Congrats & Hooray! No More CFA®! (...for now)

Happy CFA® break time, monkeys!

Boy, what a ride Saturday was, right? We are done, for the time being at least, and wow, that is a great relief. How did everyone's exam go? I can say, with a high degree of certainty, that I've never had more inopportune bathroom breaks then I did on Saturday. We'll get into that super compelling story later.

One aspect of the test that I found peculiar was the seemingly smaller collection of level 1 candidates. Turns out, it wasn't just me, as Bloomberg reports, this is the first time since 2005 that there's been a decrease in the number of candidates on a year over year basis.

The number of candidates registered to take the June CFA® exam, administered worldwide today, dropped 2.2 percent to 146,605 from a year earlier, Charlottesville, Virginia-based CFA®Institute said in a May 29 statement. The number of June CFA® hopefuls had increased annually since 2005 and reached a record 149,954 candidates last year.

The article goes on to talk about how this is likely a cyclical phenomenon, and that there's likely to be a future increase in candidacy. But, as I'm sure more than a few of you are thinking, how will this affect the MPS?!? Well, if your day went anything like mine, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter. Here's how my Saturday went:

8:20 am: Totally ready to go, just one quick bathroom break to make sure I'm good, then into the testing room! I'm going to wreck this test!

8:57 am: Wow, these instructions are taking forever. I kind of have to pee again, which is ridiculous, it's been all of 30 minutes. I now feel an odd connection to the people populating the myriad Toviaz commercials.

9:35 am: Okay, I definitely have to pee now. It's time to raise my hand and get this done quickly so I can focus.

9:38 am: Apparently, there was a line for the bathroom. Not an actual line mind you. Only one person at a time may leave the testing room. Clearly, this is some sort of oddly constructed conspiracy. Whatever, I'm good now, should be able to make it through the rest of the morning session.

10:45 am: After spending an inordinate amount of time waffling between "A" or "B" on a question (upon reflection, I'm fairly certain both were completely wrong), it occurs to me that yes, somehow, someway, I have to pee again. What. The. Hell.

11:20 am: Okay, done with the morning session, now, do I go back over some of the answers I was unsure about? Or do I high tail it out of here and go to the bathroom before the "30 minutes of hell stuck in your seat"? I opt for the sweet release of the latter.

1:20 pm: Definitely not trying to have a repeat of the morning, so I head to the men's room and make sure that I have the capacity to make it through the next four and a half hours.

2:30 pm: All done with the first two item sets, and I'm on a roll! Oh crap, got to pee again. Great, just great. This is either a message from God that I should reconsider my candidacy in the CFA® program, or I'm pregnant.

4:00 pm: Okay, making good progress. Insofar, I think I know the answers to most of the questions - hopefully I'm not mistaken - but of course, you guessed it, I somehow have to pee again. I don't have many left, I'm pretty sure I can make it through to the end.

4:28 pm: Ugh, I'm doing the pee-pee dance in my chair. I have two left and I don't know the answer to either. Clearly, I skipped this part during my studies. I make awesome decisions. Okay, two educated guesses, and screw this place, I'm out!

In short, let's just say that my CFA® exam could've gone better. Do I think I passed? I don't know, maybe? Everyone gets lucky sometimes. Let's just say that come the end of July, I'm not going to be shocked to learn that 800 bathroom breaks don't translate into a high exam score. How did everyone else's day go? Any funny stories?

Congratulations to everyone who sat for the exam last Saturday! Best of luck to everyone!

 

I made sure to ONLY take bathroom breaks during the actual exam - no queues! Fitting x,000 people into the ExCel centre means you could be waiting a while.... There was one guy in my hall who literally ran everywhere, quite amusing and a nice distraction from the aeroplanes overhead every 10 minutes.... Now just the 7.5 week wait until results day!

Coffee and adderall are diuretics...

"For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails. Pray for me now and at the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen."
 

I took the level 1 in December and failed partly because I drank a redbull, ginseng tea, and ate a bar of chocolate during lunch. I peed too much and I crashed half an hour into the afternoon session.

This time I actually made sure I slept extremely well, and only had to pee once per session. In the morning, I drank ginseng tea in the morning with 2 hard boiled eggs. For lunch, I had a tuna sandwich with gatorade and a banana. This made my life much more easier.

 
Best Response

I took L3 for the first time on Saturday. It was on par with my expectations.

I drank a small coffee around 730AM to shake of the morning grogginess. I would strongly advise against drinking anything more than that before the exam. Red bull, 5 hour energy, monster, etc... are going to do more harm to you than good. If you've spent enough time preparing for this exam you should be nervous and filled with adrenaline at the start of the morning session. The last thing your body needs is a caffeine shock. I saw one guy down two five hour energy drinks before the morning session. He was holding L1 books....he'll learn one day.

Even if you have a small bladder you shouldn't need to hit the bathoom more than once per session. Time management becomes a huge issue at L3 and you definitnely do not have time for 3+ bathroom breaks. That's basically an entire question worth 5-7% of the total exam. So long as you were able to get 5+ hours of sleep the night before, the only thing you need is water.

 

I've taken quite a few of long tests CFA Lv 1, Lv 2, four parts of the CPA, and the two parts of the CMA. I've drank energy drinks before the exam every single time, and has ALWAYS been worth it. It's much better to sit down and be super focused for 95% of the time, and use 5% to get a nice breath of fresh air and get the blood flowing. I went to the bathroom 4 times during the recent CFA exam and don't regret it at all. That said, my test center was probably on the smaller side, so the line was very short.

But we should really be grateful that the CFAI doesn't require us to get wanded down for contraband and flip our pockets inside out when we come into the room. Anyone who has taken an exam at a Prometric testing center knows how much extra wasted time that is. Also, during the CPA exams, you only have three chances to leave to use the bathroom--you need to finish the open question set before you're free to go while the time keeps ticking (4 testlets per exam). Nothing is worse than holding it and thinking you can make it through the next question set...and realizing on question #1 of the next set that you really wish you took the bathroom break are now trapped for another 30 questions.... Thankfully, the CPA exams are a cakewalk compared to the CFA exams.

 
zee4:
Hilarious. Mike, what did you drink before and during the exam?

Haha, oh, you know, the regular stuff, a cup of coffee in the morning, a bottle of water at lunch, and like everyone else, I beer bonged a 12 of natty before each session. Nothing out of the ordinary :).

"My caddie's chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn't properly invested."
 

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