FRM exam level1

Quest4FRM

Member
I think May 2010 L1 was equally tough and in my opinion ( my guess )
70% did not make it.
Turtle2​
Umm...although i wasnt there for the May exam and can't comment on the difficulty level or the results, but i guess a score of 70% not making it might be an overestimation to an extent. I think i read somewhere that GARP takes the score of top 5% of students and then ppl with 70% of that score get thru... If u say that the cutoff itself was 70% that means that top 5% (i.e 500 students) scored 100% which by no means can be true.if whatever i hav read regarding this 70% thing is really true then cutoff wud have been closer to 60 or so...
 

turtle2

Member
The Nov 2010 L1 exam does not seem to me any tougher than May 2010 L1 exam. I will judge L2 in Nov 2010 much tougher than L1 in May 2010. You seem to assume here that the cutoff is 70% of the avg of top 5% scores. No one is sure about this. It may be more than 70%.

Turtle 2
 

Quest4FRM

Member
Yea, i mean v all can only speculate what could be and could not be...but i think the passing rate for May L1 was 54% for some 10k students....it looks a bit improbable to me that 5000 ppl scored more than 70-75% in L1...although no denying that it is not impossible!! Having said that only the time will tell what the passing marks are
Btw I thot u alrdy passed L1 in May, right? How much u blv u scored that time? Umm... Or did u write L1 this time around too...just asking bcoz u said that May L1and Nov L1 were of the same level...did u give both?
 

turtle2

Member
I passed L1 in May 2010. It is my educated guess that cut off was higher than 70% absolute score in May 2010 L1.

Turtle2
 

zript

Member
Hi Turtle2

If you passed L1 in May 2010, how do you know the level of difficulty of the L1 november 2010 one since you did not write it?

Looking to the comments of many members here, the L1 november 2010 seems to be more difficult than the May one. (much more calculations and not sufficient time to finish it then)

Therefore I would agree with you regarding the May 2010 L1 cutoff that was certainly more than 70% (as it was easier, they took more "good" score. The pass rate was 55%) but not about the difficulty of L1 in november 2010.

Cheers,

zript
 

turtle2

Member
zcript,

Yes, I did not write Nov 2010, L1 but you have excluded other ways of comparing the level of difficulty to May 2010, L1. Good luck to you all.

Turtle2
 
hey guys did any one did the question wherin we had to say which rating would go to the investment grade among AAA,AA,A,BBB as well as what was the probability of default for AAA
i guess the paper was not solvable in 4 hrs i could attempt only 65 to 70 and guessed the remaning
 

Quest4FRM

Member
I kind of only very vaguely remember this question...not sure if it has already been discussed earlier..was this the one on 2 year default probability of AAA? Mayb u can give some more details bcoz i cant seem to recall...actually i doubt if u also remember any more about this question...it has been quite some time now :)
 

Yossarian

Member
I think Theresa is talking about the question wherein a Default prob. matrix was given ( From Rating to To rating) and asked the probability of default of AAA rated bond in 2 years.
If this is the question you are asking then I solved it this way:
Take the prob of AAA rated bond changing into any other rated bond in first year and then multiply it by the prob. of that rated bond going to default. Do this for all ratings and add them.
there is direct prob that AAA going to default in the first year itself but that prob fig was zero so ignored.
Although my answer was not exactly to matching to the options so I chose the nearest figure and marked it.
 
the question was
1> which one would get upgraded to investment grade given options AAA,AA,A,BBB given the transition matrix?


2>What is the probaablity of default for AAA bond options
0.03%
0.07%
0.10%
0.15%

as well as wanted to know ur feedback on the exam coz i could solve close to 60-65 questions and i was well prepared for the exam i guessed i did really badly and since it is a comparative exam it depends how others have fared to get a rough idea as what was the average no of questions solavble in the exam it would be great if u could share ur experince
 

Quest4FRM

Member
the question was
1> which one would get upgraded to investment grade given options AAA,AA,A,BBB given the transition matrix?


2>What is the probaablity of default for AAA bond options
0.03%
0.07%
0.10%
0.15%

as well as wanted to know ur feedback on the exam coz i could solve close to 60-65 questions and i was well prepared for the exam i guessed i did really badly and since it is a comparative exam it depends how others have fared to get a rough idea as what was the average no of questions solavble in the exam it would be great if u could share ur experince​

I dnt think i quite understood ur first question...all these are already investment grade, isnt it? I think i m missing something...anyways i dnt remember the question now, leave alone the answer :D
For the second question, man!!! Do u actually still remember the answer choices...but ye if this was the 2 year default probability question, then atleast i remember the question...not the answer but..dnt even remember if i got the correct answer or just marked randomly :)

Regarding the exam in general, i found it on the moderate to tough side...tough only due to the lack of time...was short of time in the end for some questions...looking at this forum i guess that was the case with most ppl...till u r sure of 60-65 questions i personally blv u stand a good chance of getting thru...wud advice to keep ur fingers crossed just like we all are :)
 
hey people whats the average score u people expecting coz most people responding in this forum i consider them as pretty good so if 30 people respond i bet we can a idea as what is the average passing mark in the FRM exam level 1 hence plz co operate and send ur views

this is my range 58-63
cheers
 
In terms of how many questions did I not have time to get attempt due to running out of time, I would say about 10 questions. Of the remaining 90 questions that I had time to work I would estimate that I had to guess on about 20-30 of them (although some of these I was able to narrow down to 2 choices).
 

SPW1981

New Member
I attended Level 1 in Luxembourg. I don't remember how many people attended the exam, but I would say approximately 16.
In my opinion it was a very hard exam (I would have preferred less calculations). By comparing the questions to those of previous years I believe they were MUCH harder. In fact I realized that some questions were variations of questions I had already seen before, but with an additional source of complexity!
I had to answer approximately 25 questions by "blind guess". Some because I simply didn't have any clue and others because time was running out (I was not really comfortable enough with many calculations, so I lost a lot of time).
My score should be somewhere between 54 and 62, so I guess it will not be sufficient. :-(
 

braxxus

Member
If I had to guess, I would say I scored 55-65 correct on the exam, given level of confidence. A lot of it will come down to how lucky some of us are guessing correctly on question. There were really only 5 or so questions I didn't really attempt in the exam. I spent too long on certain questions and just started guessing in the end. I can't say that all of my attempts left me very confident though on if I was right or not. I took educated guesses on a large number of questions.

I tend to work quickly and do well on standardized exams (both to get into university and graduate school as well was when I took all three levels of the CFA). This was easily the most difficult exam I have taken in this format and probably the 2nd most difficult exam I ever took (one biology exam in high school absolutely destroyed me).

I would rather have taken CFA Levels I, II, and III on consecutive days than taking this single exam and I only took part one. If I pass, I will take Part 2, but if I failed I am not going to put myself through this again. I am not sure how helpful the certification will be and it causes a lot of unnecessary stress for something which might not be useful.
 
it looks like GARP in order to have 40% passing would keep the pass range between 55 and 65 coz most of us in this forum have given a CFA level1 and level 2 and hve found the FRM level 1 very challenging
lets see on jan 5th
 
Top