How did it go? No question discussions please

I was happy I took 6 mock exams. I’m not gonna study for level 2 again either way but my best advice to anyone would be to take a ton of mock exams. The test seemed easier than some of them, and I felt more prepared. That does not mean I think I passed, that’s way too hard to tell. I cranked through the first 30 questions without too many problems. Then I thought maybe I was getting tricked. So I went back and quickly re read every problem. I was kind of being a paranoid maniac. Realized on my way home how I definitely got one problem wrong which sucks, so…I guess I have 37 more I can afford to get wrong. When do we find out for level 2?

Took L2 and, F-me, never in my life did I feel this mentally depleted after an exam. Morning session was very hard (the poor girl next to me started sobbing 1.5h in) but I did reasonably well. Afternoon started off better (although I felt sleepy from my meal), however, at the very end it started throwing curve balls from every angle (midway the guy in front of me threw the towel and left, or maybe he was a genius). To sum my forecasted results up: I counted 13 and 18 unsure question in AM and PM respectively. The big question mark, however, are always those questions you were dead sure about but turn out wrong because you overlooked some small detail. In the end I am not sure whether I passed, we will see in 60 days.

The morning section was very difficult. I finished the afternoon with an hour to go. Almost like 2 completely different exams. Not even close in difficulty level to each other. Its going to be close but that morning section was so tough that I wouldnt be surprised at all if i failed.

completely agree. I had about 30 questions on the first exam where i literally didnt have a clue, but only around 10 on the second exam.

Level II: Like several others above I did 6 mocks exams in preparation and was surprised at the weight some areas were given vs other areas on a test with only 120 questions. I also found the afternoon slightly more difficult in general, despite being more awake. Cautiously optimistic for August results. @ynag12 60 days until results

I took 9 practice papers, 343 hours study time, the week off before the exam, and still felt like I feel like I had no idea what to do for some of the questions. What irked me the most was when I couldn’t derive the right answer, even though I was pretty sure my calculations were correct.

Like others here said, the AM and PM portions of L1 seemed to be completely different exams.

@Dubinka – very unlikely (and the same happened to me).

Good stuff, @justinturner‌, I like trying different things but always keeping the intensity high. I also alternated between pieces of mock and reviewing the material, and I think it did help.

I also agree with your thoughts on having the big picture at this point. I really hope I pass, because I look forward to what Level 3 has in store for us…

yet if someone really wanted to cheat they are probably going to find a way

@mitch895‌ Oh we’ve heard stories. There are a few you can read about here: https://www.300hours.com/blog/a-dark-side-there-is-cheating-in-the-cfa-exams

The morning section was very difficult. I finished the afternoon with an hour to go. Almost like 2 completely different exams. Not even close in difficulty level to each other. Its going to be close but that morning section was so tough that I wouldnt be surprised at all if i failed.

i took Level 2. it was fine. how much fine that results would tell..

i don’t want to get into how it was – compared to AM/PM or how many i guessed or not. cause i am tired of speculating and expecting and CFAI throws me off on the result day. it really doesn’t matter till it says that “Congratulations! you have passed Level 2!” till i see that for myself, it’s irrelevant how it did go. until i pass, whether it’s band 10 or band 5, it’s all same.
though, honestly, i have been counting my number of rights in every section since saturday night, pleading just this time, things change and it’s a Pass for once and all….!

It was hard, but not in a way that I expected. I’m not sure if I’m dumb or not, but I swore that some of the questions didn’t give enough information to answer it while others had 2 answers that were equally correct. It was frustrating. The cost in time and money of failing is so high, it really adds to the stress.

Given my story above, I’m certain I didn’t pass although people tell me that you never know.

Urgh. Just focusing on enjoying my happy happy Sunday! 😀

Credit to the CFAI for picking some questions that I had no freaking answer to!

I sat the Level 1 and had about 20 questions in the AM & 15 in the PM that fit into my “WTF??” category of understanding. Mainly stuff that related to retrieving from memory very specific definitions & calculations relating to things that I vaguely remember skimming over a few months ago. I found the AM session more difficult than the PM session. In the PM session I also had probably about 20 minutes to go back and attack some of the questions I was less than 100% on.

All in all I think I came out on top. But not by much. Certainly not by the margin that I was clearing on the mock exams!!

That said, I was disappointed with my performance. Maybe the result would have been better if I took a few days study leave beforehand, or found some adequately strong coffee to perk me up. But alas, what is done is done…. No one was responsible for my performance but myself.

We too had people leaving very early on in the AM session. One guy in our section even got up and left at about the 1’15 mark…. I was chatting to a proctor about the setup and he was telling me that every one of the desks had been laid out for a candidate (on quick calculation that worked out at around 1,300 for our test centre!). I would say that somewhere between 25% and 35% of the seats remained empty.

Also, slightly off topic, but I found it interesting that although our writing materials (etc) received so much scrutiny, pretty much everyone (including myself) was wearing heavy jackets (etc) and could well have been smuggling notes or cheat-sheets into the exam (even though there was a proctor stationed in the toilets I would guess this wouldn’t prevent all degrees of sneakiness). I’m not saying we should be patted-down on entry to the exam, just that if someone is really prepared to go the effort of engraving covariance formulae into their glasses case, they are probably more prepared to scribble the formula down on the inside of their jeans. Anyway. My point is that some of the regulations seemed a bit paranoid – example: I was prevented from bringing in a CLEAR plastic sleeve that held my pencils/eraser etc – yet if someone really wanted to cheat they are probably going to find a way

I think it went well, or at least I hope it went well enough… The test (level II) was not more difficult than the 6 mocks I did but it was not much easier either. I was surprised with some questions for sure, especially in the PM, and was surprised some of the subtopics did not make the exam. Oh well, now the waiting game starts, may as well forget about it until end of July…

Congratulations to everyone who sit for either of the exams for making through the pressure and everything else, it’s definitely an endurance test. And I hope everyone in this forum will have good news in a couple of months.

Morning session, I finished with one minute left. For me, that’s historically been good news relative to mock exams.

Afternoon session, I had 20 questions left and I was only 90 minutes in. Either my synapses were flying and I was lucking out on CFAI’s question choices and I nailed it…or I was falling for every CFAI curveball and I bombed.

@boneill25 as far as i know, CFAI doesn’t release the actual MPS. what you read, was estimated by 300hours themselves post results. CFAI only releases the pass percentage. am i right @Sophie ?

So. the Level II MPS for 2012 was 58-63% and for 2013 was 65-67%. and as you can see it’s not consistent over the years. The official candidate pass rates released by the CFA Institute, was 42% in 2012 and 43% in 2013.

Yes it’s estimated. I didn’t see those numbers for 2013 so thank you.

I am just here praying the Chinese don’t skew up the MPS..!

I agree, I see the topics covered at level 3 and I hope I’ve passed level 2 so I can start learning about the subjects covered in the next level, which seem more interesting and more related to my career.

Is it just me or was the AM section significantly harder than the PM? It confused me and I ended up making countless guesses even though I thought my prep was solid. PM wasn’t as bad though (I hope :P), but I suppose the AM session must have made the overall performance disappointing. Hope I make it through but I’m also prepared to re-appear in December already. Ahh well, whats done is done.

I did Level II and i thought it was tough. It’s a coin flip for me. I thought many questions were very fair with a few being ridiculous which I guess is par for the course. I do think the test questions are way more straightforward than the Schweser practice tests. The vignettes in Schweser are WAY longer and contain way more info that is not pertinent to the questions.

I saw a post on this site from a couple years ago that the MPS in 2012 for 2 was 58-63. Is that consistent with other years recently for LII. I’m guessing I am close to 63 but who knows.

I couldn’t sleep the night before. May be I was nervous, may be I was upset about a piece of news I had received the Thursday before the exam. Whatever it was, I got only 4 hours of sleep and my mind was in a complete fog. How could this happen to me? 🙁 I answered all the questions but in slow motion. I can’t believe this happened. very disappointed and sad.

I took level 2 and it went pretty well I’d say. I found it significantly easier than one of the CFAI mocks (not sure which, but the one that was not just a copy of all the practice test questions). I would say it was more on par with the Schweser Mocks although not necessarily written the same. For the poster above talking about Schweser Mock questions being too long, I would suggest that nobody actually read Schweser case studies before reading the questions. The most extreme example I can give is where there was a huge reading, and then 5 of the 6 questions needed no reading whatsoever to answer. I would say the standard Schweser mock requires you to read about 30-40% of the info given and most question sets can easily be done in less than 18 minutes and at least 1 or 2 of the questions usually require no reading of the case at all.
As for the test, I would say level 2 is a real challenge. By the end of my studying I felt as if I could step in to an entry level analyst roll, I felt like I was really getting the big picture and understanding what it is that CFAI wanted me to learn. I think that is most likely what a prepared candidate for level 2 should feel like, and anything less than that might not be good enough. How that translated into test results is another story, but I feel 99% confident I got a minimum of 65% and I hope I got 70% or better. Level 1 was completely different, I really had no clue where all of this was headed, and just tried hard to memorize all the formulas and theory. I find it hard to imagine one would pass level 2 with that approach.
I did things in a way I feel is perhaps different than many candidates, and was studying and/or reviewing chapter videos and written material up until the very last evening with 2 or 3 Mock question sets in between each study session, that kept things more fresh and allowed me to study up to 13 hours per day for many days in a row. The only full mock i did in one sitting was the live one Fitch administers, I felt that was worth my time and felt no need to simulate the test experience other than that one time.

the AM session was much harder for me. afternoon session I finished with 45 mins to go, but not sure if thats a good or bad thing thinking about it! I think the morning session probably failed me, so very prepared to sit in December!

Took L2 and I agree with @edulima that I was surprised (and a little dissappointed) that certain topics were not covered on the exam. Personally I found the PM a little tougher, there were a few curve balls that I struggled to answer but overall it went ok. Nothing to do but wait and see.

@ralu14‌ yeah I slept only 2 hrs cos for some reason I felt that I had forgotten a lot of stuff. Then since I wanted to be on time and it said to report by 8 am, I was up and travelling by 5 am. Imagine my surprise when I am sitting inside the hall like a douche at 8 am and the exam started around 9 15 am or so. I don’t know how my exam went honestly cos I forgot the paper after I finished the exam. I feel I probably fried a few brain cell or maybe it was such a traumatic experience that my brain is blocking it on purpose.

Besides, imagine my surprise when the girl next to me tells me you have to score about 70. I feel pretty screwed cos I had no clue!

Ah, the level 2 I thought it was hard, specially the morning session. There was a couple of topics that I didn’t study well and they decided to make the 6 questions about them :S
In the afternoon session I felt better but I know there were many tricky questions. Does anyone know the date of the results?

Delighted it’s over! There was stuff I knew, stuff I should have known but couldn’t recall and so much stuff I spent hours mastering that didn’t show up at all! I agree with the comments above – based on the practice exams was surprised the weights given to some areas.

Hi Guys, maybe you could spread some light on my case.. I had a eraser on my table with paper holder(with brand name on holder) and i took it out from that holder .. so during exam procter took it from my table and throw it to the garbage box.. On CFAI website i read that rubber should be without paper holder.. The inside of this paper was blank white obviously not a cheatining tool. Question is can this lead to the void my exam results, because im worried.. I studied 8 months, finished both sessions 45 min earlier .. i was really good prepared 🙁