Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how everyone is practicing in this last month and what you are using to stay sharp, specifically for general content / knowledge gaps and not specifically AM practice.
Personally for AM practice I have MM mocks, Schweser (heard its trash?), CFAI mock, and all the past exams etc so I’m all set there. But for general practice I’ve done all the CFA book questions and most blue boxes, and now I’m going to finish all the CFA online problem sets. Mainly what I was wondering is where else you all go for general practice, as once those questions are done I still want a good outlet to grind through multiple choice questions and determine what I don’t know.
Honestly if you do enough mock exams you should be fine. I broke up each mock into multiple days (1 day half a mock, one day review, then either 1 day general study or back to the 1 day half a mock, repeat). I marked all the questions I got wrong. When not doing mocks, I re-studied all those ones I got wrong, numerous times even. Those made up my supplementary study sessions. Worked for me. Cheers - good luck - you got this 
My concern is mainly just with finding mass content to try out and to figure out what I don’t know, I basically wish I had an endless q-bank of strong CFAI MQC questions to grind through and review anything I get wrong. Do you know of any efficient way to try get a lot of new questions to test knowledge?
I’m a re-taker from the 2019 exam and have been deferred ever since, so I’ve been on and off studying a lot in the past year and a half but that has made all the textbook and online questions commit to memory. Makes it pretty hard for me to truly find out what I don’t understand.
As an aside @Greybeard_The_Elder , what mocks do you recommend? My plan is MM, CFAI, and then going back to past exams with still relevant questions (Not sure if there’s an index of the relevant questions still good for 2021 prep?). Happy to purchase if needed, I just want as much new practice resources as I can get my hands on 
Greetings again friend! For my L3 exam I used the following, so this is just my personal opinion of course:
- 4 Schweser mocks (so-so difficulty but they were worth doing).
- I did the 2 full-day mock exam sessions with Chalk & Board (I personally liked these, they should not be the only mocks to focus on but you get roughly 4-5 morning sessions covered by the 2 days and Nathan at Chalk & Board is a former exam grader so his input and advice was useful for me).
- I did the 2020 and 2021 CFA mock exams offered through CFAI (I also was supposed to take it in June 2020 but was deferred until May 2021, so I received 2 mocks over that period from the CFAI website). I also went through the 2019 CFAI mock exam but more briefly.
- I did the Kaplan CBT mock that they offer about 1 month before each exam window, I took it the weekend before my exam.
I haven’t taken MM or other services but I am sure they offer great mocks too. I did all the CFA Institute learning ecosystem MCQ questions during my initial review period, but I didn’t come back to them in the final weeks - I just did mocks. I split my mocks into half-exam sessions generally, so I wouldn’t burn out taking full exams each time. The only exception was the Chalk & Board mock exam sessions which were live sessions on Zoom for about 8 hours on 2 different Saturdays, between questions and answer review. Also I took the final Kaplan CBT test under live conditions, but otherwise I never did any of the other mock exams under timed circumstances and I never did any of the other mocks altogether on one single day. By the time I finished, I had done the equivalent of about 11-12 mocks altogether and I had a lot of mistakes and weak areas flagged that I kept working on and repeating during the final days and weeks before test day. On both the AM and PM parts of the test. I just kept all those errors and weaknesses as my core study focus and repeated taking those questions until I could easily master their logic and calculations. That was my process, and I felt pretty comfortable about the May 2021 L3 exam - despite being completely burned out and weary from 2 consecutive deferments in 2020 (June and December). And despite not being able to retain nearly as much information from my 2 deferred study sessions as I expected or needed to. When I reopened the books in January for the May 2021 exam, I went through some despair initially. It was hard to get back on the horse again, but if I could do it in my late 40s you can do it also surely! Cheers - good luck - you got this
Awesome, thanks for all the info @Greybeard_The_Elder and will factor that into my final month prep. Congrats on the recent pass and much respect for grinding these out in your 40’s, hope I can also keep up the motivation to study throughout my career like you!
1 Like
Thanks! Keep grinding, you definitely got this! Cheers
any more feedback on the Schweser on-line mock exams?
Going to write that one tomorrow so I’ll let you know. The textbook based mocks were pretty good in my opinion too.
Was pretty good! Good coverage of topics with one non-core one they intentionally put in as per instructors mention, otherwise good breadth of topics. Not too difficult or any niche questions that would likely not show up on the exam either. Only criticism is that its a lot of 1-2 mark questions and a lot of MCQ + justify, as opposed to some nice 6-8 point questions that need some more depth.
If I were to do it again differently I would probably save it for the very last exam like @Greybeard_The_Elder , not really for the concepts and practice but just to try the cbt software very close to the exam date and figure out your best strategy.
Also @Greybeard_The_Elder if you’re around, just wanted some feedback and thoughts on my mock progression. So I did the 2 AM Schweser mocks, the Schweser CBT, 2018 and 2017 CFA exams, all to varying degrees of timed/writing out a lot of questions then marking and coming back to them. Haven’t done many PM MCQ type mocks, but I have the schweser ones and the cbt, and mark meldrum ones. What would you recommend focusing on next? I want to do an MM PM mock tomorrow since surely those have some tricky questions in there to test my knowledge, but not sure about prioritizing old cfa exams vs MM exams (Noticed even 2017 was a little outdated on 2-3 questions, surely 2016 and earlier will be a magnitude worse.)
Also, if you would care to share 2020 and 2021 mock exams from cfai please pm me, there are no mocks in my learning ecosystem 
Greetings friend! I would focus on mocks from 2019 or more recent, ideally. Don’t go back beyond then because the material can be outdated. Take a couple Meldrums and you should be in good shape on the AM. I would focus on taking an equal number of PM mock sections to get comfortable with that. The more mocks you take, the better. In both AM and PM parts. I will look and see if I still have the 2020 CFAI mocks. Cheers👍
I know where he can get some pretty decent mock exams. 
1 Like
I plan to buy one this week!
(Looking for the :yippee: emoji.)
Sellout! Hahah kidding 
If you were to recommend one of your mocks, AM (without grading) or PM what would you suggest? Also links to pricing?
Also, for what its worth, I wrote a PM MM exam right now. Good concept coverage, nothing too niche, and the fact that you get a comparison grade vs the average + amount of people who wrote is nice to know as well. Have to do my ‘performance attribution’ grading now but good experience overall for anyone wondering.
You can see a comparison of what’s in each AM mock exam here:
http://www.financialexamhelp123.com/level-iii-morning-session-mock-exams-a-comparison/
This way, you can decide which is best for you.
Pricing’s here:
http://www.financialexamhelp123.com/store/
There’s only one PM exam at the moment, included with each AM exam. I just finished a second, so it’s in review/evaluation/editing now. It should be up in about a week, and will be included with the even numbered AM exams.
So let me get this straight, all $75 AM mocks come with the same PM set as an addon regardless of the AM selected? If I buy an even numbered this week, do I wind up with 2 PM exams by chance? 
As a connoisseur of only the finest mock exams with a breadth on my hands, I think I owe one of yours the due diligence
You have summarized it nicely.