Important: Final Exam Day Information and Recommendations.

[martin]

I know most of us took Level 1 recently, but it never hurts to review
the CFA website in advance this week for reminders about what you need
to bring (passport, pencils, printed exam tickets for entry, erasers,
calculator batteries out of the package, etc). If you ever played
that game "Telephone" growing up in elementary school you know there's
always someone who messes up the chain before it gets all the way
around the circle, sometimes even on really easy phrases where all the
words in the sentence are practically phonetic.

Okay show me your ham & eggs, we don't have time to waste here.

1) First and foremost I'm not trying to make myself look like a
supreme d-bag with this one but you must remember not to post any
specific questions/answers/concepts that appeared on the exam on this
or any other forum after the exam per CFA Mandate. I'd be diligent on
this one as I don't trust these new Google privacy settings one bit
and if you catch a case of the you'll probably have every CFA County
Mountie East of the Sasketchewan River in Manitoba running a search
for your IP address.

Per MY understanding based on the Official CFA Exam Day listed
policies the following items are not allowed inside the exam room:
Cell phones, a Compass (the ones with the little mini #2 pencils
attached that you use to draw really symmetric circles in Geometry
class, not the ones that guide you North/South/East/West although
those aren't allowed either), Laptops, mousepads, dry erase boards,
those little flavorless heart shaped candies that circulate around
Valentines Day and have pithy sayings like "Be Good" or "Call Me" on
them, Non-approved Calculators, Chinese finger traps, Laser discs,
Sudoku, Granny Smith Apples (this actually applies to all brands of
apples, but recently there have been so many determined individuals
trying to bring these into testing rooms under the premise that it's
"not just another apple"). Also, in consideration of fellow test
takers sitting around you please do not wear the blinking LA Gear
'Lights' shoes first popularized in the early 1990's but later
discontinued in the latter half of the decade on exam day.

2) If you want to be really safe have some drinks immediately
following the exam so you can't remember any of the questions on it.
We all like to dream in our sleep about binomial models and such, and
this is really the only surefire way you can protect yourself against
divulging which pension accounting methods appear on the exam around
your significant other(s) (singular or plural? You dog you.) Plus
you'll save yourself COUNTLESS hours over the rest of your life by
having a canned "I don't remember" response handy when future CFA
candidates try to time bandit you with questions about the exam. 5
minutes saved here, 5 minutes there. Pretty soon we're talking a full
episode of Grey's Anatomy.

3) Thanks to whoever started this group, it was helpful to keep
motivated. If everyone comes back to report our passing scores in
July we could keep this group going for Level III, no? Or should we
form a new one with"2012CFALevel3" as the heading so that when people
pass by our computer monitor they'll know to pay respect accordingly?

I'm definitely nervous, I didn't do that well on the PM mock session
(59%, WHAT A LOSER!!!) a few weeks ago so I didnt look at the answers
yet and I figure I'll try it again the night before the test. Haven't
tried the AM yet because my printer printed them off in reverse and
then ran out of ink before I reached my terminal value of pages.
Printer ink is such a racket. What's ink cost like $0.25?! How do
they sell those cartridges for $30? Someone get me Michael E. Porter
on the phone I wanna know which one of his freaking forces we have to
activate to get printer ink prices back to Earth. You think the
Declaration of Independence would have ever been drawn up if they'd
been forced to dip their quills in $30 printer ink?? Absolutely not.
You ever seen that thing? It's huge. That would have cost like $7,000
in printer ink. Try discounting those cash flows all the way back to
1776. Modern day printer ink prices would have put that Revolution
down quickly.

The last ten days have been a real bender. I've basically gone
through almost all of the EOC questions, chapter summaries, and the
elan notes for Equity, Accounting, Corp Finance, and Econ. My head
hurts, I've lost 12.9% of my flexibility, I've only seen the sun once,
and I lost 5 lbs drinking protein shakes everyday in lieu of cooking.
But I know one thing. My facial hair is going to be just the right
length on exam day. Not too scruffy because that can be itchy and
distracting and just generally makes you look like an unkempt weirdo.
But not clean shaven either because for Pete's sake you don't wanna
catch an ingrown on exam day.

Last question, for those that did the Schweser mock, was it helpful?
It's $49 on-line with a 10 hour video instructional I believe it
says? I may still purchase it if I run out of other stuff to review
today.

Alright, later.

[Laura Noonan]

Wow, you have thought of everything :) Wouldnt worry about your mock score, if I'd done it week's ago I'd be well in the fifties. Sounds like you've done loads since then, you'll be fine. I did the Schweser mock, found it tough but good. The 49$ doesn't include the videos though, they're an extra 100$ 

Good luck! 

L

[martin]

An extra 100 bones?! For that I could get 3 new ink cartridges for my
printer