iteracom

I remember [and I think I posted here on AF, actually] that the difficulty of the exam for L1 vs my Schweser books was just about even. Not too much harder, not too much easier.

As far as the amount of calculations, I'd say you're probably right. Schweser [and probably most other providers] tend to "overweight" problems that are quantatative because it's so cut and dried - there's clearly a right and wrong way to translate foreign subsidiary earnings, for example.

In the actual exam, I think I probably only took out my calculator for every third or fourth problem, maybe even less. However, I'd echo what Joseph213 said - less calculation doesn't mean it's easier. A lot of what they give you, especially at higher levels, is less of the "How do you calculate this ratio" and more of "What does this ratio mean when..."

iteracom

Yes, I meant to trail off. The exam didn't have a lot of questions that were just focused around "Tell us the formula for inventory turnover and then calculate inventory turnover". Rather, there were plenty of questions that were something like "Calculate inventory turnover for the last two years and tell us what this trend means when viewed in conjunction with the accts payable trend."

I guess what I meant is that the calculations factor in heavily en route to the answer, but they want you to calculate the nitty-gritty number and then kind of switch to the 5,000 foot view of "OK, what's this number telling us?" As I mentioned, I hear that as you progress up to Level III, this gets to be more and more the case. You need to know the formulae, but ultimately, they're gonna test you on both the calculations and your interpretation of it.