Mechanical pencils? mechanical, anything, website, about

Finalnub

I haven’t been able to find anything on the CFAI website about this, so can we use mechanical pencils for the exam?

svgleeson

Yes, I believe the mechanical pencil equivalent to #2 is HB. Used mechanicals for all my exams and never had a problem.

d2rockstar

Yes, I used a mechanical pencil for L1 and passed so I wont be changing this strategy anytime soon.

segalm

I used mechanical pencils for all 3 lvls

malbec

I used mechanical pencils, too.  Just make sure that you have the HB lead, not 2B or 2H.

giorgio10

I used the same 2 mechanical pencils for all 3 levels.  They were my lucky pencils….Pentel .7mm drafting pencils.  I am glad i used pencil for level 3 especially.

onelife1

My lucky pencil was a Faber Castell 0.7mm. The lead doesn’t break as easily as 0.5mm if you drop it. I’m upset that I’ve lost that pencil…hoping it’s somewhere in the house & will show up eventually.

bcp901

I don’t like 0.7mm lead.  It’s too thick, and the lines on the paper are too thick.  I use 0.5mm lead, and use 2B.  2B shows up better against the lined notebook paper.  I took all the lead out and changed to HB for the exam.

IAmNeil

Man, my Level 3 paper was the worst. I finished a bit early, so I went back and changed a lot of answers. There would be whole paragraphs which were crossed out, and then, there was an arrow going to another page that says “read this one instead”. Maybe I should have used pencil instead of pen. In fact, people are so used to typing now, that it’s hard to write whole written answers without being able to go back and edit text.

bbtomato

I hate .5MM lead because I always break it and sometimes it will cut through really thin paper.
Handwriting is definitely a lost art as everyone types almost everything.  My cursive is so illegible so I had to write in print on the exams which is much slower but at least it is  somewha legible.  Now I can’t write in cursive anymore because I got so used to printing while I was studying for the exams.  It makes me wonder if kids 20 years from now will even know how to hold a pencil.