Schweser Practice Exam Q's difficulty, comparable, practice, earlier

laurab

Just wondering how comparable you guys think the Schweser practice exams are in difficulty to the CFA I. I’ve done ~40% of qbank questions and started the practice exams earlier in the week. I’ve been doing pretty well (high 70s/low80s in %), but I find myself finishing each session in around 120-140 min, which makes me think that the actual exam may have longer problems.
Also, if anyone has taken the practice exams offered by CFA Institue, how would you say they stack up to Schweser’s?
Thanks for any input, and good luck in the final stretch!

ba736

Thanks for response

disiz64

I found the schweser exam slightly harder than the CFAI mock, I agree that the wording on the CFAI mock is better. Maybe that’s why, nonetheless my score for schweser was 177/240 and for the CFAI mock I got 188/240. I did take the CFAI mock 3 days later, maybe that is why because I understand that most ppl found the schweser mock easier than the CFAI exam.

ikoreaii

cgottuso8190 wrote:
I felt the range of difficulty was greater on the CFAI mock.  What I mean is, that I felt there were questions that were far easier than the ones on the Schweser practice tests but also a number that were more difficult.  However, I also thought the CFAI mock’s questions were more straightforward - not long winded like schweser’s.  Having taken 7 tests now (6 full Schweser practice tests and 1 CFAI mock) I feel good about what to expect.  Also felt good to score highest today, on test 7 of 7, with no topic below 70.  Timing’s not bad.
I, too, have finished much faster on Schweser (4.25 hours total today), whereas it took me maybe 2.5-2.75 hours per session on the CFAI mock.
I agree - CFAI mocks (and the actual exam) tend to be more ‘sudden death’. In these questions you either know it or don’t, there is no try.

krause2

I’ve personally done about 50-60% of the Schweser questions (Accidently deleted some tests, so those questions got placed back into the pool making my usage amount iffy) and getting about the same scores you did.  I only did the intermediate/hard questions, though.  I finished the morning CFAI Mock in 1.5 hours and the evening in 1.75 hours, scoring in the 70s.  I’ve found that the QBank makes it clear the formulas I forgot to study, so I take advanced question tests and then memorize those formulas I got wrong.  As far as ethics, the Qbank and ethics are completly different.  I focus more on reading the explanation to each question in the QBank, to be familiar with the stuff.
I have most of the theory down, it’s just forgetting to subtract a 1 or add it back.  I find taking a QBank test a day on all sections keeps them refreshed, so I don’t forget most of the concepts in sections like Econ since there are a ton.  But when I took the CFAI tests, a lot of stuff I could peice togehter because I’ve taken sooo many QBank questions, you start to remember “Oh I use this and that, and that right there is distractor information.”
That’s my experience at least.  We’ll see how the test goes

tikfed

Thanks for the responses