A simple question here

[Hend Abuenein]

Why is it that we get only 80 questions in Part II exam compared to 100 questions in Part I, when both exams are 4 hours long?

Not that I'm objecting or anything

 

[Ankur S]

expect it to be 20% tougher than part 1 given the same # of hrs, garp is giving more time/ques...i would have loved to keep it at 100 and rather bring the difficulty level down

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hend - If GARP ever explained why, then I missed it because I sure don't know. Are P2 questions more difficult/time consuming? Hmmm ... that's not really my impression. Yes they are more often qualitative but it's not obvious to me that qualitative questions take more time (?). Further, P2 has 5 topics versus 4, so I'd think they'd want a fuller sample. I will say that having written so many questions, I think it is harder to write quality P2 questions (because the foundation isn't as stable), is all I can think ...

P.S. I often marvel at the ratio of questions to AIMs. I think maybe we counted 590 (don't quote me) P2 AIM concepts in our AIM XLS.

Say there are 500 P2 concepts. Then figure 80 P2 exam questions maybe tests 15% of the AIM concepts, really really rough back of the envelope. Or, to be conservative, figure 25% at most of the "fair game" AIM concepts will actually be tested.

 

[Aleksander Hansen]

GARP likes money.
Time is a cost.
=> GARP does not like to spend a lot of time coming up with and proof-reading questions.
P2 questions are likely to have fewer reliable question makers/proof readers due to difficulty/expertise needed, thus driving the marginal cost of each P2 question up...?
I'm pulling this out of thin air by the way...they may have a good reason, albeit standardized testing rarely makes any sense to me anyway.

 

[Dmitrij]

Perhaps since mathematics is more 'universal' and part I is more quantitative, there are more questions. By this I mean that many non-native English speakers take the exam, and they may need slightly more time to read the questions and answers than native speakers in part II.

 

[Hend Abuenein]

Hey Dmitrij,
Nice to hear from you again


I've seen half-a-page long questions in Part I as well. And in GARP practice exams, Part II questions are of normal length, nothing extraordinary.
I think it's a combination of all the reasons mentioned here.

 

[aman241]

How many questions one should get right on FRM1 to clear it ?

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

It is not ex ante knowable because the passing ratio will be based on top 5%, GARP does this to allow for some ex post calibaration (if it's too hard such that a lot of people miss certain hard questions, they want to be able to curve it down). I didn't think even the reporting gives number correct, I thought it merely reported (ordinal) percentile outcomes [top quartile, 2nd quartile]. Do past passers even know how many they answered correctly? Please correct me if i'm wrong ... but lack of a public scoring database plus ex post "grading on a curve" would continue to make answering this question basically impossible.

 

[btlski]

You are correct David. You only get quartile results for each section - no other information apart from that.