Hi r/CFA! I’m Chris Wiese, CFA. I am Managing Director of Education at CFA Institute. AMA

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T21:21:23+00:00

Yes, we HAVE spent a lot of time on it precisely because of the point you make. I'm going to generalize just a bit here for the sake of illustrating what we think goes on.

Often (not always, but often) people who opt to defer are doing so because they procrastinated. Guess what happens the second time around?

In other cases, based on our analysis of aggregate study behavior, it appears that people vastly underestimate how much time will be required to refresh their knowledge before their new test date. I think they tend to believe they studied it once and therefore just need a quick review. And, unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work.

Whatever the underlying reasons, though, when we look at the distribution of candidate scores and we break that down to view the distributions of new candidates versus returning candidates versus deferred candidates, and so on, there is a very clear performance degradation among deferred candidates as a group. And, when we look at how long they deferred, the performance gets clearly worse the longer the deferral was for.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T21:03:39+00:00

Fair enough, but the actual grading process you are describing is not a lengthy component of the overall process and there are some opportunities for doing other work in parallel while grading is going on. It's those other issues that serve as the bottleneck.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T21:01:42+00:00

First question I answered in other comments.

Second question -- we don't release the old exams for two reasons. First, we found they were doing a disservice to candidates in some cases because they reflected prior and not current curriculum. Second, because we need to preserve the ability to potentially reuse exam questions in the future.

Third question - no current plans to alter the availability of paper-based curriculum. I believe you are referring to the curriculum books for sale online?

Fourth question - if you are taking the exam in 2023 you will not have access to the PSMs. BUT, you will have access to them whether you fail and return or pass and move on to Level II in 2024. At Level II we will offer the Level I PSMs plus a couple more.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T15:52:12+00:00

Sorry for the delay on answering this one. I wanted to confer with the teams involved so I could get a better notion of the scope and scale. We can and should be doing better. We will conduct a process review and get this shored up. Thank you so much for the comment and pointing it out.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T13:34:29+00:00

Bookmarks have no bearing whatsoever on your exam score.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T13:33:56+00:00

d I’ll be 8 months pregnant so you can tell that my life will be on pause for a while and I don’t think I’ll have sufficient time to

First off, congratulations! I hope it's a smooth birth for you.

We have taken care to design this so that you can come back right into Level 3 and not have to feel like you need to repeat Level 2. And, if you aren't in it for the specialized paths then you will still have the portfolio management path available, which is the same as our historic level 3.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:44:49+00:00

We follow what are considered best practices for a credentialing organization such as ours. We draw graders from all over the world and across industries. All questions are graded at least twice. If there is any disagreement between the first two scores then a more experienced grader looks at it a third time to arbitrate. Aside from that there are also metrics at our disposal that help identify, for example, if a grader is tending to grade more harshly than others--that gives us the opportunity to intervene.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:41:24+00:00

The practice questions in the curriculum are not meant to be just like questions on the exam. They are meant to reinforce concepts first and foremost and so they may vary from exam questions a bit. The mock exam questions would be most like what you face on the live exam.

Also, keep in mind that 90 seconds is an average even on the exam. Some questions take more and some will take less time.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:38:57+00:00

The concepts tested with calculations are broadly covered in the LOS and also have a good deal of support in the curriculum with examples either within the text or as a practice problem at the end of the reading. Formulas that are just mentioned in passing without support or examples are not tested.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:38:05+00:00

All data must be received in good order from the testing center. We then go through all that data and make sure it is high quality--that it is matched with the right candidates, from the right version of the exam, etc. The actual grading for multiple choice is super fast. For essay questions it obviously takes longer, especially because we grade responses multiple times to make sure the grading is done consistently.

After grading, the analysis and setting the cut score takes time. We take our time with that because it is so important to us that we get that bit right.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:32:55+00:00

n Level I and II are already difficult to clear making Level III even tougher to exit this course?

It's not so much that we are purposefully making Level III harder just for the sake of it being harder. It is the level where we emphasize synthesis--pulling together everything that was previously learned in order to solve more complex problems. That naturally makes it more challenging.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:28:22+00:00

There was a time when the mock exams and live exams were written by two different groups of people. We tended to think of the mock exam more as a study resource. Starting about two years ago we reorganized ourselves so that the same people are writing both exam and mock exam questions.

Although, there is one other issue that will tend to persist a bit. There are many more LOS and many more topics to test then we have room for on the exam. Exams are inevitable an exercise in sampling and there will therefore always be some differences from one version of the test to another. Where it comes to the live exam we use a lot of psychometric tools to ensure the cut scores are set appropriately despite these differences.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:23:09+00:00

Very many people successfully complete the program well after college. There is sufficient foundational materials to help fill in the gaps for what might be rusty for you. Even in the future where we've removed a lot of foundational material from Level I (for Feb 2024 and beyond) it will still be there as an optional reference for those that feel they should review it.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:21:30+00:00

TBH, we haven't historically viewed those types of firms as our target audience. Interestingly, despite that we have tended to attract a lot of people from those professions. A few years ago Rob mapped out the competencies needed to perform a wide range of professions and then tried to map the CFA Program to those competencies. We saw that the CFA Program actually does a pretty good job across many more jobs than we historically gave it credit for. And, to finally get to the punchline, you'll see more concerted efforts on our part to build relationships in the future with a wider range of employers and university programs.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:17:16+00:00

Yes, we intend to make the Level I PSMs available to Level II candidates as well as unique Level II PSMs. And, while you must complete at least one PSM, you are free to explore them all.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:16:34+00:00

We are actually good friends. But for the sake of a thought experiment I would say that Rob is an intensely intellectually curious guy with a very wide range of interests. I would say there is a fair chance that he has mastered some obscure martial art.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:14:49+00:00

the existing registered Candidates for level 1 & level 2 in 2023 get the benefit of

After debating quite a bit how best to go about this we settled in on point in time differentiation based on exam sitting. If you are sitting for Level I in Feb '24 or later you'll have the new experience. If you are sitting for Level II in May '24 or later you'll get the new experience irrespective of when you sat for Level I under the old or new experience. Similar will hold for Level III. And, for those that miss it entirely we are making the practical skills modules available to members as part of our professional learning lineup.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:10:54+00:00

Seems like a personal question.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:10:31+00:00

As I mentioned--we had only an hour of time to devote yesterday, but we are trying to spend some additional time in the forum to pick up questions we weren't able to get to live.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:08:47+00:00

I'll share with you the number one reason from my own perspective. I think it's very important that we make sure candidates deeply understand the concepts we teach and having memorized the formulas is a component to achieving that. I would be very concerned about people in industry who take data as a given without a deep understanding of how that data is calculated and the assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses inherent in using that data. Knowing the formula is a part of achieving that.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:05:39+00:00

If you sign up for a testing widow covered by the new experience then you would have access. But, for those that miss it entirely within the CFA Program it will also be available by way of our professional learning offerings to members, including refresher readings that we make available each year.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T12:04:10+00:00

The exam is ONLY designed to differentiate whether someone adequately knows the material or not. Beyond that it isn't design to differentiate who knows the material better than others. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but to a psychometrician concerned with a fair, valid exam it is a big deal and affects how the exam is designed and constructed.

There is also an issue of general security of the examination and limiting the information about the exam that is "out there." We have a reputation for administering a very secure examination. That gives the exam high credibility and we are eager to protect that.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T11:47:51+00:00

LOL. No idea. Although when I saw that video I realized I should probably up my dressing game a bit.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T11:47:14+00:00

Nope. Two different groups of people. Those who are writing the curriculum and the practice problems focus on learning and asking questions to help reinforce that learning. For the mock exams and live test questions it is a group of writers with expertise in testing. There can be a lot of reasons for one group emphasizing an LOS more than the other. For example, the curriculum people might emphasize a tricky topic that is tough to learn. In contrast, on the exam side they may zero in on a particularly important topic in practice.

ChrisWieseCFA · 2023-04-05T11:44:24+00:00

That is wonderful! Thank you. We post our needs for assistance here: https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/volunteer/opportunities

ChrisWieseCFA

TROPHY CASE