I'm scoring on a 65-76 spread (actually the 76% was the first time And only time I passed and the last test I took)
Is the difficulty of the series 79 on par with KM's practice exams?
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It’s easier but you also can’t really bank on that I guess. No one knows what they score on the actual exam so there’s not much science behind it — but I know a ton of people that all felt very shaky based on practice test scores, and ended up all passing.
Keep grinding on it, but also no need to lose confidence here.
Same boat! Passed the assessment with an 80 and then all downhill from there (68-75ish).
Done 1000 practice problems and no matter how much I review there are just too many details/day counts/specific regulations to wrap my head around. Hoping Knopmans stats about a 99% pass rate for average question scores of 65-70 applies.
I take it Wednesday-- I'll let you know how it goes! Best of luck!
I also take it Wednesday. LETS GOOO
Woo hoo! Best of luck!
Had to switch from Kaplan due to how horrendous and outdated the material was. There was so much missing information. Knopman does a way better job in preparing you for the exam.
I passed Diagnostic 1 (74%) and Benchmark (82%) but didn't pass Diag 2 (68% - which is supposed to be harder). I was told that if you pass the benchmark exam, you're in a good spot to pass.
Personally I found the real thing a little bit more difficult I think, but obviously you don’t get the score anymore so don’t know how my actual scores compared.
In general, I felt like the real exam had more questions where you needed to know the subtle details to pick out the correct answer from two close choices, whereas with Knopman, I usually felt like if I *mostly* understood or recognized a concept, I could pretty easily spot the one correct answer.
Any advice on how you would have prepared differently knowing this? Exam is tomorrow so I can't do anything drastically different. But I'll take anything at this point
Personally, I didn't really change my strategy the day before.
I would alternate between doing a bunch of practice questions and re-reading the sections from the book that I was consistently missing. I focused more on sections where I was weakest under the assumption that improving from 65 to 75 in a section was probably easier than improving from, say, 85 to 95.
Just do what you can and try not to stress about it too much.
I actually thought the exam was much easier than Knopman’s Q-bank. Way less random nitty gritty questions. I didn’t get any valuation math, but a lot of accounting.
Definitely study fairness opinions, research rules, and the IPO transaction stages. Got at least 5 (straightforward memorization) questions on each.
I thought it was a bit of a time crunch. Only finished with 5 min left to go. The questions were much wordier than knopman and small details can reveal the answer. For instance, they would put that “existing shareholders don’t want to be diluted” in a paragraph with 6-8 sentences so it’s easy to get mentally tired and pick a wrong answer.
Btw I scored a 68 on the baseline, 73 on diagnostic 1, 74 on diagnostic 2, and 80 on the benchmark. Practice tests I’d range from 68-76 or so. I started 10 days ago probably spent 60-70 total hours studying. Everyone I know passed, so you should be fine.
I passed! I agree with your whole assessment, but would say the small details made it harder than Knopman. In the Qbank if I could match a key word to a bigger concept by association, I'd get the question correct. However the small details can make you second guess yourself on the real thing.
The exam went into the nitty gritty of rules (75% of revenue must come from that state to qualify for reg 147 was an answer choice, but you'd have to remember it was 80%). The questions felt wordier than on the QBank overall.
A lot of the questions came from obscure places in key concepts. If I could do it over again I'd spend way more time memorizing the key concepts cold and less time aimlessly doing a 1000 practice questions.
I completely agree with this. Unlike the SIE, it seemed like they stressed key concepts more for 79. They said 2/3 of studying should be key concepts/notes and 1/3 questions. The target question count is 750 as opposed to 1000 too.
I think the actual exam was quite easy compared to Knopman exams. I was scoring in low 80s in practice, and for the actual, I finished and passed super quick with lots of time to spare.
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