Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Exam Day Tips for CFA Exam
1. Do not aim to score 100% in the exam. Passing marks may range from 65% to 70%. An aggreagate score above 70% is the requirement. There is no sectional cut-off or individual paper cutoff.
2. Have a good sleep before the exam day, a few hours of study the day before the exam day may do more harm than good. Take a heavy breakfast as it will provide the fuel for your brain.
3. You might find one exam to be difficult and one exam to be easier, which exam is easier or difficult depends on preparation level of indvidual. You may find mornign exam tougher than the afternoon exam, whereas your friend might have the opposite feeling. Do not get disheartened if the morning exam doesnot go well, keep your focus and crack the afternoon exam. On the other hand if your morning exam has gone well, keep up the tempo and do well in the afternoon exam.
4. Remember to fill in the bubbles after 5 or 10 questions. Alternately you can fill the bubble after each section (though it is not advisable for bigger sections like FRA). Filling the bubbles periodically will reduce the chances of filling in the bubbles for the questions you have missed or wrongly filling it. Remember that mistake in filling bubble has cascading effect. One of my friend who was a brilliant chap, got poor rank in IIT JEE (though he was better student than me) because in rush he filled in one of the bubble mistakenly and it got repeated in all the subsequent questions.
5. Do not write anything after the procter announces time over, this is against institute's code of ethics and also it is unfair to other candidates. And this is being taken seriously, you may be barred from taking examination for certain number of years or may be expelled for life.
6. Keep track of time, you have 1.5 minutes for each question, please make sure that you do not spend more than 3 minute in any question, if a question is taking that much time, most probably you have not understood what is being asked, leave it that time and revisit it once you have attempted all the questions.
7. Keep marking the skipped questions on the answer sheet or question paper so that you know which questions to visit later. Also at the end make sure that you fill all the bubbles by making intelligent and random guesses. Please do not leave any question unanswered. If you are guessing, do not guess 2nd time, go with the first guess, if you are lucky you will score.
8. Most of the questions are designed to test your concepts and not your calculator usage skills, hence the numbers are fed up such a way that many of them cancels off. So you will not find many calculation intensive problems in the exam.
9. Please make sure that you understand the problem statement, pay attention to what you are being asked to find. In the mock exams conducted by Knowledge Varsity, we found that students chose the correct statements when they were asked to find the least likely correct. When solving questions involving most likely correct/incorrect, least likely correct/incorrect, first underline this phrase. Next step is to look in for the correct and wrong statements, then choose the option which is required in the question.
10. Make sure that you read all the ethics questions carefully, a good score in ethics can really make the result in your favour. CFA Institute's questions are un-ambiguous so do not try to break your head by evaluatiing what all situatuoions are possible. The best way is to read the questions carefully and then fo through the answer options. The questions in the exam are not big and you have enough time to attempt all the questions, but the questions are tricky and it will make sense to go throug the handbook one day before the exam.
11. Last, do not discuss the morning examination questions with your friends during the break. During discussion it might happen that you marked an answer incorrectly and the moment you realise this, you will not be able tto focus on your lunch or for the next exam and it is sure to hamper your performance in the afternoon exam. This advice was given to me by my IIT JEE coach (Mr K. K. Mishra) and i abide by it till now.
2. Have a good sleep before the exam day, a few hours of study the day before the exam day may do more harm than good. Take a heavy breakfast as it will provide the fuel for your brain.
3. You might find one exam to be difficult and one exam to be easier, which exam is easier or difficult depends on preparation level of indvidual. You may find mornign exam tougher than the afternoon exam, whereas your friend might have the opposite feeling. Do not get disheartened if the morning exam doesnot go well, keep your focus and crack the afternoon exam. On the other hand if your morning exam has gone well, keep up the tempo and do well in the afternoon exam.
4. Remember to fill in the bubbles after 5 or 10 questions. Alternately you can fill the bubble after each section (though it is not advisable for bigger sections like FRA). Filling the bubbles periodically will reduce the chances of filling in the bubbles for the questions you have missed or wrongly filling it. Remember that mistake in filling bubble has cascading effect. One of my friend who was a brilliant chap, got poor rank in IIT JEE (though he was better student than me) because in rush he filled in one of the bubble mistakenly and it got repeated in all the subsequent questions.
5. Do not write anything after the procter announces time over, this is against institute's code of ethics and also it is unfair to other candidates. And this is being taken seriously, you may be barred from taking examination for certain number of years or may be expelled for life.
6. Keep track of time, you have 1.5 minutes for each question, please make sure that you do not spend more than 3 minute in any question, if a question is taking that much time, most probably you have not understood what is being asked, leave it that time and revisit it once you have attempted all the questions.
7. Keep marking the skipped questions on the answer sheet or question paper so that you know which questions to visit later. Also at the end make sure that you fill all the bubbles by making intelligent and random guesses. Please do not leave any question unanswered. If you are guessing, do not guess 2nd time, go with the first guess, if you are lucky you will score.
8. Most of the questions are designed to test your concepts and not your calculator usage skills, hence the numbers are fed up such a way that many of them cancels off. So you will not find many calculation intensive problems in the exam.
9. Please make sure that you understand the problem statement, pay attention to what you are being asked to find. In the mock exams conducted by Knowledge Varsity, we found that students chose the correct statements when they were asked to find the least likely correct. When solving questions involving most likely correct/incorrect, least likely correct/incorrect, first underline this phrase. Next step is to look in for the correct and wrong statements, then choose the option which is required in the question.
10. Make sure that you read all the ethics questions carefully, a good score in ethics can really make the result in your favour. CFA Institute's questions are un-ambiguous so do not try to break your head by evaluatiing what all situatuoions are possible. The best way is to read the questions carefully and then fo through the answer options. The questions in the exam are not big and you have enough time to attempt all the questions, but the questions are tricky and it will make sense to go throug the handbook one day before the exam.
11. Last, do not discuss the morning examination questions with your friends during the break. During discussion it might happen that you marked an answer incorrectly and the moment you realise this, you will not be able tto focus on your lunch or for the next exam and it is sure to hamper your performance in the afternoon exam. This advice was given to me by my IIT JEE coach (Mr K. K. Mishra) and i abide by it till now.
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