Exam tips

Study program

It is critical that you design a study program. There are no short cuts to passing the exam and pass rates have been falling. It is a tough exam and you will need to both learn the underlying material as well as do plenty of practice questions to test your knowledge and to get used to the CFA^® style of questions.

In addition to working through all the questions in the The Way To Work series and Pegasus 2008 CFA Level I Practice Exam, we recommend you try the sample Level I exam provided by CFA Institute.

Before the exam

• Read the CFA Institute instructions: the rules are strict on what you can or cannot take into the exam room. Don’t forget your exam admission ticket and passport, or other form of permitted identification.

• Remember that the only calculators you can use are the TI BAII Plus (including the BA II Plus Professional) and the Hewlett Packard 12C (including the HP 12C Platinum). We strongly recommend you take two calculators or at the very least a spare battery.

• Ensure you know the location of the exam and how to get there. It has been CFA Institute policy to close the doors 30 minutes before the exam starts.

• Read the CFA Institute Candidate Bulletins to check for changes to the exam procedures.

On the exam day

The exam is 100% multiple choice questions; the morning and afternoon papers will each contain 120 questions.

• You will be under time pressure in the exam and need to answer on average one question every 1½ minutes so you must keep moving through the questions. We recommend that you:
  
  - mark questions in the exam booklet when you are not sure of the answer or where the calculation needs checking and come back to them when you have finished all the other questions.
  - do not get distracted by a question that does not make sense. If the question turns out to be ambiguous then it will be excluded when it comes to grading the paper.
  - read the questions carefully, particularly when there is a negative statement in the question.
  - leave time to check your answers on the answer sheet. Be careful you don’t miss answering a question and mark subsequent answers against the wrong question number on the answer sheet.

• There is a strong argument for working methodically through the questions in the order they are set but you might wish to start with a subject where you feel confident and which you can work through fairly quickly. But avoid hopping from one subject to another. This will waste time and you may end up missing one section of questions out.

• Don’t panic if you hit some difficult questions: you can probably get as many as 30 or 40 questions incorrect on each paper and still pass the exam.

• There is no penalty for getting an answer incorrect, so if you don’t know the answer, eliminate any obviously wrong answers and guess which one is correct.

• Ethics in study session 1 is an important topic. If you are a marginal candidate, your ethics score could be the deciding factor whether you pass the exam.

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