just dropped them. Hoped I passed, essay went really well, got lucky with some of the topics I know well. MC was much harder than L1 but reckon I scored around 70%
Jarvey and phillip - are you guys saying you took the exam second time this year? I am sure you guys will pass this time around. This is scary. I wasn’t expecting CAIA to that tough. It seems like CAIA institute is making these tests harder because of candidates influx in last couple of years. Good Luck.
It was such a great experience in September that i did it again! But seriously, i didn’t prepare well for September. I definitely have a shot this time though because i did ok on the essays. Just make sure you cover the curriculum adequately so that you have something to write about on the essays. Nothing is worse than blanking out and losing 1-3 points on a question. Actually, I take that back. Nothing could be worse than blanking out on the whole topic and losing 10 points.