I took my first mock exam yesterday from 8:45AM to 11:45 AM at Florida Atlantic University. As expected, I didn't do well, I scored at 47% which was less than my goal of 50%. I started out by immediately working my way thru the test backwards since I had just reviewed the Alternative Investment material at a high level and wanted to get any easy points I could in that section. I worked my way back all the way to the beginning of FSA before I went back to Ethics and then completed the rest of the exam. My results by section, with some comments:
Some further comments:
- I finished the exam in 2 hours. Probably because I just guessed on certain questions vs spending time trying to solve.
- I did a cursory review of the exam but did not really go over my answers. I definitely need to do this on future mocks as I would have caught some of the dumb mistakes I made. I probably could have increased my score over the 50% mark had I really used the extra hour to review everything.
- A good rule of thumb, especially on calculation questions is that if you think this it's easy, it may be too easy so check for those common mistakes(not taking sq rt of variance to get std dev, etc)
- One thing that made Ethics seem easier to me(although my results don't reflect it), was that you could underline key parts of the question stem. I've found when quizzing electronically on longer questions it's easy to get lost in the verbiage. I was able to highlight key details that helped me when I answered.
- At no point did I feel overmatched despite my terrible score. A lot of the time, even if I didn't know the formula or exact approach, it was always, "I've seen this, once I review this I'll be able to answer this easily".
Definitely worth taking the exam at this stage. It may sound funny given my score but I came away very confident of where I stand now. I am under no illusions, I need to bust my tail for the next month, but it was good to see that I was "close" on several answers. The biggest thing I took away from the exam is that it's easy to get discouraged when you see how much material you need to study for the exam, but then on the exam you see how major concepts get tested which helps with the confidence. You quickly realize how futile it is to try and remember everything and usually the answers will help jog your memory if you do get a question on the more obscure LOS's.
Next up: my study plan for the month of November.
Some further comments:
- I finished the exam in 2 hours. Probably because I just guessed on certain questions vs spending time trying to solve.
- I did a cursory review of the exam but did not really go over my answers. I definitely need to do this on future mocks as I would have caught some of the dumb mistakes I made. I probably could have increased my score over the 50% mark had I really used the extra hour to review everything.
- A good rule of thumb, especially on calculation questions is that if you think this it's easy, it may be too easy so check for those common mistakes(not taking sq rt of variance to get std dev, etc)
- One thing that made Ethics seem easier to me(although my results don't reflect it), was that you could underline key parts of the question stem. I've found when quizzing electronically on longer questions it's easy to get lost in the verbiage. I was able to highlight key details that helped me when I answered.
- At no point did I feel overmatched despite my terrible score. A lot of the time, even if I didn't know the formula or exact approach, it was always, "I've seen this, once I review this I'll be able to answer this easily".
Definitely worth taking the exam at this stage. It may sound funny given my score but I came away very confident of where I stand now. I am under no illusions, I need to bust my tail for the next month, but it was good to see that I was "close" on several answers. The biggest thing I took away from the exam is that it's easy to get discouraged when you see how much material you need to study for the exam, but then on the exam you see how major concepts get tested which helps with the confidence. You quickly realize how futile it is to try and remember everything and usually the answers will help jog your memory if you do get a question on the more obscure LOS's.
Next up: my study plan for the month of November.
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