Band 10 2X Essay Suggestions difficult, question, passing, morning

JRossSter

I have finished in band 10 twice on the Level III test and was looking for suggestions. Both times the morning essay has clearly cost me from passing. Specifically, I have gotten less than 50% on the first two essay questions for Individual Portfolio Management and 50-70% on the Institutional Portfolio Management question. It seems to me that it is very difficult to study for the essay part of Portfolio Management.

Can you be taught to answers questions the CFA way?

chandsingh

Dont write as soon as you finish reading the question. Think for a moment what is really being asked.

BC_MBA_student

Practice actually writing out answers and timing yourself. I did this with the old AM questions and found it to be difficult at time, but I eventually got the hang of it. There are tons of institutional questions to practice with and it helps to make a summary sheet

king_kong

Watch videos to get enough to BS your way through AM. Blue box examples and EOCs are important. Write short answers in lists.Attempt all questions. At least aim for 50-70% for each question or around 2/3 of lists first round and come back if you have time (Do familiar parts first).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 08:15PM by oldboy321.

cfalevel2011

Tiburon Wrote:
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>
> Can you be taught to answers questions the CFA
> way?

the 90,000 active members are proof it can be done

economicz

use the CFAI examples in the text they are very thorough.

i too scored <50 in those sections and thought i nailed them on the exam...time will tell when we get the exam itself to look over.

zephyranalyst

Tiburon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have finished in band 10 twice on the Level III
> test and was looking for suggestions. Both times
> the morning essay has clearly cost me from
> passing. Specifically, I have gotten less than
> 50% on the first two essay questions for
> Individual Portfolio Management and 50-70% on the
> Institutional Portfolio Management question. It
> seems to me that it is very difficult to study for
> the essay part of Portfolio Management.
>
> Can you be taught to answers questions the CFA
> way?

Take the level 3 creighton boot camp this year..it teaches the exam, not just the material.

Muddahudda

@ Tiburon

I failed in 2010 and 2011. I aced the afternoon session in 2011 (this year) and felt good about it leaving the test. However, as in 2010 and 2011, I did extremely poorly in the morning session. There are a few reasons I did poorly in the morning session in both years.

First, there was some material that I did not know well enough.

Second, I wish I had taken more morning practice exams so that I could have gotten a different perspective on the CFA material. In my case, having a different angle on a concept that is explained in the CFA texts is all that it takes (not because the concept is necessarily difficult). Part of this is knowing how to give a response that the graders who rely on the guidelines are searching for. Simply knowing how to package an answer can help me to learn the material, too. For example, if you look at the matieral on individuals and insitutional portfolio management, the end of chapter exercises are long, thougtful, and drawn out. The actual morning examination questions that have been released by CFAI are quick one-two punches compared to the end of chapter exercises. The end of chapter exercises help you to learn the concepts the long way. The make you thoughtful, but they don't necessarily make you quick at packaging the answer quickly and efficiently. Indeed, the answer to the end of chaper exercises are at least a full paragraph in length. To that end, I plan on using a review course of some sort this year.

bbtomato

You can use Schweser Practice exams, aswell as CFA AM parts from past years. But I myself found the Schweser tests most useful for the AM part of the tests. They explain very very well what you are supposed to answer, whht you might be asked and so on.