What would you like to ask the CFA Institute?

1)Why don’t they have a better way of delivering the e-books instead of using Vitalsource?
2) Why don’t they make past years’ mock exams available (for a fee if desired) to candidates for all levels? (currently we only have L3 actual past exams available for L3 candidates)

Thanks for these questions! We’re working on trying to get some questions to ask the CFA Institute. No promises that they will be answered though, but all suggestions welcome!

Why don’t they give useful feedback? Why the aura of secrecy? Is it really necessary for the institute to market itself so aggressively to the entire financial community, rather than targeting the elements where the syllabus is really relevant?

@mitch895 I think the stat I have seen was something like 19% of those that start the process go onto achieve the CFA designation, probably the same one you are thinking of?

@christine – thanks for that!

Initially I came up with something along the same lines, except I saw somewhere that ~20% of those who register for the course pass all Levels without any re-test (this might even have been from the CFA site, can’t recall).

I believe the CFA don’t include those who don’t show up for the test (~25%, by their stats) in the fail rate, so the actual pass rate is lower than the headline rates published (i.e., for Level 1 it is less than 30%).

I prefer the sound of “less than 10%” though. Let’s go with that 🙂

@Zee probably more LIII specific than others because the basic diagram-thing they release probably works if you fail LI and LII and want to target specific areas. That said, I see now reason why they don’t release passing grades, your actual grade, blah blah blah, other than to keep this ridiculous mystique around themselves – perhaps if they had to show all the errata and so on and go into detail, the whole facade might show a few cracks, who knows…

But coming back to my point, the feedback on the morning paper at LIII is utter crap, especially if you appear to do okay or even very well in simialr topic areas in the afternoon paper. Nobody really knows what they are looking for, whatever hints and tips are out there. Probably rhote-learnt phrases, but they won’t actually disclose that…. again might chip away and the carefully manufactured image. /rant

@mitch895 you can see all historical pass rates and stats here: http://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfaprogram/Documents/1963_current_candidate_exam_results.pdf

about 160k passed L3 so far with 1.8M L1 candidates (including repeat candidates). So understanding that this calculation includes repeat candidates for L1, and assuming passing L3=charterholder, the proportion of charterholders to registrations is less than 10% 😉

@mitch895 yep you’re right, they only count people who show up. I’m theorising extremely roughly that repeat candidates cancel out the no-shows 🙂

Why charge so much for the books to be printed when the quality is so poor? Why keep so many readings in that are absurdly out-of-date, notably in LIII of recent years? Is the blatant political bias of the syllabus really necessary? I really could do this all day…

What is the MPS? 😛

What proportion of people who register for the course actually get the Charter?

(their own material suggests ~25% of Level 1 registrants don’t show up for the exam, and I read somewhere else that ~20% pass all 3 Levels without re-test. You would have to think that most who undertake L2 or L3 would re-sit the exam, so I am thinking the end result will depend on how many re-tests are going on at L1).

I’ll take a stab in the dark and say b/n 40% and 50%