neither b nor c…1000$ pls
I’m with Greenman and I’m calling BS. I can’t verify the hours you put in, but I also don’t see any confirmation that you’ve passed LII, which should be easy enough for you to post a screen shot of. Furthermore, it’s faulty reasoning to drag your 99% LSAT score into this (assuming it’s yours). Join the club, 99th percentile GMAT here. But honestly, I still had to study my ass off for Level II, because unlike standardized reasoning exams based on grade school concepts, this covers some graduate level finance.
I’ve known several quantitative PhD’s on this forum to go through LII and I’ve never seen one do it on less than 50-100 hours of studying. There are just too many concepts from beyond any one narrow discipline.
I wrote this in another thread but realized I meant to put it here:
A lot of people take these exams now. It’s plausible that perhaps one or two of them can do L2 without all that much studying. And maybe this guy is one of them. But something smells fishy with the particular outsized claim in this thread. (Doing L1 on less than two weeks of studying is rare but not unheard of, particularly if people were finance majors in school; L2 is a different story).
The math in the exams is simple, so it’s not clear why someone with a strong maths background should find the exams fantastically simple. That’s not what makes the exams challenging. Econ work is also relevant to the CFA, but Econ is a huge field, and financial economics is just one specialization in it. And of course, a ton of stuff on the exam is about how the industry is structured, how the rules are designed, what are quoting conventions, what are the ideosyncratic arguments for valuing consolidated balance sheets, foreign transactions - a lot of this stuff isn’t obviously logical unless you know the industry very well. And that sort of stuff just takes time to sink in. Even if you’re in the industry, the Equitiy people don’t always have a grasp of the Fixed Income side of things, and vice versa. And of course the Ethics section is not something that traditional math and econ courses cover.
Add on top of that the ideosyncracies of how stuff is worded for the exam. Mentally preparing oneself to be sharp after 6 hours of reading vignettes and filling in bubbles is a big part of the prep process even if you already know the material down cold. The vast majority of people need more than 50 hours to prepare, even if they are smart, disciplined, and on board.
So, maybe this guy is one of the perhaps 0.1% of folks who can do it. But suggesting that the exams are easy just because he was able to do it this way represents profound lack of self-awareness, and really seems kinda douchey backdoor way of boasting without even the grace of openly saying “I’m awesome and I’m here to lord it all over you.” Congrats, I guess. If you did this, I’m impressed. But so what. If you’re that good, the fact that it was easy for you doesn’t prove that these exams are thus easy by some “objective” standard.
Then there is the possibility that there’s substantial exaggeration and or false claims going on. I have no idea if this poster is genuine or just phluffing themselves up for fun, but I do know that the number of people who would lie about this stuff on an anonymous forum to autostroke their ego is way, way larger than the number of people who can actually pass L2 with a bit more than 1 week of study (did that include any 6-hour practice exams?).
Telling the truth or not, dude is a fag.
I didn’t come on here to stroke my ego, like everyone else I answered the damn question on the thread (in three short sentences) - do you want me to make up some BS answer about how it’s my dream to go into equity research, or give an honest answer whether or not it fits everyone’s preconception of why I should take the L3 exam? People who feel the need to “call others out” on message boards have serious issues, but honestly when someone has the audacity to call me a liar I do feel the need to defend myself.
And I did do 3 full-length L1 practice exams (all mid-high 80s), but didn’t get through the Schweser until the night before L2 exam and so I only walked myself through half of a full exam while looking at the answers…I got up at 5am the day of the exam and my last few hours were spent memorizing formulas (mnemonic devices were helpful). Look, I had a roommate who said he didn’t study at all until the day before L2 and he managed to pass. I didn’t pass by a lot either, I scored bottom tier on Ethics and another major section, so I’m not trying to insinuate it’s easy, even for someone with my background (and I see no reason to be apologetic about the fact that I’ve been fortunate enough to obtain a background in subjects that align very closely with the CFA curriculum). Fortunately the econ, quantitative and AI sections are places where I can basically skim over the material and still get a good score…and a lot of the other concepts are related to work I’ve done as well. For someone who’s never had to calculate bond duration or do a cash flow model, obviously the time commitment will be significantly more.
I wanna see the screenshot, although that will only half verify it as it doesn’t address study time.
It’s too easy to post a fake score. Why bother?
Complete with “failed” ethics. Sorry it came out really small.
http://overpronatorshoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/cfaL2-300x252.gif
There is something wrong when a thread degenerates into people calling each other liars.
Maybe kartelite didn’t really need to study that hard because of a combination of good fortune in career paths, study choices, etc… Who really knows, and why does it even matter at the end of the day?
For me, the only important thing is for other readers to know that most people are going to require substantially more than 50 hours of study to pass L2. If kartelite is being genuine, then it’s important to know that passing L2 on 50-60 hours of study, begun 9 days before the exam is atypical, to say the least.
@kartelite - “Passivation Phenomena”
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/91314316
Having a PhD in Math and a PhD in Econ does not tell you how to account for FIFO inventories, nor how to classify securities as “available-for-sale” or “trading”. It also doesn’t teach ethics.
It also doesn’t teach how to calculate elasticity. Sure, it should be easy for a PhD in Econ to do, but not the way CFAI teaches it. CFAI’s method is very different from the way the rest of world calculates elasticity.
These are just a few examples of why you have to put in some significant study time. I’m still calling BS on this one.
Having a PhD in Math and a PhD in Econ does not tell you how to account for FIFO inventories, nor how to classify securities as “available-for-sale” or “trading”. It also doesn’t teach ethics.
- I learned LIFO/FIFO on the job…that’s a very basic concept. I also deal with AFS etc. distinctions a lot as well. That said, the FRA and Ethics were the two worst sections for me.
It also doesn’t teach how to calculate elasticity. Sure, it should be easy for a PhD in Econ to do, but not the way CFAI teaches it. CFAI’s method is very different from the way the rest of world calculates elasticity.
- The way they calculate elasticity annoys me. Still, it takes about 0.3 seconds to “learn” the way they do it once you already understand the concept (and the annoyance factor of their method is enough to make me recall it). I did read all the Schweser materials.
These are just a few examples of why you have to put in some significant study time. I’m still calling BS on this one.
- Go ahead, I really don’t care.
Ah yes, bchad the diplomat.
Anyway, Statistically speaking, it’s possible for someone to not study at all and pass the exam. L2 is pure multiple choice with 1/3 chances of guessing right, and an MPS of ~65%
Does someone want to run the monte carlo simulation for us?
If you literally ran say 300k simulations, I bet you’ll get many examples of passes (assume 65% to pass) based on random guessing. heck, run enough trials, and I’ll bet you get scores in the 90-95%+ percent ranges.
So, sure he may be telling the truth. But it means shat. Ok let’s move on.
There’s no point to running a Monte Carlo as a normal approximation is perfectly applicable here. 65 MPS is 117 out of 180 raw score (is it 180 questions?) and expectation is 60, so you’re looking at 57 above expected and a back of the envelope calculation puts 1 Std Dev at 6.3, so that’s 9 Std Dev above the mean which is almost a zero probability event.
Incidentally, if a monkey repeatedly took the test over and over, he would get a perfect score infinitely many times. Doesn’t mean he will score 65% in our lifetime though.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. Regardless of how smart (or not smart) anyone is, they’re going to better than a monkey.
Assumption 1: Someone who has studied 40-50 hours can probably get 25% of the questions correct.
Assumption 2: For 50% of the questions, their answer is completely random. (Assuming they don’t look at the options and use the RAND function on the calculator. less than 0.33 is A, 0.33to 0.66 is B and greater than 0.66 is C.)
Assumption 3: In the remaining 25% of the questions, they can eliminate 1 option. After selecting a random option, they have a 33% chance of being correct. At this point, if they can eliminate 1 option in the case of half the questions, they switch to the option that is left, giving them a 50% chance of being correct.
So, that is 45 + 90 * 0.33 + 45 * 0.5 = 97.5. It’s certainly not a standard deviation 10 event. With a little luck, it can be done. It just depends on the approach taken.
Okay, okay - I admit it, I made the whole thing up to have a bit of fun with you guys. You have to admit, it was entertaining though, right? I am in fact an L1 candidate, and this whole thing was a bit of “wishful thinking.” Fortunately I was able to procure not only a convincing L2 results page, but also GMAT and LSAT results to corroborate my story.
I must admit that the part of this whole facade of which I’m most proud is the time machine I built to go back in time (as far as 2007, no less) to drop those other forum posts under the same username in the hope that some enterprising poster here would undertake the research to see if my story checked out. And voila, just as planned!
While I deem the overall attempt a moderate success, some of you were just too clever and saw right through me! (Props to you, Greenman72)
I think you misunderstood. He is calling BS only on the “I passed by studying 40-50 hours cause I’m that good.” You passed, I’m sure. Just that no one belives you did it with such a low prep time.
I did that at the bottom of my second post (I think it was) - posting my LSAT/GMAT scores.
But here it is again: http://overpronatorshoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/test_scores.jpg
lankylint, I think I don’t have personal messaging privileges yet, but I have something else that would strongly corroborate my story that I’d rather not post for all to see, so if you want to message me I’d be happy to share that.
I really liked the smiley face on that pic. Nearly spewed tea all over my keyboard. 
i just think there are some really smart people out there. It’s certainly possible to pass with such little study of the CFA material. Now his room mate who passed the exam with only 1 day of study…That has got to be pure fluke!.. Even a smart ass would have toguess a bunch of the answers on that exam.