CFA Conspiracies: Am I Missing Something? money, membership

KungFuPanda

Wouldn’t the CFAI make more money off of membership fees (presumably for 20-40 years?) than 1-4 years of enrollment fees?

hanvinh

“CFAI and all CFA charterholders (now including me) want the charter to remain exclusive but not so exclusive that people stop trying. ”
I’m afraid this is going to happen but hope not. If you look at this board, especially the experience of failed candidates, several of them have a lot of financial experience and have worked very hard but still failed. To say that the lower pass rate is due to candidate’s lack of preparation or lack of financial experience is unfair to those people.
I did work very hard using the CFAI material as my main source of preparation and did countless practice exams, mock/sample exams etc and still failed, for the SECOND time (performance band:9). I have been working in the financial industry for about 12 years, most of it in a trading firm.
To me - it seems like defending the charter and keeping it exclusive seems to be the only reason why the pass rates for Level 3 have dropped off the cliff, in the past few years.
After failing L3 twice (work experience is already approved), it is very unlikely that I will continue in this program, with a full-time job, long commute and kids. Spending another 6 months of study time (after 4 years) is not a trivial investment of your time.

cross-ied

I apologize if that came across as crass or demeaning. It was not meant that way.
I also have 3 kids, a trading job and actually had a heart attack in January to throw a nice kink into my studying.
With that said I probably put at least 500 hours of studying into it this year as I literally ordered the books the day I got the fail and started studying in september, took the NYSSA class, finished the schweser Qbank twice, did every EOC, Practice exam, Mock, and old tests at least 3 times and squeaked by after failing level III last year.
I don’t believe that it is statistically possible that test takers intelligence dropped by over 50 percent from 76 percent to 46 percent over the last few years. I do think that the test is much harder than it has been in the past.
Also for me having 15 years experience certainly helped me pass. Don’t give up dude. Next year may be 65 percent. Or it may be 30 and you might pass.