Word of advice to successful L1 and L2 passers.. failure, assigned, subjects, management, successful

LPoulin133

I passed 2008 L1 and 2009 L2 with flying colors but failed L3 badly this year...band 5.

The reasons for this failure, with weights assigned:
1) I approached L3 in the same way as L1 and L2, i.e. section-by-section and pounding out 1000's of QBank questions. Did not do proper AM tests nor did I study the "CFA way" of essay answers - 80% of the failure.
2) I have never worked in asset management, so most of the subjects in PM were new to me (i.e. performance evaluation - WTF?) - 10%
3) Increased workload at the office - 10%

I know this has been repeated many times on this board, but still, a word of advice - do not take the same approach for L3 as you did for the previous exams. You need to spend A LOT of time on the essay portion and understand the "CFA code" of answering questions. I made basic mistakes like listing 4 or 5 bullet points when they asked for 3 and including correct answers in the last 1 or 2 bullet which the graders probably didn't even look at.

In a way I'm not so depressed that I failed, because I was poorly prepared going into the exam and will have a chance of learning the material properly. However for those who do not wish to take an extra year to learn this lesson, pay attention to the advice that is being handed out as it is 100% correct - L3 is a totally different test than the previous two.