Exam Feedback November 2015 Part 2 FRM Exam Feedback

samsamsam

New Member
Subscriber
Hi everyone,
Unfortunately I didn't have much time to interract on the forum during exam prep but it doesn't mean I didn't spend time to read many topics to prepare FRM2.
There are very pertinent questions on the forum and it helped me a lot to succeed this exam.
Of course, I want to thank a lot David and Nicole for your professionalism and for very precise answers to many questions posted here.
I used Schweser on L1, it did the job but with BT it was a completely different experience. I wasn't only craming for an exam but actually I have been learning a lot during the whole journey.
Congratulation for all of you who succeeded and for those who did not, I hope you will TRY AGAIN!

I have a small question concerning job experience. Do you know if management will be contacted by GARP or receive some notification of my achievement?

Best
 

shlobb13

New Member
1) P1: 1,1,1,1 P2:1,3,1,1,1
2) All of them
3) Probably about 70%, with focus on areas that I found difficult or that end of chapter questions indicated I needed more time on.

I used the BT notes for all of my study except for those sections where there were no BT notes. In those cases I referred to the GARP provided materials.

I probably studied for about 100-120 hours for each part. I found that downloading the BT pdf notes to my Kindle and then reading them through on the train to/from work allowed me to fit in quite a bit of revision, saving the evenings for re-reading/questions.

100 hrs? dam!! i pretty much did as well as you did, but i studied nearly 3 times as much
 

Aenny

Active Member
Subscriber
btw do you know where we can submit our CV? coz I didn't find a link
Hi @pui ,

when I click on my programms I get a button on the webpage named "submit job experience". I have not done that yet, but I think it is the right button.
 

Tipo

Member
Subscriber
Glancing through this thread, am i right to say that more than 60 of the 80 questions are qualitative? (e,g ..explaination type of ans..goes up or goes down,etc) instead of compute xyz (quantitative/numerical ans)

Im also looking at the AIMS, out of the 500+ aims, there are less than 70 compute/calculate in the description
 
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blazei

New Member
Subscriber
P1: 2212 ; P2: 44411 (lol)

P1, only the GARP books no BT. P2, started with GARP books then relied pretty much solely on BT and google.
P1 was mostly review, P2 was mostly new especially Basel/regulatory and some of the FI models
Probably covered ~75% of BT notes/videos
Probably covered ~90% of BT questions (restricted to the most recent versions i.e. the 500/400 series)

Looking back, I wish i had spread out my studying and spent more time reading the books. The BT notes just don't go deep enough and a lot of them seemed outdated / weren't updated until < 1 month before the test. Also, for me, reading the books would have solidified more of the concepts solely through the forced process of having to read that much material. The BT notes might have technically covered all the material, but it's way too dense on its own to be practical without some sort of background.

The BT questions on the other hand were really the reason I signed up for BT (read the forum when i was studying for P1 but couldn't see the answers...) and probably one of the reasons I actually passed. I can't stress enough IMO how important doing these actually are. The last few days leading up to the test, all of my study time was dedicated to going through as many sample problems as I could.

I thought P2 would be more 'qualitative' but I'd say more than half to maybe 2/3 of the questions for my test were quantitative. For example, even if the question didn't have numbers in it, it would ask something along the lines of "what of the following is true about LVAR? a) if blah blah blah increases then LVAR stays the same; b) if <factor> were decreased, LVAR would increase ...". For those you still need to know the formulas and in many questions even calculate the resulting cases in order to answer. There were A LOT of that type of question. And with that loose definition, very few were actually strictly qualitative and most of those would have probably fallen under "Current Events" or more accurately "HFT".

For P2, I calculated out my study time to be just around 100 hours with about 60 of those coming in the last 2 weeks leading up to the test (3-4 hours weekday nights + ~8 hour weekends). The previous 40 were spent in the month before by reading/watching the BT notes and videos on my commute to/from work.
P1 was ~50 hours, ~half spent reading cherry-picked chapters out of the books, ~half on whatever practice problems i could find.

Ideally I would've liked to have done a bit better, but in the end I think i learned what i wanted to in terms of material, while putting in the minimum amount of study time to still pass.

BTW my background: BS Economics conc Finance, BS Engineering conc CS, 6 years in the industry specifically electronic trading.
 

brian.field

Well-Known Member
Subscriber
I am hoping this doesn't come across the wrong way.....I am happy for @blazei

I feel like passing someone with 44411 is a disservice to the credential.
 

blazei

New Member
Subscriber
@brian.field I totally agree, doesn't make any sense. Especially considering the other responses where someone got something like a 12111 and 'knew' they only got half the questions right. I'll leave it to you guys to speculate on what that makes my score...

Funny story, GS first-years have a running bet when passing the Series 7, closest to failing without actually failing wins the pool. The 7 is a lot more predictable though, you know exactly how many wrong answers you can get and still pass. So the kid with the lowest passing score ends up knowing the material the best since he/she basically has to know every one of his correct answers is actually correct.

Not that any of that applies here of course. GARP must've sensed my knowledge of the material through how almost right my wrong answers were... ;)
 

Sidewinder

Member
Subscriber
Kind of strange. The failing quote is 40% (according to GARP). Hence one expect to land, on average, in the 2. / 3. quartil. The 2 quartiles with "1" are only weighted 15% and 10%.
 

HERO

New Member
if I knew that 44411 ia a pass, I would not prepare for the exam.... I passed with 12113. Completely unfair....
 

Matthew Graves

Active Member
Subscriber
I think people are missing the point slightly with regard to the passing quartiles. If you pass you can call yourself a FRM but you have to have the knowledge to back that up otherwise you'll very quickly be found out by your colleagues/peers. Personally, I'd rather put the effort in and learn something than scrape through and look pretty silly when questioned at work.

However, I do agree that having a low pass mark cheapens the qualification and doesn't do GARP or the FRM any good.
 

ShaktiRathore

Well-Known Member
Subscriber
I am hoping this doesn't come across the wrong way.....I am happy for @blazei

I feel like passing someone with 44411 is a disservice to the credential.
Look from the perspective of scores also that is Market Risk:20,Credit Risk:20,Operational &Int Risk:20,Investment Risk:12 & Financial Cases:8
someone with 44411(order:Credit Risk=4,Operational &Int Risk=4,Market Risk=4,Investment Risk=1,Financial Cases=1) could have altogether different scores ,i would expect the person scores full out of full in topics with quartile 1 to avoid disservice thus he has 12/12 in Investment Risk(range:11-12 for 1st quartile ) and 8/8 in Financial Cases(range:7-8 for 1st quartile ),also assume that the performance of test takers was exceptionally good in the topics where he got quartiles as 4,then those with quartile 1 have average score of 19/20 in Operational &Int Risk(range:19-20) and 19/20 in Market Risk (range:19-20)& 19/20 in Credit Risk(range:19-20), those with quartile 2 have average score of 17/20 in Operational &Int Risk(range:16-18) and 17/20 in Market Risk (range:16-18) & 17/20 in Credit Risk(range:16-18) and those with quartile 3 have average score of 14/20 in Operational &Int Risk (range:14-15) and 14/20 in Market Risk (range:14-15)& 14/20 in Credit Risk(range:14-15) ,those with quartile 4 have average score of 11/20 in Operational &Int Risk (range:8-13) and 11/20 in Market Risk (range:8-13)& 11/20 in Credit Risk(range:8-13)
So our person with 44411 could have the scores of 13,13,13,12,8=59/80(>70% of total score 80) which is i think is a pass by handsome margin if we consider the top 5% scorers in the exam to have score of 75 then the 70% of the 75/80=.7*75=52.5 so the person with score 52/80 passes by handsome margin.Also compare this with someone getting quartiles 22223 could have scores 16,16,16,9,2=59/80,although the quartiles 22223 seems way better than 44411, the score of 32223= score of 44411 ,i think i have made my point clear how could you determine performance in the exam from quartiles they just give a glance to your performance who knows the actual scores.I think quartiles conceals the actual scores although they do give some idea for the scores.
Passing with such quartiles as 44411 is not that bad(although it seems Bad) after all consider the average quartile=(4+4+4+1+1)/5=14/5=2.8 which i think is fair quartile is worthy of a pass,compare this with someone passing with quartile 42242(the average quartile is same=(4+2+2+4+2)/5=14/5=2.8 ) which looks a fair quartiles scores, that is you are scoring in 3/5 topics in top 50% is worthy of a pass.
Thanks
 
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Jo_

Member
Subscriber
Work experience has been validated by GARP, so officially certified as of today! (sooner than expected, thumbs up to GARP for the fast validation)
 

brian.field

Well-Known Member
Subscriber
Look from the perspective of scores also that is Market Risk:20,Credit Risk:20,Operational &Int Risk:20,Investment Risk:12 & Financial Cases:8
someone with 44411(order:Credit Risk=4,Operational &Int Risk=4,Market Risk=4,Investment Risk=1,Financial Cases=1) could have altogether different scores ,i would expect the person scores full out of full in topics with quartile 1 to avoid disservice thus he has 12/12 in Investment Risk(range:11-12 for 1st quartile ) and 8/8 in Financial Cases(range:7-8 for 1st quartile ),also assume that the performance of test takers was exceptionally good in the topics where he got quartiles as 4,then those with quartile 1 have average score of 19/20 in Operational &Int Risk(range:19-20) and 19/20 in Market Risk (range:19-20)& 19/20 in Credit Risk(range:19-20), those with quartile 2 have average score of 17/20 in Operational &Int Risk(range:16-18) and 17/20 in Market Risk (range:16-18) & 17/20 in Credit Risk(range:16-18) and those with quartile 3 have average score of 14/20 in Operational &Int Risk (range:14-15) and 14/20 in Market Risk (range:14-15)& 14/20 in Credit Risk(range:14-15) ,those with quartile 4 have average score of 11/20 in Operational &Int Risk (range:8-13) and 11/20 in Market Risk (range:8-13)& 11/20 in Credit Risk(range:8-13)
So our person with 44411 could have the scores of 13,13,13,12,8=59/80(>70% of total score 80) which is i think is a pass by handsome margin if we consider the top 5% scorers in the exam to have score of 75 then the 70% of the 75/80=.7*75=52.5 so the person with score 52/80 passes by handsome margin.Also compare this with someone getting quartiles 22223 could have scores 16,16,16,9,2=59/80,although the quartiles 22223 seems way better than 44411, the score of 32223= score of 44411 ,i think i have made my point clear how could you determine performance in the exam from quartiles they just give a glance to your performance who knows the actual scores.I think quartiles conceals the actual scores although they do give some idea for the scores.
Passing with such quartiles as 44411 is not that bad(although it seems Bad) after all consider the average quartile=(4+4+4+1+1)/5=14/5=2.8 which i think is fair quartile is worthy of a pass,compare this with someone passing with quartile 42242(the average quartile is same=(4+2+2+4+2)/5=14/5=2.8 ) which looks a fair quartiles scores, that is you are scoring in 3/5 topics in top 50% is worthy of a pass.
Thanks
I want to hire @ShaktiRathore!
 

Tarun Kaushal

New Member
Subscriber
Work experience has been validated by GARP, so officially certified as of today! (sooner than expected, thumbs up to GARP for the fast validation)
congratulations... :) what information is needed to be provided for the work experience... ? Any CV which needs to be submitted or a work ex. certificate.... ??
 

shlobb13

New Member
Work experience has been validated by GARP, so officially certified as of today! (sooner than expected, thumbs up to GARP for the fast validation)

did you get an email from GARP or did you constantly check the site until you saw your status change?
 
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