Practice exam scores!

Jo_

Member
Subscriber
From reading past comments it seems that candidates with practice scores around 70% did ok. Can anyone comment? At what level should we start to gain some confidence?

I did not read the entire thread and just picked up this post to reply to. For what it's worth, i recovered for you my scores on the practice exams i did the two days prior to the 2014 May Part 1 exam (I never looked at these exams before and I simulated real exam situation including timing):
GARP 2011: 21/25
GARP 2012: 17/25
GARP 2013; 23/25
GARP 2014: 16/25

BT B: 19/25
BT C: 22/24

I ended up passing the exam with 1/1/1/1. One key advice i can give is timing. When i did the practice exams i remember completing them in approx. 75% of the maximum time allowed for them. On the actual exam on the contrary, i only had <15 minutes to spare on 4 hours. I think it gave me a big edge that i was able to work through the entire exam. I heard a lot of people were only able to answer 70/80 questions and randomly guessed the other (no correction for bad guesses!!).

My biggest tip i can give you is (and that's what i did): set yourself a benchmark of #of questions to solve each half hour and monitor that (my target was finish with half an hour to spare, so basicly i needed to be at ~Q15 after 30 minutes, at ~Q30 after an hour and so on). Then if i was running behind, I JUST SKIPPED QUESTIONS and categorized them in two categories with a sign in front of the question: (i) i'm sure i can make it but it takes 5-10 minutes to solve so not worth it unlesss i have time left (e.g. a valuation with a 2 step binomal tree) and (ii) i don't know the answer / methodology right away and i need to think about it. Then i used the half an hour left at the end to go through the (i) category. Then i used the time left after that to look at the (ii) category. Also very importantly, keep the answer sheet next to you and fill it out simultaneously as you answer the question. This avoids making errors in appointing the answers on the answer sheets and avoids having not enough time left at the end to fill out the answer sheet.

Good luck to everyone taking the exam!
 

murrayf

Member
Hi Jo_ , thanks very much for the post and the good advice.

I had a bad day yesterday getting bad results in the 2014 practice exam, and decided I just wasn't ready yet.

Seeing your scores and eventual result has given me hope that I might squeak through, and I'll be going into that exam with both guns blazing.

Thanks again.
 

murrayf

Member
Just back from the part 1 exam here in Europe. It was fair, and everything had been well covered by BT. Jo_'s advice of getting ahead of the average questions per half hour is very good because you lose concentration in the last hour. Good luck to those still to sit.
 

tosuhn

Active Member
it was bad bad bad in Singapore for Part 2. We had a very bad test centre with music blasting next door and people giving MLM sales talk.
questions were tough.
we had a question on point upfront for credit traders and i can't remember seeing it anywhere.
 

Sidewinder

Member
Subscriber
Im back from Part I in Zurich /CH. Doesn't work very well...I think I haven't passed, had to guess approx. 15 questions at the end due to time problems (but I think my preparation for the exam wasn't bad..)
 

td

New Member
I agree, 70% with practice exams seems OK to me. For part one I had around 70% with Schweser practice exams and I passed with 1211.

Ami,

What does 1, 1, 2, 1 mean? Are these percentiles? I just took part 1 and have no idea what to expect for a result?
 

ami44

Well-Known Member
Subscriber
Ami,

What does 1, 1, 2, 1 mean? Are these percentiles? I just took part 1 and have no idea what to expect for a result?

The only results you get from Garp besides pass/fail is the quantile for each topic. So you can be in the first, second, third or fourth quantile.
 

td

New Member
thanks. is the pass score independent of the quartiles? do you have to be the top half for each subject to pass?
 

ami44

Well-Known Member
Subscriber
No, pass/fail is determined on your total score. Garp uses a secret algorithm for that that every year magically results in c.a. 45% passing for Part 1 and 55% for part 2 (+- 3%).
 
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