The day before the exam...

I remember this day like yesterday. After all the procrastination, studying, worrying and assorted other feelings that you've experienced for over 4 months, you finally realize the big day is only a day away. There's not much you can really do to prep any more than you already have, so today should be a day of relaxation and only light reviewing of major concepts. I went thru Ethics again and briefly thru some mock exams and formulas, no more than 2-3 hours. The rest of the day I spent relaxing and prepping my stuff for the morning so I didn't waste any time.

I'll leave you with some advice from my Secret Sauce document. Make sure to remain positive beyond everything else. Believe you will pass the exam and it will happen. Please send me email and let me know how you did and what the experience was like. Good luck tomorrow and hopefully you'll be joining me for Level 2 studies next year!!!

OK, you’ve spent all this time busting your tail to prepare for this exam. Now it’s the night before.
You’ve done all the studying and reviewing you can do at this point. Now’s the time to get yourself
mentally prepared for a day long test that you’ve been busting your tail to conquer. Everyone is
different when it comes to test taking skills so some of these tips may not be relevant to you.
‐ Make sure you get a good night’s rest. Be in bed by 10pm the night before, with your clothes
ironed and you showered already. You want the morning to be all about eating a good breakfast
and getting mentally prepared. You also need the extra time to find parking or deal with traffic.
Give yourself a buffer to work with by prepping the night before.
‐ Dress good. I heard this from Deion Sanders(ex‐NFL football player) and it rings true. “If you look
good, you feel good, if you feel good, you perform good, if you perform good, they pay good.“
Truer words have never been spoken. I’m not saying throw on a suit but don’t go looking like
you just climbed out of bed. Plenty of test takers did just this at my test center. I went in
business casual clothes as if it was a workday for me.
‐ Watch some motivational video. I always get hyped up whenever I watch the Rocky movies,
especially the training scenes. I link to them on the blog. Sounds cheesy but it helped me get
into the right mindset before walking out the door. Seeing Rocky train his butt off before the big
fight was a metaphor for what I was doing and it gave me a rush of adrenaline I’m convinced
help me rock the exam. I also looked at a picture of my kids the moment before I walked in the
exam room. Helped ground me as to what I was really doing this for. Find your own motivational
tools and use them before the exam.
‐ BRING LUNCH – do not waste a single minute during the hour break you get trying to find lunch
or battle crowds. I brought a sandwich I made, an apple, a powerbar and a bottle of water. I ate
in my car and reviewed material that was not on the morning exam. I’ll go into more detail on
my lunch routine later but do not waste this hour. Some people say take the hour to rest your
brain but I think that’s crap. You’ve spent four months preparing for this moment and you’re
going to try and get an hour of rest right in the middle of the real thing? You wouldn’t do that if
you were an Olympic athlete and you shouldn’t here.
‐ SKIP COFFEE – if you got a good night’s rest you won’t need it. Eat a protein bar if you feel you
may run low on energy. Coffee will only amplify your nerves which you do not need come
gametime.
‐ BRING TWO CALCULATORS. No matter what version(HP or TI) I strongly recommend bringing
two calculators to the exam. First off, you’ll have a backup in case one dies. Secondly, I found
having two during the exam helped me tremendously when performing multiple step
calculations. I could do one part of the calculation in one calculator then copy the value for the
next step in the calculation. This can help during annuity problems where if you make a mistake
on the 2nd part, you have to go back and recalculate the first step again. It also helped me
“reset” myself when I was going off the deep end on a calculation, which I am very prone to do
during a test. I typically blow thru exams fast and at times I can go overboard with a problem. I
would simply start over on the 2nd calculator and it had a certain calming effect on me. I know
this involves extra cost but if you can afford it, I recommend it.
‐ Bring mechanical pencils and a pen. I saw people with the old school pencils and sharpeners and
all I could do was laugh to myself. If you’re like me, you’re writing a ton on the exam book to
help yourself think thru a problem so you’ll go thru plenty of lead. Why waste any time
sharpening pencils when you can click once or twice?
‐ Don’t speak to anyone before the test or during the break if you can avoid it. Your focus must be
Tiger Woods/Michael Jordan like at this point. I saw people chatting with their buddies, on the
cell phone, playing PSP, etc. Maybe that works for people but I don’t think you should have your
mind on anything but what you’re about to undertake.
‐ It can be a little frustrating waiting in the room while they go through the motions before the
exam starts. Use this time to start solidifying what your approach will be to tackling the exam.
‐ Go in the order of the test. I heard the advice to start on your strong section but on almost every
mock exam I took, I always began with Ethics. I did the same on the real thing.
‐ Fill in your answers as you go along even if you’re not sure of an answer. Circle the answer on
the sheet as well so when you review it you can start with verifying your initial answer is the
correct one. Scratch out the wrong answers on the exam book. All of this is to help you do a
quick review of the exam. Once you are confident in an answer, check it off next to the # in the
book. This will help you on your 2nd or 3rd pass thru as you can skip those questions and save the
time to work on the harder ones you previously may have guessed on. There were questions I
spent a second on and ones that got 5 minutes.
‐ Do not look up and around the room, they will think you’re cheating. I always looked straight up
and down whenever I needed to rest my eyes for a second.
‐ If you finish early, go over your exam as much as you can. I did 3 complete passes on both
sessions. Caught dumb errors, rethought thru a few problems and changed my answers but it
also just increased my confidence when I’m able to double and triple check myself. If for no
other reason, you’ll feel more confident about how you did and it’ll make the month plus you
have to wait for the results that much easier to deal with. I felt I gave it my best effort
‐ LUNCH ROUTINE ‐ This is where I’m sure Ill have people disagreeing with me but it worked for
me. As I mentioned before, bring your own lunch and go back to your car to eat it. While you’re
doing this, recall what topics on the morning session were NOT tested and use the Schweser
Secret Sauce and whatever formula sheet you have to bone up on those topics during lunch. You
will read plenty of advice saying you can’t learn anything new at this point or that you may get
more nervous because you’ll find out you answered a question in the morning incorrectly based
on something you read at lunchtime. I disagree. I did discover that I had answered a few wrong
while reviewing but I also saw that I got some right that I was unsure about, so it was a wash
overall. However, the ability to focus on material that hadn’t been tested but most likely would
in the PM was crucial to how badly I dominated the afternoon session. There was one stretch
where I must have answered 20 questions in about 2 minutes and a good chunk of those were
from things I had just read or reviewed during lunch!!! It was surreal how much in a zone I was
during that period. So use this period to refresh yourselves on key areas you felt weak or unsure
about that were not on the morning exam. I think it will help you a lot.
‐ In the afternoon, try to find peace in knowing that in less than 3 hours, this ordeal is over. Once I
saw how close the finish line was I was determined to sprint my way to the end. I found the
afternoon session easier than the morning, which was a surprise. If you get frantic in the
afternoon because you think you’re borderline, you’ll increase your chances of panicking and
answering incorrectly.