AuthorTopic: What is your strategy when writing the exam?
euricles
@2019-04-14 13:19:13
Hi all,

What is your strategy when writing the exam?

- Choosing your strongest topic first and then the harder ones

- Answering the most important topics first (ethics, FRA, etc.) and then the other topics

- No strategy in particular, just going question by question

- Any other?

Personnally, I think I will follow my usual strategy for every exam at univ : going through the exam three times. On the first time, I answer the easiest questions (if there's such a thing on that exam, lol). On the second time I answer the harder / longer questions. Finally, I answer the hardest / longest questions on the third pass. It's not perfect because I keep the hardest stuff for later during the exam and I might be tired at that time. However, it helps me building confidence and momentum by answering the easy stuff first.

I have no idea if this is feasible for the L1 exam since I've yet to write a mock / practice exam. I guess I'll have to adjust my strategy after I tried it on a mock / practice exam.

So, what is your strategy?
petworth
@2019-05-21 08:53:35
I followed the same strategy in all 3 exams... start from the top and work your way to the bottom. The format of the answer sheet makes switching back and forth between sections highly risky, it?s too easy to fill in the wrong oval. People have had to erase all of their answers because they got to the last question just to notice that the oval is already filled in.

I recommend this: start from the beginning and work your way through. Make a mark next to each question in the question booklet: a tic mark if you are sure of the answer, a question mark if you are unsure, and an x if you guessed (and of course always CIRCLE the answer you have chosen - that?s for your own reference). When you are done with everything, go through the guessed questions again, then the ?-marked ones, and if you have time left, double check the rest.

You should be very careful changing the answers to those questions that you marked with a tic mark the first time around - with multipe choice, the biggest risk is that you start to overanalyzse and end up getting confused by the options put before you. If you are SURE that the new answer you have come up with is the correct one, change, if you aren?t it may be better to leave the original answer in place.

Also, do try to write out your calculations at least roughly in the question book so that you can check them again - this makes double-checking those calculation intensive questions so much easier. For the infamous accounting questions where you will be asked to reason out whether income would be higher or lower in a given scenario, note the reasoning down (I did this with arrows and abbreviations) - again, if you haven?t noted it down, double checking your answer becomes more difficult.

Good luck!

CFA Discussion Topic: What is your strategy when writing the exam?

To post a new topic or reply to a topic, please log in or register for a free user account.

I was very pleased with your notes and question bank. I especially like the mock exams because it helped to pull everything together.
Martin Rockenfeldt

Martin Rockenfeldt