Spotted similarity in FRM practice exam

[qin841121]

I am now doing practice questions from FRM website. As the website stated​

​

​

2012 FRM Practice Exams
Based on a sample of questions from the 2010 FRM Exam, these practice Exams are representative of the questions that will be in the May 2012 FRM Exam.

2011 FRM Practice Exams​

Based on a sample of questions from the 2009 FRM Exam, these practice Exams are representative of the questions that will be in the November 2011 FRM Exam.​

2010 FRM Practice Exams
These Practice Exams are based on a sample of questions from the 2008 FRM Exam and are representative of the questions that will be in the November 2011 FRM Exam.​

I notice that there are some similarities in the questions. For example, I am sure that the Basel 2 drawback questions is repeated and there are some questions which I encountered twice in these 3 exams.
I am thinking is it possible FRM keep testing on the same few concepts again and again? If yes, then it will be very worthwhile to study the three exams deep in details and know all the concepts in these 3 papers deeply.
I am drawing this conclusion from my CFA exams. I finished the three exams and found that sometimes exams questions are repeated. For example, you will bound to find some questions from the practice papers and some questions from the past year papers in the exam tested (I noticed that for the three level).
Maybe Moderator, you can delete this thread if the discussion is illegal

 

[vallerano]

Yes, you are right, there are some questions exactly the same in the various practice exams provided by gaarp. Would have been better if there are no overlaps...

 

[qin841121]

But 2012 practice exam is based on 2010 FRM real exam,
2011 practice exam is based on 2009 FRM real exam,
2010 practice exam is based on 2008 FRM real exam.

That is to say that the real exam has many overlap questions too?

 

[qin841121]

David, any thoughts?

The more I do, the more similarity I discovered. There are many questions that are exactly the same

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

My initial thoughts are:

• I think the discussion is perfectly legal and, further, I have no ethical problem discussing sample exams which have been publicly released by GARP
• You have not provided any actual citations? It's hard to opine without data and I don't have a deep impression of a high overlap across these exams (I am aware of concept similarities).
• If you want to add examples, I am happy to facilitate a query to our GARP contacts by linking to this thread, if we think it is productive? (I'm not sure yet I think it is productive ...)
• My honest guess (which of course i am willing to share, by definition, since the following is now part of the potentially linked thread) stems from the relatively low esteem in which I already hold the recent sample exams, including the 2012. I simply don't think they are terrific in the first place (i.e., they have too many errors and imprecisions), I do not think they reflect a significant time investment, and I would not be surprised if the self-statements about their source are imprecise. (For example, GARP has considerable resources, yet only developed 20 + 25 questions: something which I did by myself in the last few weeks. It is very time consuming, but they should have enough resources to develop a full mock, IMO). My sheer guess is that duplicates can be explained by inadvertent duplicate sourcing; i.e., I do not leap to a hypothesis that actual exams have duplicated questions, I think a simpler explanation is that the sample papers are a bit sloppy. I understand why FRM candidates take the sample papers seriously, but I don't assign a great deal of weight to them.

Thanks,

 

[qin841121]

Noted with thanks.

As it is near exam, I am unable to do a mapping of questions. But I am now on 2010 practice exams part 2 and I saw many questions that are repeated from 2011 and 2012. I can give the answer without even thinking. Below are some extracts of the questions. I did not even intentionally choose the questions but it just happen that I am on question 2 of the paper.

Q2) drawback of Basel 2 (Asset correlation decrease with increasing PD)
Q3) ASRF of basel 2
Q4) SPE cannot use derivatives
Q5) how to value derivative

All these 4 questions (yes, there are in a row) came out before in 2011 or 2012. As they claim that 2010 is based on 2008 real exam and 2011 is based on 2009 real exam and 2012 is based on 2011 real exam, I seriously think that I will see this questions again in 10 days.

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Thank you for specifics but I do not see that Q2, Q3, and Q4 appear on the 2012 Practice? (I am unsure about Q5) ... Q4 about QSPE would be weird to re-appear as it has been extinguished, but i do not see it in 2012?