CFAI Mock Exams

Hi @Stuj79,

Wow!  If you’re clearing around 83% in the AM and 73% in the PM you are smashing it!  Well done!  

I am scoring ok, though I don’t want to get too excited as they could pull some completely random/difficult material out on the day!

It’s hard to know how to score the AM exam so I’ve tended to err on the side of caution – i.e., if I provide an answer that isn’t as good as the guideline (but is still correct) I might, for example, assign a score of 7/10.  My handwriting is terrible so I am a bit concerned that it will lose me points.  Time-wise I think I have tamed the AM beast – have it down to around 2’45, including allowance for 7 minutes of toilet breaks.

I found the “AM” multiple choice exam tough.  There was one question set that I found really, really tough.  When I sat the “PM” multiple choice exam the only thing I really stuffed up on was GIPS (I figure we will probably see a 6-part question on GIPS and/or AMC, so for 5% of the overall exam I want to make sure I am all over this).  For both the CFAI multiple choice exams time was not an issue – completed both in around 2 hours at a fairly laid-back pace.

Ethics is always tricky.  I will give it another review, but as it’s a maze of ambiguity I accept I will probably drop 1 or 2 questions in the PM exam.

At this stage of the study it’s getting a lot harder to find improvements.  I ran an analysis of past mock exams and my estimated score improvement for a topic category is in the 1.5% – 2% range.   Hopefully I can improve my estimated score by around 2% over the next week. 

If I sat the exam today I would most likely get through (assuming a MPS ~68%) but I don’t want to leave it to chance so I am very happy to have another week of study.  I will probably sit the 2015 Mock tomorrow afternoon, after work.

Good luck!

Sat the 2015 AM Mock yesterday.  I would be super happy if the exam this coming Saturday was of similar content and difficulty!  

The biggest disappointment was that I didn’t complete the entire exam.  Ran out of time and missed a whole question (which would have scored me an easy 8 – 10 points!).  Classic case of being sucked into providing detailed answers to questions where 2 – 3 sentences would have sufficed (there were questions that were super-easy, but took 5 min of writing to score the 3 points).  

Even so, my overall result wasn’t too bad.  Also there was a stack of material that I expected to see which wasn’t on the exam, so all going well we might get to see it make an appearance this coming weekend (which will help bank some quick points).  

That’s probably enough speculation for one day, now to get a few solid days of review in before the big day :smiley:

For the AM a tad short of 70%.  

Averaged across the PM mock should bring the total score across the finish line above 70%.  I am spending the next few days reviewing the summary sections of readings, rereading anything I can’t recall.  I’m beginning to find it difficult to find areas of improvement (which I suppose is a good thing).  My weakest area is in currency and some of the swaps/forwards questions but I’m hesitant to spend too much more time working on those.  Feel there is probably a better return on study time if I review GIPS and AMC etc (which I figure should get a good 4 – 8 questions on the PM = 3.3% – 6.6% of entire exam!).

I actually re-sat the question I missed yesterday and going flat-out I completed it in around 12 min for 16 points.  I wasted time (probably close to 20 min all-up) on a question that I eventually bombed on (scored myself 9 points), so reallocating time between those questions would have made a huge difference (+7 points = 3.9% = 1.9% across entire exam).  Overall I was actually pretty happy with my answers. It’s the first Mock I have sat where I printed it off beforehand, and I found it much more comfortable being able to underline and scribble on the exam paper.  

Strategy-wise I always give a super-quick flick through the exam to see where the easy points are hiding, and I picked up that the (missed) question was going to be easy.  Basically I wanted to put myself at a disadvantage, to err on the side of caution.  On the day those “easy” questions are going to be first to tackle; or perhaps more precisely, questions that I’m unsure of are going to get thrown to the back of the queue.  I also guesstimate my score as I go so I get a feel for how many “points” I have locked in.  For the AM exam I need a minimum of 115, preferably 120+.

Of course who knows what the actual exam is going to look like.  If it’s like the 2015 Mock then I’d be very happy.  Hopefully not too many ambiguous questions in the PM exam.

Good luck!