Anyone else not retaken if they fail? department, passing, networking, people

jim8z3

ummm 2 things.

1. CFA is a sunk cost if you keep failing over and over again. Not if you fail once and then take it again

2. Not sure where you get your info from but in the investment community everyone knows about the CFA. And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. I dont care if my friends dont know what it is, I care about the people who I will be applying with for jobs or promotions.

thisisbrianly

timotimo, I think your insight is not well informed. I work in investment management for a major institutional investor/pension plan and the CFA charter is a gold standard of excellence to everyone here.

As the others here said, EVERYONE in the business knows what it is and how tough it is to get. It is held in much higher esteem than an MBA, even from a top-tier university.

Way more people at work asked me how my exam went last weekend than have asked about my new baby boy born days before the exam.

glamorous

I won't, CFA is not worth taking over and over like a idiot(CFAI makes huge profits off idiots that repeat over and over)

Think back to readings on Econ and opportunity costs. If I spent the time I wasted on CFA on networking(kissing ass gets you far) or on projects that add value to my department I would make much more profit then passing CFA. Remember CFA is largely unknown to most people and thus isn't going to get you higher pay(more like HR will deem you to overqualified).

Kiakaha

uh,

if you think that way then taking it in the first place was a waste.

if its worth it take once, then its worth it to take it twice. you don't all of a sudden get to negative utility (or npv) by taking it a second time.

JRossSter

Yeah- I took the LSAT and the CFA is about, oh, 5x harder than that.

koba

Haha so if you fail, CFA is stupid and worthless. If you pass, it might be worth taking Level II.

Great attitude there, buddy. Might want to internalize some adversity instead of blaming all of your shortcomings on others.

nitoha

Personally I think not taking would be a mistake. The exception is if you literally guessed on every single question and actually didn't learn anything. People that get band 9 or 10 would be crazy not to retake... they already know most of the stuff, they just failed by a few questions. Also, and maybe the biggest reason to me, is that if you don't retake the exam after you fail you lose. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about how I took the level 1 exam, failed, and then quit. Just retake, pass, and move on. If you can quit without feeling bad about yourself, then I guess you probably should.

@timotimo Is the point of the CFA exams to teach you about being an analyst or to prove that you are smart and that you have general knowledge of the stuff on the curriculum? Personally, I think the point is when you see "CFA" after someone's name, you know that they are:

1)smart
2) knowledgeable about a lot of difference stuff in the cirrculum

not necessarily that they are a great analyst. If they wanted to prove that, they would probably make us write research reports or something.... Just my opinion.

Ionutzakis

if you did the work, there were no trick questions. it's as simple as that.

scr879

There are always trick questions but you just need to slow down and read the question. It's very easy to, say, read or think "systematic" when the question/answer says "unsystematic" and you're just not paying attention 'cause the wrong answer looks so right.

studyn

timotimo- Dude, I felt the same way you did after the test. I was so pissed, both at myself for missing stupid questions and at the test writers, but you can't give up man. You've put in so much effort and giving up now wouldn't do ya any good.

Think of it like this. They WANT 60-70% of the test takers to fail the test. If people expect to pass all the tests in one setting- the chances are so slim:

Level I: 35% chance of success (assuming a random selection)

Level II: 33% " "

Level III: 62% " "


Chance of passing all of them on the first try is 7.1%


Don't give up man