Hi friends,
I’ll finish the material to CFA Level I in 10 days, however I’m a little bit confused with Fixed Income and Microeconomics, I know those are my weak spots. (Your passing score is calculated by SS, e.g. You failed to score at least 70% on FI so you are out even if you scored over 70% in all other or it’s the aggregate?)
So what’s the game plan until exam? Re-read again again and again; doing 120 questions per day on Schweser’s QBank, any suggestions?
Firstly, no one knows what the passing score (a.k.a, the minimum passing score “MPS”) is. It’s never been released, probably never will be released. The 70% target is there because it is the lowest score of the highest scoring band (i.e., >70%). Secondly, you can fail one, or more, subjects on the exam and still pass. However, this is not a recommended path to success on the exam.
Very few people get 70%+ in every category. We don’t know the minimum passing score because they keep it in an underground vault guarded by centaurs.
You could have two candidates…Candidate A who gets 50-70 for one subject and 70+ for the other, and Candidate B who gets 50-70 on both. Candidate B can actually have a higher average from these two subjects (69 + 69 for an average of 69, versus 50 + 70 for an average of 60). All it tells you is how relatively well you scored in each of the subjects. You can’t really determine whether or not you’ll pass based off of these.
For mocks, aim for higher than 70%. If you get more than 70% of mock test questions right under test conditions, you are very likely to pass the exam.
Your game plan should be to do lots of mocks and focus on the areas that are your weakest, because you’ll get the highest marginal gains from your weakest areas. However, keep in mind the topic weights. If you get a 50 in FRA and a 45 in Alternative Investments, you should study both but definitely spend more time on FRA (despite you doing slightly better in that subject) because it is weighted heavily.
So Fellas, I’m thinking to start doing 120 questions per day, every day until the test, that should give 24.000 questions plus mocks and not reading again all those stuff, Test Effect should work. Does anyone think that’s a feasible strategy to pass?
I’d caution against spending too much time on questions that are in sections you already understand well. Don’t do 120 across all subjects just to do 120 questions. Unless you’re focusing the 120 questions on the subjects you’re weakest at.
Make sure you do some full mocks with an hour break to get you used to the exam experience.
Where are you going to find that any questions?
Honestly if I were you, I’d register for the December exam and see if you can scrape in a pass; and then shoot for level II in june…what do you have to lose?
120 questions per day, lets say 3 hrs to do that…and 1-3 hrs more to review. So are you sure you can do 4-6 hours per day even during the workdays?
I think it’s too late to register now.
With all the time you have left, I would reread Fixed Income and Microeconomics.
There is no sense in doing that many practice questions and this far in advance.
And unless you have mastered accounting and IFRS/USGAAP differences, re read that one too.
Ppl, I did a break of 2 weeks, what I should do now? (I need to study Fixed Income and Derivatives/Alternatives, economics I thnk I got it.) should I make some questions to gauge my level after this break or move on?
Don’t just do a lot of questions to do a lot of questions. Perhaps part of the reason you’re having difficulty with two relatively obscure sections is because you’re not spending enough time trying to understand the material.