CFA® Exam Day: Your Top Questions Answered by a CFA® Expert

The CFA^® Exam is in a few short days. To ensure that you totally rock this thing, we’re giving you last minute exclusive access to the top questions and answers from our recent webinar with CFA expert, Darren Degraaf, CMA, CFA, CPA.

Here’s a sample of the questions and their answers you’ll get:

Q: For Level I CFA exam, how are the topics/areas sequenced? Do the questions appear in the same order as they are on the CFA Institute curriculum?

A: Ethics has historically been the first topic examined – so the first 18 questions you should expect to see – in the AM and PM sections – is Ethics.  I have asked the Institute, but they would not give me any further details in this regard.  They would only tell me that candidates should expect all topics to be roughly evenly split between the two sections.

Q: Can the morning and afternoon exam ask about same subject? For example, if there is a question on LIFO FIFO in the morning exam, can it be asked again in the afternoon session?

A:It is possible, but very unlikely to examine a specific concept (LIFO vs. FIFO) in more than 1 vignette. However, you should expect to see 1-2 vignettes on FRA in the morning session and again in the afternoon session – per the weightage of 15-20%. Once again, 5% = 1 vignette.

Q: For Level II CFA exam, how should you allocate your time between vignette and questions?

A: Do a quick perusal of the questions first then attack the vignette. You’ll be surprised at how much time you’ll save. Note that a lot of times the Ethics vignettes are broken down into 6-7 paragraphs, with the first one being largely introductory in nature (i.e., not useful to solve any particular question). However, the following paragraphs can normally be tied to each question – and in order! For example, the 2nd vignette on Ethics in the afternoon section of the CFA Institute practice exam lays it out this way, at least for the first 3 questions that I looked at from that vignette.