How do you suggest to tackle practice exams/questions?

Really? Im sure I’ve read somewhere that the actual exam has the questions split by topic area like you get in the mocks.

Oh. I’m sorry I misunderstood @sankrutimehta and @Sophie. I was implying the opposite actually i.e., Ethics, Quants, Eco etc.

nope they don’t @lulu123 – it’s all mashed up in 120 separate questions per exam

Yeah, i was just going to say that too @Swift. The questions in the actual exam are split by topics just like the mocks/practice exams.

Mocks for sure – that’s the best way to get started!

As for method, I’d play it differently depending on what stage you’re at. If you’re just starting out and want to make it an open book, by all means. Later on progress closer and closer to an exam environment and check answers all at once.

I guess it depends what you mean by split by topic areas? I’m defining it as per @sankrutimehta’s definition.

I find doing a mixture of stuff keeps me “interested”. On a typical weekday I do a random set of questions from the entire syllabus in the morning before work, some questions from a specific area at lunch (usually Econ, FRA or Fixed Income) and then go home and read up on the areas I feel I need to brush up on. Then on the weekends I tend to do a 3 hour mock session in the morning and then go through the answers in the afternoon.

I also did both sessions of the official CFA mock in one day to simulate proper exam conditions and will probably do a full day mock again the week before the exam.

I wouldn’t recommend doing a section of the mock and then checking the answers, it kind of defeats the purpose of having the questions in an exam format.

What I do is I practice a 3 hour session in one go. And score it. While i’m going through the answers, i check the correct and incorrect ones both for my reasoning. While doing this, I also make a list of all the topics i need to re-read or revise. Once I’m done with this, i do another practice session.

@Swift @SidMemon: They do have topic wise but it’s not broken as Economics, Execution, Monitoring, etc…Mostly it is Portfolio Management, Asset Allocation (seen at times), Ethics. Which isn’t much of a topic wise break down as per me. 🙂 Hope this helps…my observation from various past papers :O)

Nah no worries @Sidmenon! I suspect @lulu123 is on the same wavelength as you 🙂