First 3 Morning questions ..... gap, material, discuss, between

kd26gioi

Usually a combination of Portfolio Management: Individuals and/or Institutional. If I am not mistaken, getting these 3 questions correct would be the key to pass L3.

However, the CFAI material kept using old material (ie Peter and Hilda profile.....) to discuss the issue and seems to have a gap between the material and the actual exam.

What would you guys suggest to do? Other than:

- Doing past exams.
- Practice and time the questions.
- Understand Command (ie Define / Discuss / ...) words.


Any "solid" approach to tackle these 3 questions????

Chuckrox8

EEYY Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Usually a combination of Portfolio Management:
> Individuals and/or Institutional. If I am not
> mistaken, getting these 3 questions correct would
> be the key to pass L3.
>
> However, the CFAI material kept using old material
> (ie Peter and Hilda profile.....) to discuss the
> issue and seems to have a gap between the material
> and the actual exam.
>
> What would you guys suggest to do? Other than:
>
> - Doing past exams.
> - Practice and time the questions.
> - Understand Command (ie Define / Discuss / ...)
> words.
>
>
> Any "solid" approach to tackle these 3
> questions????

Reading the book helps out a great deal. There was not a really good idea of what exactly CFAi wanted for the questions based on past questions there was some ambiguity.

I think you can get a lot wrong and still be on the right track and do well on the questions.

Just remember Return/Risk/Liquidity/Time/Tax/Legal/Unique and you can fare well.

dvilayphet

Peter and Hilda....they are like my friends now...

John10

Paraguay - gotta disagree with you on RRTTLLU. I knew these cold, broke out my answers in this format and still scored less than 50% on each of these 3 questions.

I truly believe the key to the essay section of the exam is luck. I read the CFAI curiculum and had all the behavioral finance terms memorized, but it was little to no help in taking the exam. The questions were so ambiguous to anyone who had a solid understanding of the material that ultimately our answers were guesses, and thus we were rewarded based on whether we guessed right or wrong, not whether we knew the material.

Having crushed level 1 Dec 09 and level 2 June 2010, i walked out of level 3 thinking i was done with the program for sure. Absolutely shocked to have not passed, and horrified to see that it was entirely due to my essays. I'm deeply concerned about next year's exam, as i don't see any way to adequately prepare myself for the type of ambigous BS that was thrown at us this year.

kickthatcfa

focus on schweser book 6/7 and do absolutely everything from there.especially am exerises

in the am exam just answer what is asked,only what is asked (i know it sounds weird-but read the damn question - 90% of the time all they need for an answer is 2 sentences)

NakedPuts

Again, I feel similar. I was really surprised I didnt pass (Band 8 Fail). I didnt I have any issues with the difficulty of the material. I feel like I need to have somebody teach me the test rather than teach me the material...

BC_MBA_student

For Individual questions, Stalla suggested to do:

1) 5 (or less) constraints first (save time for doing return objective). then

2) Risk objective (ability / willingness /overall)

3) Return objective (ie calculation).


For Return objective, here is what I have been doing.

1) Setup the calculation format first. (Cash Inflows / Cash Outflows / Net cash Inflows or Outflows / Net Worth)

2) Time period ( ie the year before retirement and the first year of retirement)

3) Then I wil go back to each paragraph and pick the information by paragraph (ie tax rate / inflation rate / amount of inheritance) and filling in the calculation format that I setup in the very beginning. ( ie Salary / Tax / Mortgage / college education / donation / etc....)

4) Adjust the inflation rate at the end(if necessary).

5) Normally, the final return objective answer would be less than 10%.



Good or Bad approach to deal with this type of question????

bchadwick

All of my answers were straightforward, and one or two sentences, no fluff. I don't think I could have known any of the concepts better than I had. I also want to just remind people on here that those who did pass could have only passed by one or two questions. Do not think just because you have a pass on a test that can be partially based on luck you somehow have all of the answers on how to pass it.

I find it quite interesting that there are more than a few candidates who failed with a high band last year but this year it dropped down.

Dapper425

+1 on the essay grading being a total mystery. I think the problem is that you have graders looking at literally thousands of essays at a clip and they are basically scanning for key words and trying to make a judgment as quickly as possible.

+1 on the morning behavioral finance questions being super ambiguous and could have been answered about 6 different ways (and all valid, per the curriculum)

I have failed this exam twice, low score bands, both driven by bad morning performance, and I am totally mystified about what these "essay responses" are supposed to achieve.

Another thing to remember...the entire curve of grading for this test is between 50-75% raw score on the exam. so it is *very tight* on the borderline (maybe even 1 question would make the difference). It sucks but that is the nature of the beast.

congrats to the passers - hope you all are taking some time to celebrate!

Zestt

OMG ITS KEN LUCE. INTERNATIONAL CFA MODEL !