Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I guess this is as good a place as any to ask for some help!
I did the mock exam from the CFA Institute a couple days ago. Obviously I didn't know everything on there and that's not really the issue. My problem is that clearly my exam taking skills leave something to be desired. I say that, thinking that I'm usually a really good test writer! I don't get overly nervous or anything like that and I don't run out of time or anything like that.
My issue on this mock, particularly though is just stupid mistakes! As an example one question I got wrong asked which payment would be the smallest. I did the work for each one....and proceeded to then pick the largest payment! I haven't tallied it up, but between the morning and afternoon mock these kinds of very minor mistakes cost me 10-15 marks...which is obviously enormous! It didn't really dawn on me that there were that many of these issues for me, and needless to say I was shocked at how many marks I would have given away! Hence my cry for help.
Does anyone have any helpful strategies I can use to take care of this? I really feel like I know the material well. I scored what I would guess is within a few percent of passing, so clearly adding on another 5-10% would be pretty nice!
I'm not too interested in "read the question", "relax", kind of things. Not to be rude, but I get it. At this level I think we've all taken a lot of exams and know to do those things. I'm just wondering if there is anything beyond that might work for anyone else, or any strategies that others have here that might make me slow down, or that sort of thing?
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I don't know if this is the kind of test where you're allowed to actually mark up the test paper, but something that helped me (and my ADD brain) sometimes on law school exams was to use a highlighter to mark the few words in the question that were specifically needing to be addressed or indicating what type of answer. That way once I'd answered the question, I could look at the highlighted words and decide in about one second whether I'd answered the question that was actually being asked. I found that I had to do this because with my ADD I would actually get distracted while reading the question and start answering it without really addressing my mind to what he point of the question was. I developed this strategy in my undergrad and it helped in various exams where there were either a lot of questions that had to be answered quickly, or a few questions where they question was long and detailed with lots of facts and/or a trick or twist to what was being asked.
If I'd figured this out in my first year of Engineering, I might have done better! (although going to class more and actually studying probably would have been a bigger help there).
ETA: As a case in point,in my quick browse of firebug's answer, I didn't even notice that he already suggested the same thing much more succinctly. Time to renew that Ritalin prescription I guess!