I friggin passed!

Ok so here's the deal. The CFAI offers a full length exam that they say is of comparable difficulty to the real thing. Two sessions of 10 item sets each. I wanted to take the exam this past weekend after I had the chance to review the entire cirriculum but still had enough time to learn from the questions I missed. I even made sure to take it in the conference room of a local hotel to try and simulate the environment (as best as possible without spending money). I allowed 3 hours for the morning and 3 for the afternoon, though I didn't need the 3 hours for either half. Anyway, I got 71%! It may not sound like much but the last 3 exams have shown an improvement and don't forget the scoring. No one knows what the minimum passing score is but it is probably in the mid 60s and is always less than 70%. That means if I get 71% next Saturday I will definitely pass! Of course I haven't actually taken the real thing yet.

Out of an abudance of caution in respecting the code of ethics I won't go into the specifics of what was tested, but I will say they tested every study session and I didn't do well in all of them. I thought I performed adequately in derivatives and great in corporate finance. Those were the two areas I got less than 50%. In corp fin in particular there were about 4 questions I was confident I got right and they offered me the wrong answers which I happily selected. If I performed as well on corp fin and derivatives as I thought I would have gotten mid 70s.

The schedule for this week is simple. Today will be reviewing the results of the exam. Then review the last third of the cirriculum. Then the middle third, and finally the first third. Most of the focus will be on the main concepts and all of the formulas. I won't even try to pick days to go along with it. The schedule is simple. Study until I get a headache. Relax until the headache goes away. Study again. On Friday I get in the car and drive to Tampa for the test. I am really starting to feel good about this year's exam.