I agree completely that candidates should not grade their own exams. I also agree completely that they should treat the past exams as a study session, taking them under similar conditions to the real exam, then comparing their answers to the guideline answers.
Close.
In 2012 I’d already been teaching CFA review courses for 8 years.
Well. I haven’t been on here in a while and this was a good read. I’ve just been getting joy from reading the level 1 and 2 posts, but yeah in a similar boat to others. Aim is to finish the material mid-March. Questions during the week and practice exams on the weekend.
i have enjoyed the CFA process and learned a ton despite working in the industry more than 10 years already. But there are two things I don’t understand about the program. One, why is the exam so time constrained? Who cares that you can solve the problem quickly, that’s not so relevant in real work conditions. I mean no one says, I am fine over paying for this stock/company but give me the answer in an hour. Second, why the obsession with memorizing formulas. It really doesn’t matter if you can remember how to lever and unlever beta, calculate the covariance…or derive ROIC. In the real world, you will use a spreadsheet, and either follow your firm’s approach or double-check with a textbook (or CFAI material) you got it right.
What do charter holders here think about the PM session difficulty? Obviously the focus should be on the AM session but I was wondering about the MC difficulty compared to L2. Were they trickier compared to L2?
WAY easier than Level 2. I actually think the PM section of Level 3 is the easiest section of the entire CFA program. However, one thing to keep in mind. Lots of candidates will score really well in the PM section. I was over 70% in the PM section and I was pretty solidly below the 90th percentile. Goes to show that there are candidates that will score very well in the PM section. Why does that matter? Because candidates will try to focus on AM damage control and then try to crush the PM section to pass. This just illustrates HOW MUCH you have to crush PM to do that. Is PM easy? Yes. Easy to get 90% or higher? No.
I had thought it made more sense to focus on doing well in AM. AM is definitely harder, but if you can get good at answering the questions then that takes a lot of the pressure off PM. If you can get yourself decent at the AM section, I think you’ll find clearing 70% in PM to be pretty free.
Thanks a lot for the info. One more thing, are you implying that good performance in AM session is highly correlated with PM session, or they are uncorrelated, i.e. different beast.
Well studying AM questions will naturally help you in PM also just because you learn the material better. But I’m saying that outperforming on PM is challenging, and you can relieve some of the pressure on crushing PM by focusing on more than just damage control for AM.
My experience of level 3 PM is that the difficulty level of MCQs was much lower than online CFAI topic tests and lvl 2 exam and one must eye for above 80% as it is completely doable. Average number of people who prepared well and passed the exam in my testing center including myself were of the view to get only 50 to 60% marks at max in AM even after knowing the curriculum well. As wlfgngpck rightly said you have to prepare for the AM in such a way that you can automatically score well in the PM.
I think it’s very unfortunate that a methodical thinker is penalized on the exam, or that somehow the depth of knowledge of a financial analyst is somehow tied to the speed at which he/she can deliver an answer.
For me, while the morning exam exceedingly tough, I found the afternoon a familiar, navigable exam with few difficult surprises.
This is a weakness of all timed exams, especially in math based subjects like finance. Something I found very frustrating when I was in college. Unfortunately I think the answer just comes back to additional preparation (also an answer I didn’t like while in college).