Feedback on FRM 2010 Level I Please

simhan

New Member
How was the FRM 2010 Level I Exam? What is the degree of difficulty? Any questions out of syllabus?
 

chessykcherian

New Member
Came out of L1 feeling quite OK. Exam was mixed.some basic & some testing questions! Degree of difficulty-medium. Noticed the attendance was very poor.
 

amitsaraf03

New Member
Hi, David,

Wrote the FRM LI exams in Bangalore, India. Quite a number of people there in the exam site (around 160). The level of difficulty was easy to medium. There were all the questions from the study material and lots of portfolio management, hedging, IR, Ratios, VaR, etc. Dont know how the others have fared, but looks like the cut offs would be higher.

can any one pls tell me how the passing marks is determined...

Cheers!!
 

chessykcherian

New Member
Hi David
Some of the questions on L1(as much as I can recall... ) :

- An exam has 10 questions with 5 choices each. 3 questions need to be answered correctly for a PASS. What is the probability of a candidate passing based on guess work?

- Question provided Bond prices for Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5. Asked to calculate the 2 yr forward rate in year 3 assuming annual compunding of the rate.

- A FRM is risk manager for a firm and he has provided a report on firm's risk strategies . He nor the firm is aware that the risk methodologies are out of date. Choices were-Is he in violation of a GARP code of conduct, OR Not responsible because he nor the firm since both were not aware , OR he is in violation of GARP code of conduct only if the firm took decisions based on the risk report.

- 1.25 USD = 1 EUR ; inflation rate for USD was 2% , inflation rate for EUR was 3% . Interest rate in USD = 5% ; Interest rate in EUR = 4%; After 3 years , what is the FORWARD rate assuming annual comppounding for both Interest & Inflation. ( Rates are not exact)

- A trader has 30 tons of rice he wants to hedge against future price drops in 180 days. Storage cost is USD 2 per ton per day. Spot price was USD 600 per ton. Risk free rate was 4% daily compounding. Contract size was 5 tons per contract. Asked to determine the fwd price.

- Noticeably higher number of questions on probabilties, GARCH, hedging & fwd valuations... some questions were pretty straight-forward and easy...

I found myself short of time by 5-8 questions. I think time management & practice(lots) are key elements for exam preparations.
 

Thachanun

New Member
Hi David,

I took the FRM exam in Bangkok, Thailand. For the exam, I would rate them as easy though there are some a little bit tricky questions. Everything in the exam could be found from the core reading. However there are too much questions for 4 hour. I couldn't finish them all and had to guess for 10 questions although they are not difficult questions. Does anyone can complete the 100 questions in time?

T
 

RomanS

New Member
hi, I found the L1 exam difficulty level medium to advanced.

Below a very nice question concerning probability calculation. Unfortunately without figures. Does anybody remember?

given
P( Renew of Insurance | Auto Insurance )
P( Renew of Insurance | Health Insurance )
P( Renew of Insurance | Auto and Health Insurance )
P( Auto Insurance )
P( Health Insurance )
P( Auto and Health Insurance )

probability in question
P( Renew of Insurance )
 

archlight

Member
i think sample question is more difficult than the actual exam. the standard set by bionicturtle is high. I was a liitle worried one month before exam because i couldn't answer most of extra questiones in annoted sample questions. I can see David spent a lot of effort to expand the question but for this year format, it is not effective in term of training for exam. i prefer Garp can break one question into small questions. in the exam i feel i took most of time reading through question and in the end i was only answering a small testing point.
 

amitsaraf03

New Member
Hi romanS,

The questiion was as follows (if I remember it correctly):

40% of the total auto owners will go for auto insurance, 60% of total home only owners will go for home insurance, 80% of both auto and home owners will go for both auto and home insurance. It is given that at least 65% of the people were auto owners and 50% were home owners and 15% have both home and auto. find the prob. for people who would go for atleast one insuance.

I think the answer was 53%
 

itsvijay86

New Member
Hi, I found the exam level easy to medium only...however it was notpossible to complete the entire set in 4 hours. Some questions where like an essay but the answer was straight and simple. Based on the feedback you have received at BT what would be your level of upper and lower cut off?

Vijay.
 

RomanS

New Member
thanks for the figures for the probability question. i agree with the suggested result. 53% should be good.
(0.65 - 0.15) x 0.40 + (0.50 - 0.15) x 0.60 + 0.15 x 0.80 = 0.53
 

David Harper CFA FRM

David Harper CFA FRM
Subscriber
@archlight:

I do appreciate f/back in regard to question sets. I would be very interested to the extent that others agree/disagree with my approach in "compounding" the sample practice questions. The goal, FWIW, is to give deep(er) practice on the single idea, to "surround" it with related questions; and, as you suggest, I deliberately try to make the questions tougher as they go because this tends to increase readiness vis a vis the actual exam ... historically, this technique has been well-received--on average--but I'm always eager for improvement feedback. Since we've expired the 2010 L1/L2 GARP samples, we definitely will be deploying more "single-type" practice questions along more organized topic lines...

@Vijay: I can only speculate, I don't think anyone (incl providers) has been given specific ex post criteria ... It appears GARP will re-employ the same formula (see FAQ here: "The passing scores will still be determined based on a ratio of the absolute score to the average of the top 5% of candidate test results"); i.e., a ratio of 0.X based on top 5th %ile. That's a (fancy) curve with 2 variables we don't know
 

David Harper CFA FRM

David Harper CFA FRM
Subscriber
Re: "About 70 percent of questions are numerical.. " FWIW, that is roughly in the historical neighborhood for the full FRM; i.e., > 65% were quant. (In some cases, > 75%) The history of FRM is overwhelmingly quant (however, we lack a L1 vs L2 history of course).
What is interesting to me is that the L2 takers are reporting a more qualitative than quantitative exam (see here http://forum.bionicturtle.com/viewthread/3771/).
In short, if the 70% is ~ accurate, then L1 = quant > qualitative and L2 = qualitative > quant ...
(part of this could be that some of the L2 topics are sufficiently advanced that numerical problems haven't been developed; e.g., LVaR and EVT have some *very* difficult formulas, so in those cases maybe GARP often "resorts" to qualitative questions...just musing)

David
 

rsinghso

New Member
Hi,

I had appeared for level one and have mixed feelings about my performance..

Just want to clarify the Question about the P n C : 10 question each wid 5 choices , candidate needs to get 3 correct atleast , wat is her probability of passing ?

I calculated as : 1- ( Prob. of getting 1 out of 10 right) - ( Prob. of getting 2 out of 10 right)

where [ Prob. of getting 1 out of 10 right ] = 10C1 * (1/5)^1 * (4/5)^9
and [ Prob. of getting 1 out of 10 right ] = 10C2 * (1/5)^2 * (4/5)^8

Answer through this comes out around 43 % but none of the options was nearby..Am I mistaken somewhere :(

Thanks
Ravinder
 

syaiful

Member
hi,

maybe we need to add the sub tractor with..

Prob. of getting 0 out of 10 right & Prob. of getting 3 out of 10 right ?

:)
 

rsinghso

New Member
yup,, I missed the subtractor of 0 out of 10 right,, 3 out of 10 wud not be thr as atleast 3 correct gives pass :)

Thanks for the clarification , though including a subtrator of 0 out of 10 correct would mean answer lesser by 1% i.e 42% ,,I cant remember any choice nearby,,anyways thnx ..
 
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