How quantitative is the exam? guess, calculator, something, recently

ogoluwa

I’ve been told by people who have recently taken the exam that it’s not that quantitative. One girl even said that her friend barely had to break out her calculator. I sat for this exam years ago and found it to be pretty quantitative and some of my licensing exams were quantitative. I guess I find it hard to believe that it’s not that quantitative but that does seem to be something I hear from people somewhat consistently over the last few years. Can I get your input on this? If it’s not that quantitative, how can they test the quant section? I can see how they can ask questions that will test your knowledge of formulas without actually making you perform calculations but it would still seem to me that you would occassionally actually have to do some math. Is it a waste of time to use Schwesser’s Q-bank to test myself too much quantitatively?

kingstongal

imranmir1 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> This is what I tried, and u shud too: Open any
> page of FRA RANDOMLY, and the randomly opened page
> wud ALWAYS have a calculation…I did it numerous
> times, and each time, the page is a
> calculation….My conclusion: the exam has to be
> quantitative, as much as I hope I am wrong…
You’re a peculiar fellow.

ruchita

imranmir1 Wrote:
——————————————————-
> This is what I tried, and u shud too: Open any
> page of FRA RANDOMLY, and the randomly opened page
> wud ALWAYS have a calculation…I did it numerous
> times, and each time, the page is a
> calculation….My conclusion: the exam has to be
> quantitative, as much as I hope I am wrong…
>
> Even if I know the formulae, inadvertently, I
> always mess up..get it wrong in an exam
> situation..it is psycological, I guess…
your wrong. probably used my caluclator less then 30 times out of 240 questions. But that doesnt mean you shouldn’t know the math, they can and do test math without making you do math.
for example, you’ll see alot of things like, what happens to P/E when g increases and what happens when req.return decreases - things like that. Now if you know your gordon growth model - this is pretty easy.

Chuckrox

The exam is definitely NOT very quantitative. It’s mostly concept oriented. With that said, if you have all the formulas memorized, it will make the concept questions that much easier to figure out.

AndyNZ

When I went into the exam I was definitely expecting it to be much more quantitative then it was. When I thought about it some more it was more about concepts then “plug and chug” work with the calculator. You can test quant work by asking conceptual questions just as easily as asking the “plug and chug”.

tango_gs

Q-Bank is good. Keep up with the problems.