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I thought it was much more difficult than the 2020 exam. They went out of their way to add in elements to even the most straight forward problems to slow you down and eat the clock as a punishment for using excel vs paper/pencil.
The IQ was a total joke, nothing was “integrated” and the main point portion seemed unreasonable based on the actual syllabus readings as without real world experience in that area you would have an extremely difficult time trying to get full marks.
I ran out of time due to the busy work and awful wording of the questions. The “blooms” style of trying to catch you in little tricks doesn’t test your actual knowledge on the syllabus material, just how well you can quickly decipher their puzzles.
Who knows if they even gave everyone the same test this time, they stated the reason for going dark on the exam is they want a bank of questions. If they do that on an upper level like this I’m not sure how they set a pass mark because although they intend for questions (hopefully) to be a certain level of difficulty we all know that isn’t the case when you look back after.
I definitely don’t do it first.
I’ll go through and get into a good rhythm of problems I know and get my confidence up then usually around half way through the time I’ll go and attempt it the first time.
As every time I’ve attempted it in a live exam the IQ’s have thrown me off I like to be able to get a few looks at it so I don’t save it for last either.
Sometimes your subconscious unlocks something while you are not thinking about it for a while.
But I have never passed an exam with an IQ so what do I know haha
CAS drops the ball again. How can they not offer all of the upper level exams next fall? Its almost like they are going above and beyond to keep people from getting their FCAS in a reasonable amount of time…
I think also if someone has time in a Pearson environment to leave for the bathroom, find some stashed notes, review enough to be helpful, and get back in the room and finish without time running out they were good enough to pass without looking at notes anyway.
It is NOT a short process to leave the room for a Pearson exam, I chose not to take a bathroom break and still ran out of time on my last problem.
Also people forget that the prior exam 5 sitting extended the testing time to 4hr 30min and to be honest I think due to testing facility restrictions they should consider it. The extra 30 min will help candidates who are “slower” but I don’t think that slow = unqualified. For others it just may offer them a bathroom break and time to review a few problems.
so you want even higher pass thresholds for all of the exams because it is possible someone cheated? Got it.
Early exams notes would be invaluable, upper level exams not as much from a purely see notes get answer perspective.
The exams aren’t correlated with how well someone actually does their job in the real world anyway, it is just a barrier to entry and a pay grade differential at this point.
Exam 5 had the same questions on all the “cheaters” out there, I think it was less prevalent than the fears of those who thought everyone was cheating.
For the most part outside of exam 6 most of the upper level exams you need such a quick and deep understanding of the material that having a quick peek at your notes would net you maybe 1 or 2 points on the whole exam anyway.
to be honest the only thing having all of your notes next to you for exams 7,8, 9 would do is help on the random formula’s you have only seen twice since starting the material months ago but they are asking you to remember and use. Everything else you need to really understand (the way they want you to) to answer the questions as of the last 2 years
With how poorly the CAS write’s their beloved blooms questions you have to guess at what the heck they even want you to do half the time anyway.
When they rolled out the CBT plan for exam 5 they said in their webinar that the goal was to get to all online exams and for the uppers they would eventually be open book similarly to how engineering exams are. That just makes way too much sense for the CAS to ever do it though, because we all know on a regular basis if we need to attempt some method we haven’t used in a while we make sure to do it from memory and don’t check the source because that is how we were taught to do it on the exam….
not a fan of the TIA support but the videos and resources are helpful with the app they have.
In terms of CBT support is is nonexistent compared to others like Exam 5 & 8, basically you got a few excel exams and you are on your own otherwise.
I really like the Rising Fellow cookbook for the upper level exams for the “problem” portion of the exams, it does an excellent job of walking you through how to solve them and why, not just a regurgitation of the source material like some sections in TIA are done.
TIA + Cookbook for me. Source + Cookbook is probably fine but a lot of it is awful to read and I’d rather listen to it on video/audio.
