Secret Sauce Update

I will be putting up a post on my methods to success on exam one in the next few days.  I am trying to catch up on a lot of work, and this blog is one of those things.  Here is a list of the posts you can expect to see in the not so future:

– Exam Techniques for CSC-L1

– Review of CSC Modules

– Review of CSC Quizzes

– Top 10 Things not to Do for CSC L1

– CSC-L2 Preperation

– CSC-L2 Chapters 13 & 14

I hope to get these posts done fairly soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

– Steve

I PASSED!!!

I got my marks back for the CSC-L1 test today, only 4 or so days after writing the exam. I have to say the service CSI has provided me so far has been exceptional, and i am impressed they were able to squeeze out the marks so quickly.  I was fully expecting a full 15 day wait for the marks, and it was driving me insane. I can’t imagine having to wait for 2 months to receive my marks from CFA Level 1 in June, I think I may go mental.  Anyways, for the amount of time I studies (3 weeks), I feel I did well.  I am not extremely satisfied with my mark, as I know there was definite room for improvement in my study routine, organization, ad effectiveness. None-the-less, it feels good to be done one of four of my total exams before June.  Of course, only two of those exams are related to the CSC.

I would assume if you stretched out your studying longer then I did, you may have more time to retain the material and do some extra practice quizzes. My biggest lessons from this exam was to focus more on retention of drill down topics using cue cards, then on quizzes and practice questions. Those questions are very helpful but I need to spend balance my time more effectively. Another thing I learned from is not to worry about creating your own self-quizzes. I spent a bunch of time creating 12 chapters worth of quizzes and I never used them.  Instead I used some quizzes I obtained from a friend.  This friend may or may not be on a facebook message board located in the sidebar.

I am going to take two days of to recuperate and get some portfolio analysis done for my clients, and then I will be back at it studying for CSC-L2 on Feb 24th. That gives me 18 days to review an additional 12 chapters. I can’t speak to which material is more challenging, but I have heard that exam two is easier.  We will  have to see.

– Steve

Writing CSC-L1 Exam

Exam 1 was a lot tougher than I would have expected.  Even though I studies pretty hard for the exam I was expecting a lot easier of an exam format then was presented. Most of the questions assumed your understanding of the definitions and pulled concepts off various chapters into a single question. Every question had at least 2 possible answers which could throw anyone off, the wording was really the biggest problem for me.  I had some extra time at the end of the exam so I was checking the questions that required formulas, and out of curiosity I checked different ways of doing the same question.  Seems like the creators of the exam had calculated four different ways of using the numbers in the question, so that, even if you got a number on the exam, it didn’t mean that was the right one.

In terms of math there wasn’t a lot of calculation required, even though there was a lot of numbers involved.  Mostly it was being able to apply your knowledge to solve a particular question, in most cases, using none of the formulas you learned. Don’t get me wrong, I used almost all of the formulas in the chapters, but just not to the extent I thought.  What was more prominent on the exam was references to put/call options.  I took four years of university and I have never stayed as late to an exam as I have for this one.  That may be due to the fact that I wanted to do well on this one, and maybe because I actually cared about this exam.  Bad attitude I know.

Before the exam I read through al 12 chapters and made detailed notes, read through all the FAQ documents, the message boards, re-read my notes, took practice quizes and review cue cards I had made.  I wasn’t as organized as I had liked, but this was a good start to getting me back into the swing of things. Another interesting note I found during the exam was that people were having a lot of difficulty with the test, probably spending to much time reading those message boards who said it was easy. 45 minutes in a couple people left, very discouraged.  When I left, there was still over 2/3 of the class remaining with 10 minutes to go.  As I walked from the back of the room I observed that 3 people out of the 4 I had looked at were still on question 25 – 40.  That’s a sign of a fail, because if you aren’t at question number 50 by 60 minutes, your in a lot of trouble.  I had 60 questions done at 60 minutes, and I had approximately 20 minutes to review my answers. From the sounds of it, at least 10 people failed that exam, if not higher. Just another example of why you shouldn’t stroll into the exam room trying to finish off your reading.

– Steve