dirk01

I thought I did great in the AM session. Among all three levels, I never felt so good ater giving the exams. But the results was very disappointing.

sameeragarwal

Looking at the consistenly poor AM results posted on this site, CFAI needs to explain why either:

a) it is doing a bad job educating candidates on the CBOK but is still passing people that don't really know what they are doing, or

b) there is something badly wrong with the test format.

The mere fact that AM results are consistently worse than PM proves that the AM is not producing a fair measure of candidates' abilities.

My 2 cents.

jcole21

I am on the side of CPK123, I don't know what happened in the morning. I thought I did better than that but boy was I smoking some cheap stuff. I know I missed a whole question but overall I thought I answered the rest fairly well.

Need to clean up a few areas for next year.

SpyAli

I'm in the same boat - got 6 < 50% in AM, rest 50-70%. And I thought I had it down cold after solving CFA mock, schweser practice tests, old CFA exams and BSAS mock. Pretty confused with the results. Go figure.

Zestt

Same here: I was surprised, not by the low marks, but by the consistency of the distribution of the low marks. If i had not opened the books till the last couple of weeks, i would have understood. My AM and PM were almost complete opposites. It should be impossible (over a large sample) to do a good PM and an abysmal AM consistently: a level III black swan event perhaps.

While i accept that i may have given different answers to those required, nothing you can do about this, and i do believe the margin of error in these exams is very fine, i am nevertheless concerned ( in terms of the future probability of having the same event happen again) over the apparent lack of randomness with respect to the outcomes. Obviously i do not have the full sample to hand and this might be clearer if we did, but we are right to question any outcome that is significantly different from that expected: a fail might have been within the realms of probability, but the distribution of marks between AM and PM (you usually know when you have "really" messed) and the consistency of the AM marks may well be outside our confidence intervals.

I guess the point people are making is that they feel that the Am section marks are individually more than 2 standard deviations outside the average expected result.

I was the best prepared of all three levels having completed the curriculum this time: the first 2 levels i passed without completing the course. While i have never done any of the mocks or sample tests at any level, i do not think you need to do these to pass, as long as you know the curriculum and understand it.

Really, the AM made me look as if i did not have a clue, with the exception of the 70% on the Inst PM, which i answered more or less at the same level as most other questions in the AM: why would one randomly (like a monkey at a typewriter) come up with the correct answer in one section and miss the script entirely elsewhere? Perhaps the margin of error is too fine.

I do think the AM is harder though if you find the course at times divorced from market and economic reality, and hence disagree with the fundamental belief of efficient markets and general equilibrium on which much of the course is predicated. You do have to hold your breath and quietly bang your head against the wall, at times, while pretending to believe that we are at equilibrium and that MVOs, monte carlo, michaud resampling and everything else will realistically represent the boundaries and realities of the market and economic universe we are in.

While it is a very rigorous and extremely valuable course and correctly provides you with many of the tools and structures to manage portfolios within a close to normally distributed general equilibrium model, it does not really allow you to question it. Nevertheless, if we are doing the course we need to accept that is the CFAs beliefs and disciplines that we are agreeing to be tested on, and not our own. In other words, we have already accepted our fates just by signing up for the course. We can question the credibility of our fate, but we cannot complain about it.

jcfa2011

this is really helpful. Thanks to all. For me, I don't get it either. I wonder if it could be the keywords? This never occurred to me. I answered everything the same way and that could have been the reason. I got most in the 51% - 70% range - which is still considered poor by CFA - but none >70%.... and like others, a few in <50% including Asset Allocation. If that was the gold one, I expected this but not the others. Well onward and upward.

badonkus

Doesn't say much about the program and the quality of the test if the absolute majority scores low in most of the essay q's . Just reeks of ambiguous wording and subjectivity. My PM looked fabulous , but the AM was a disaster. How is that possible?

RepoToronto

Unfortunately, This level does not measure the candidate's intelligence/ability & knowledge. To me, the exam pattern level is not upto the mark for CFAI's reputation. Will attempt again and pass for sure, but will not be proud of clearing this exam ever, unlike level 2 where I secured > 70% in every area except ethics/econ.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Friday, August 19, 2011 at 02:22PM by cfamba2011.

genuinecfa

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that L3 more than any other level maybe tests a candidate's not only knowledge but ability to synthesize the textbook material, think quickly, and then be concise and to the point when it comes to answer articulation. An essay test is far harder than multiple guess. You can't back into anything. You can't blindly guess. It is far more like the real world where you not only need to make good decisions, but you need to get your point across well. There are plenty of study materials out there for practice on L3 AM tests, more so than any other level, and free from the CFAI. If you bomb the AM, chances are you underestimated the difficulty of the essay part of the test or didn't express yourself briefly and to the point. Thankfully for those who fail, you will get published the exact exam to study and learn from. Once you see their guideline answers, take a look and you'll realize quickly that this is a fair test, just a very tough one. Many people who breeze through 1 and 2 get tripped up on 3. It is a completely different animal, not to be underestimated. Learn from your mistakes and you will have a huge leg up on 1st time takers next year having sat through one in real-time conditions and stress. You can't hide from the AM section- the key is to just survive it. Cut your losses sometimes on questions, turn the page, and have a very strong understanding and plan of attack for both the individual and inst. IPS q's.

joehogue

..the more i read about L3 the more i shake