Exam Feedback October 2020 Part 2 Exam Feedback

mcrisk7

Member
I passed with 1,2,1,3,4,2.

Thank you BT!

Congrats to all who made it. To all who did not make it. Keep it up!

Wish you all the very best!
 

Adam633

New Member
Passed! Thank you David and Nicole for all of your hard work you put into the program. I'm truly thankful for your guidance thought this process.
 

Nicole Seaman

Director of CFA & FRM Operations
Staff member
Subscriber

frm2

New Member
Define barely, bc I think thus far I've been the closest.

3,1,4,3,3,3
Hi, congratulations. You seems to have passed closely :) Just for benchmark, how many answers do you think you were correct. That must be quite useful to guague. Thanks. Please don’t take it offensive.. :)
 

VWJETTY

Active Member
Hi, congratulations. You seems to have passed closely :) Just for benchmark, how many answers do you think you were correct. That must be quite useful to guague. Thanks. Please don’t take it offensive.. :)

Nah no offense taken. Here's how I assessed it. B/c I had a few minutes after I finished the exam to ponder this.

- I know about 1/3 of the questions flat out. No gimmicks or guesses. So that's about 27 questions. I think we agree these were like low-hanging fruits. Simple calculations. Simple efficient frontier, information ratio, current event, type questions.

There were about 10 questions I had no idea. These include using the full merton model, and long novel drawn out questions and those governance/operational stuff. No idea. Zero. Just kinda looked through the choices and selected one.

So now I'm about half....Assuming I got all 27 questions of the easy ones correct. And 1/4th of the 10 questions from no idea questions, that's about 3 questions correct.

30/40 = 75% correct. No bad.

The rest, 40 other questions i struggled with the most. The stuff I knew, I knew. The stuff I didn't. I don't know. These 40 questions were like half/half. So I'd narrow it down to 2 or 3 and just kinda winged it. Let's say 1/3rd correct to be conservative.

0.33 * 40 = 13 correct.

So altogether I think I probably got 43/80 = approx 54% correct

This number makes sense because I've taken the mock GARP exam and have taken both the Kaplan Schweser Exam and was scoring very consistently in the mid-to-high 50's. I broke into the 60's on an older mock but I think that's a fluke.

Going into this exam, I knew it was going to be tight. And the results proved it. So their exam is 'fair' at assessing me. OpsRisk was not my friend. I work in market, credit, and liquidity risk space so those were kind of my strengths. And the exam reflected that as well. Similar to my mock exams.

Overall, I have no quarrel with the exam. It was a difficult exam. I struggled as always and knew it was going to be tight. Other people from Kaplan were in a similar boat as me; just hanging by a hair. I honestly believe what saved me was the little help I've gotten here to just barely pushed me over the edge. As I know for a fact, I was very close to the threshold, if not directly on it.

I do however, have a quarrel with GARP and how they run their organization but that's a story for another day.

Hope this helps.
 
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sandrasp

New Member
Nah no offense taken. Here's how I assessed it. B/c I had a few minutes after I finished the exam to ponder this.

- I know about 1/3 of the questions flat out. No gimmicks or guesses. So that's about 27 questions. I think we agree these were like low-hanging fruits. Simple calculations. Simple efficient frontier, information ratio, current event, type questions.

There were about 10 questions I had no idea. These include using the full merton model, and long novel drawn out questions and those governance/operational stuff. No idea. Zero. Just kinda looked through the choices and selected one.

So now I'm about half....Assuming I got all 27 questions of the easy ones correct. And 1/4th of the 10 questions from no idea questions, that's about 3 questions correct.

30/40 = 75% correct. No bad.

The rest, 40 other questions i struggled with the most. The stuff I knew, I knew. The stuff I didn't. I don't know. These 40 questions were like half/half. So I'd narrow it down to 2 or 3 and just kinda winged it. Let's say 1/3rd correct to be conservative.

0.33 * 40 = 13 correct.

So altogether I think I probably got 43/80 = approx 54% correct

This number makes sense because I've taken the mock GARP exam and have taken both the Kaplan Schweser Exam and was scoring very consistently in the mid-to-high 50's. I broke into the 60's on an older mock but I think that's a fluke.

Going into this exam, I knew it was going to be tight. And the results proved it. So their exam is 'fair' at assessing me. OpsRisk was not my friend. I work in market, credit, and liquidity risk space so those were kind of my strengths. And the exam reflected that as well. Similar to my mock exams.

Overall, I have no quarrel with the exam. It was a difficult exam. I struggled as always and knew it was going to be tight. Other people from Kaplan were in a similar boat as me; just hanging by a hair. I honestly believe what saved me was the little help I've gotten here to just barely pushed me over the edge. As I know for a fact, I was very close to the threshold, if not directly on it.

I do however, have a quarrel with GARP and how they run their organization but that's a story for another day.

Hope this helps.

Hi, congratulations! just wanted to ask, what part of the BT curriculum did you focus on in your review part. I read Kaplan Swecher notes for part 2 but still don't feel very confident, I'm about to purchase BT to help me reinforce for my exam which is scheduled for Jan 16,2021 in Toronto. Just need guidance as what you think BT made a difference to get you to pass the exam.

Anyone else feel free to comment on this too. If you have any tips as I'm about 5 weeks away from the exam. Thanks!
 

VWJETTY

Active Member
Mainly credit and operational risk as I thought I felt pretty confident with all the other topics taught from the other provider. Hindsight, I think I probably should have paid more attention to operational risk as that was a bigger chunk of the exam. I got really comfortable with market, investment mgmt, and current events that I kinda just focused on that more than I should have.
 

VWJETTY

Active Member
passed quite marginally ~~ 2-2-3-1-3-4 , can't believe score 1st quartile in liquidity risk but is shocked to have 4th in current issues. anyway, thanks BT
 

anton.mahkats

New Member
I do not recommend relying on anything you might find when logged into your GARP account until the official results are released. The hacks and tricks have been tried for a number of years, and they are not accurate. They just cause more stress for everyone. The glitches on the GARP website happen every year right before the results are released. :/

Just wanted to support this statement - the trick suggested earlier in this forum resulted in me getting the letter that I failed the exam encouraging me to register for the next Part II exam. Which I actually thought was true, given that I did have very little time for preparation just before the exam. The actual result was a pass, which did come as a big surprise to me but also confirming the fact that all those tricks are indeed useless.
 

Sjegathe

Active Member
Just wanted to support this statement - the trick suggested earlier in this forum resulted in me getting the letter that I failed the exam encouraging me to register for the next Part II exam. Which I actually thought was true, given that I did have very little time for preparation just before the exam. The actual result was a pass, which did come as a big surprise to me but also confirming the fact that all those tricks are indeed useless.


I am bit confused, did you get a letter saying that you failed the exam and then later was changed to a pass? or are you trying to say based on these tricks you thought you failed the exam but in fact you passed?
 

sandrasp

New Member
Well ok, slightly better then! :D 2,3,1,3,3,3

Congratulations! Just wanted to ask you, what did you focus more during those 3 weeks you said you studied. Was it all BT questions? Thanks in advance. Right now I'm working on the official GARP mock exam questions and not getting good results. My test is scheduled to be Jan 16, 2021 in Toronto.
 

anton.mahkats

New Member
Thanks. Well, I had access to both Kaplan and BT but due to lack of time mostly used Kaplan as it’s better structured and well organised. So I managed to read all their books and used their Q-Bank.
However, I regretted numerous times during my preparation that I bothered with Q-Bank at all (at least for Part II) as questions are simply too easy and not representative at all (Mocks are better though). And if I had to retake the exam I would definitely use BT questions. But I would probably still read Schweser notes though.
 
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