I have voted as bad...I m expecting 75-80% in 1st half..and in 2nd half it may be 50-60%...I don’t think i am going to clear it..

HI David,

Fine that you see our feedback remarks as useful. The early birds were indeed useful (I discovered an answer of one of the questions Riskmetrics and Garch(1,1) difference for example but I watched it to long ago on the exam). The problem with the questions and the spreadsheets and the PDF is the limited time available. If you want to do all you must choose what to do. Reading all the material as you suppose to do takes a piece of your time. Reading and listening to your movies seeing some spreadsheets.
To have it more practical and exam based. You can made it more case based. Provide generate data with a randomizer and let student do all the testing based on a case. And let the student make a regression in stead of following the aims one for one make the case and see you cover all the aims. I know this takes time too to make but 2009 will be especially around statistics quit the same..
A lot of things can be tested with this (Skewness, Jackbarra, t-test sample definitions, inference testing, confidence testing, historical VAR, VAR). A lot of the material can be used in risk management. Operation risk can also be done with a small LDA case reforging statistical practice.

Let the case do the work. One other thing what can be done is a flash exam per segment and make it lengthly and get a result. First make your questions and result per mail with time pressure in it.

Another thing what might be useful make couples of study-bodies to make exercises and sparring with fellow students possible (out of the box thinking). And make some kind of competition between the teams, competition is always helpful.

This is focussed on passing the exam but I think it is also more productive. I know things are not as easy as putting them in a fast reply but maybe you can roll your mind about it.

I hope Garp don’t remove the Risk matrix questions from grading since I was correct on that one

John

Hello David:
the exam is totally different compared with past ones. I think they try to renew all of those ideas. If they try to
do that. I think they have to provide some materials for the testing preparation instead of just the papers and
chapters in books. But I know it is really hard for me. Because I have no good memory for all of those materials.
The FRM exam this year is tough I think and is suitable for those ones have been lectured by those professors
I guess.(Of course, they have to be newbies not those ones with them several years ago!) The test this year
needs a lot to test skill and I think that nobody can finish it on time without guessing. Therefore, pass or
not pass may be due to LUCK. That makes me feel a little disappointed. But we have to face the music as
I am not a native American. Therefore the language gap does exist between me and tests. But after the exam,
I really feel the test is more like a phD qualification instead of a test for those ones working in the company.
The past experience is a little void for this exam. But I know the examer try so hard to have some questions
that can tell the different of testers. I still think it is not about the early preparation since after the morning
session, I heard a lot of people talking about the preparation seems to be useless. I know a lot of them go
to the CRAM school but it seems a little.... I already take the past exam of 2000 to 2003 FRM exams which is
provided in the Jorion’s book and take those 31 chapters at least two times. Of course, I also take the practice
exams of 2006 to 2008 provided by D.H. website. But as others mentioned, it likes some IQ tests. The question
is long but the answer is short. I believe they are a lot of traps there, and many ones have not to be calculated
by calculator but by hands and simple mind.
Sincerely
chris

It seems like everyone else has covered much of the exam.  I, as others, was tired by the time I covered the lengthy questions on the second part.  I found myself speed reading them and not really paying attention.  Recommendation, sleep well the days before! 

David, your site covered very well the items tested.  Thank you very much!!  I will most likely have to take the test again next year since I was not able to dedicate the time to studying that I should have, unless they become very generous with the curve

As such, you can add me to your forecasted revenues (hopefully at a discounted price) for next year!  I really learned a lot from your presentations.  The way you display the material is an advantage, specially the way you combine the tutorials with the study guides, which complement each other.

What is this ankit if your score is like you expect you will sail through. Why do you guys list the exam performance and bad and not good, I don’t understand. After expecting 65% in a tough exam what more do you want.

I did view all of the early bird sessions and I looked at most of the spreadsheets and I found them helpful for learning the concepts.  I chose BT over Scheweser, eventhough I used Schweser for most of my CFA exam preparation because I liked Dave’s early bird screencasts so much and I liked the fact there were spreadsheet examples and I thought BT was more than worth the money for everything I’ve learned.  So, my decision was to go with the actual GARP readings and BT rather than spend $500 on Schweser alone.  I did read some of the GARP readings, but there is just too much information there and there are no questions at the end of the chapter like what CFAI would do for their assinged readings.  It was just impossible to remember what is relevant based on GARP’s readings alone.

So, in hindsight, I do agree that more case studies that were long and lengthy with a lot of distracting data may have better prepared us for the exam, but it is difficult to come up with realistic sample exam questions.  I recall from my CFA preparation that I didn’t think Scheweser did a good job with sample exam questions as well and the best source for sample exam questions that used the same sort of traps and language were from CFAI themselves and those practice exams were $50 each and I spent $250 on just practice level 3 CFA exams in 2007, but they were extremely helpful and I passed.  Thus, I think David did a great job this year, despite not having enough long lengthy questions for us...but my point is that making long case study questions that will be similar to GARP is a very very difficult task and it probably wouldn’t be cheap unless we expect Dave to not sleep at night or perhaps sell it as an additional add-on package towards the end of the cirriculum.  Personally, I would have liked to see GARP follow CFAI by putting out more (better quality) sample exam questions...one’s that weren’t just taken from past exams but written in the same year as the actual exam is given.  I would have paid at least $100 for 150 good sample exam questions that were more like the questions on the actual 2008 exam...at least, that would have prepared us for all the different flavors of scaling VaR to different time scales and the long 1/2 page and 3/4 page cases.  But, in all fairness, they should provide it for free because the readings and the exam fee isn’t cheap and there shouldn’t be an advantage for those who can afford to purchase the additional questions.

I think fundamentally the problem with this year’s exam was emphasis focused on deciphering what the question was asking of you, rather than testing knowledge of concepts.  Triple negative elimination questions, multiple distracting text and data may serve GARP in making the exam harder to pass, but perhaps not harder in the way they would really prefer...determining high quality risk professional candidates. 

I, like another member who posted here, haven’t taken an exam since my very distant university days, and felt the exam was more about how good you are at taking exams rather than how well you understood the material.  I feel I was pretty diligent in my studies and grasped the concepts well- I started with david’s early bird session, I actually read nearly all the core materials, followed through all david’s screencasts and most spreadsheets.  I still felt I was at a disadvantage in the exam and most likely have failed due to question deciphering/answering strategy.

David’s course has been invaluable.  The screencasts, study notes and spreadsheets were of most use to me.  I did end up also purchasing the Schweser notes.  For reasons that follow… this isn’t meant to be a critique of Bionic Turtle as I think it is the superior learning product.  More in the vain of constructive feedback to help make BT even better:-

BT pros
- The full hour screencasts were great.  The study notes were also really good.  David excels at breaking down complex ideas into visual concepts that really capture the essence of what you need to know.  The Basel II diagrams and the Merton model screencast are just two of the many examples that I think helped tremendously.
- I found the spreadsheets were very helpful in breaking down every step of the calculations.  For me, this is how you really understand an approach.  Its often those tiny steps that are omitted in the core readings that trip you up, and the spreadsheets help clarify a lot.  There were maybe a few too many peripheral sheets where David could save some time and focus on some other areas.  There was some areas in the Schweser notes where the math just didn’t make sense, David’s spreadsheets were spot on.  If anyone has both you should look at the Surplus at Risk spreadsheet… it’s very clear what’s going on here.  In Schweser its just plain wrong and misleading.

Room to grow
- Where Schweser helped me was in two places-
1) They were concise in explaining dense textual, non-quantitative material such that you can grasp what you need to know.  This was especially the case for Op risk where there was so much regulatory stuff.  In my opinion, although BT is great at summarizing more quantitative concepts, for the qualitative areas, David’s notes were a little too sparse with not enough background or context to know how to use in the exam. 
2) Questions- One thing I did like about Schweser was that each section then summarizes key concepts and then has concept checking questions to get you into the question answering mind-set.  This is an approach that I think would benefit BT as it helps tie materials all together and bring us more into a exam ready frame of mind.

I should emphasize again, Bionic Turtle was definitely my primary source of study, and I only purchased Schweser a little under 2 months before the exam.  I’m very impressed with David Harper and the quality and sheer hard work he puts into the BT program.  I’d love to see it continue to improve (especially seeing as there’s a good chance I will be taking the FRM again next year).

Thanks

Simeon

@ John:
In regard to, “The problem with the questions and the spreadsheets and the PDF is the limited time available....To have it more practical and exam based. You can made it more case based. “
- Yes, I agree, I agree, thank you.
“And make some kind of competition between the teams” - Great idea, I think maybe a contest where winner(s) gets refund and/or prize to stimulate participation. Awesome idea!

@Chris:
In regard to “Therefore the language gap does exist between me and tests. But after the exam, I really feel the test is more like a phD qualification instead of a test for those ones working in the company. “
I mentioned this to GARP leadership yesterday; i.e., that the exam needs to take care to avoid a bias against non-native American/English speakers (most of my customers are outside the U.S., some are not native English-speaking and many do not bring recent academic experience). But, since I spend all year giving preparation, my deepest concern is that the preparation be relevant to the exam. BT needs to improve, of course, but the exam also needs to better reflect the assignments and the AIMS which constitute the course provider roadmap (or, what i am doing all year?). And the sample questions needs to get better. Including, incorrect/distracting sample questions need to be weeded out. I am summarizing all feedback in this thread for GARP (they read this thread anyway, so your feedback here is already seen by GARP)....the good news is: I believe they are quite committed to improvements in the exam. I truly believe the FRM is gold standard for risk and will only get better.

@Rowsey:
“hopefully at a discounted price:” of course, absolutely. My goal has always been to bring down the price for the exam prep.

To be candid about pricing, the #1 issue this year, for me, was piracy: we made everything downloadable because many customers requested download (e.g., to view on laptop/riding the train). The “price” of this is they are easier to pirate. This year, acute pain for us because, for example, one pirate sold those (illegal) copies from a major selling platform. He sold many copies before we shut him down (actually, I referred it to Kaplan as I did not have the resources/time to pursue and they were able to shut him down). I even have two visitors to the forum who admit this plainly; culturally, it seems, not paying for digital assets has become almost normative. The problem is, I need to get paid, of course, to provide the service and (just as important) to invest in improvements. Next year, I want to address the generous, wonderful feedback on this forum so I’d like to hire help specifically for (i) more, better questions and (ii) better notes. At the same time, i want to maintain convenience for customers so I want to keep the downloadable aspect. Finally, I want to be the low cost leader (I would argue our super low prices, over the last three years, has driven down prices among the training providers generally). But with low price like ours, it is critical that all users pay. It is not something you asked about , but i thought i’d share this dilemma. It’s not a long run problem: in the long run, my analysis of the business model is that it will actually tend toward free (I believe) and sponsors will pay for attention. As the value of customer attention will soon exceed the cost of developing the product.

@chih22:
Great points. About BT: “making long case study questions that will be similar to GARP is a very very difficult task and it probably wouldn’t be cheap unless we expect Dave to not sleep at night or perhaps sell it as an additional add-on package towards the end of the curriculum.” You are so correct. The absolutely hardest thing to do, as a provider, is write good quality questions. Easy to write lame questions; very timing consuming to write relevant questions anchored in assignments. And new candidates don’t necessarily bring this as a buying criteria. Some providers sell “we have 1,000s of questions” but irrelevant questions can do a disservice. I will be thinking about an add-on as you suggest. This year, on this forum, we discovered that even with GARP’s own samples (which are quite imperfect), there are very few high-quality questions in circulation generally.

“[GARP] should provide it for free because the readings and the exam fee isn’t cheap and there shouldn’t be an advantage for those who can afford to purchase the additional questions.” I am giving GARP this same feedback; included with registration *should* be a better set of relevant sample questions, at least a starter set.

@Simeon:
Fantastic feedback, thank you for (arftully) highlighting both pros and cons and for taking the time to offer constructive feedback. I sincerely agree with both sides, including Room to Grow. (and, totally agree, we’ve gone about far enough with *number* of spreadsheets. I think the relevant XLS can be improved but we don’t need to add too many more. Need to shift emphasis to the other areas.) I’ve printed your post and it becomes part of my planning for next year.

Thanks you!
David

Thank you David for your detailed webcasts...made preprations a bit easier

It was simply horrifying. This is not a way to test Knowledge and skill. U r simply checking time management.

It was surprising to see that many of the questions answers were not matching or were simply away from the statement. Your question says use compounding method but choices are those when we use discrete compounding.

Given a one page case study on Op risk caoital estimation, not justifyiable. U are just checking my skills of mathematical computation AND FAST USE OF CALCULATOR, it took lot of time. There was nothing big in that question. ( ALCO BANK QUESTION)

I hope any one who scores 50 is sure to clear it this time. The question was such that even finance pundits will not be able to solve in stipulated time.

Cheers and best of luck to all

Issue is what does garp do if the alternative answers are not correct. What if in TROR question I have choosen -12 mio instead of -6 mio althogh the answer was -9 mio.

Even the VaR questions, alternatives were not correct. Does it give benefit of doubt.

Also I do not know why have they checked the concepts of VaR after every second question,in real world and to us practitioners we feel VaR has badly failed and has almost lost relevance, its concepts only look good in books.

i voted as bad in the poll above ...

At the end of the day the fact that GARP forgot the AIMS about Basel this year and yet tested Basel as extensively is simply unforigivable. Combined with the rest of the mis-alignments to the AIMS I lost faith in the exam.. With more than one question instead of trying to answer the question I was instead estimating the probability that there was a flaw in the question (like the mistakes in the 2008 practise exam) which made it impossible to answer the question correctly.  Since I easily missed out on 15 questions cause i ran out of time, I have no idea whether I passed. I reckon the max i can get is a 50%. If this is sufficient to pass - like it was last year - I’d be happy for sure but still question what exactly it all meant.

I learnt an incredible amount in the last 6 months studying for this exam, thanks to Bionic Turtle. I particpated from the early-bird sessions and easily put in 350 hrs. David, you have an incredible gift and I was constantly at peace thinking there was someone out there doing so much of the studying for me. Thanks. The lectures are incredible as well as the excel sheets and notes. The ONLY thing missing is practise questions, which is clearly difficult (as mentioned) given that GARP didnt exacgtly strictly stick to the AIMS.

David, I took the concrete decision not do focus to much on past exam questions (beyond prescribed given time) since many of them didnt seem to link to the AIMS. This was a mistake since the test in fact didnt test many of the new AIMS and in this sense was like the past exams. More practise would have helped. The other mistake I made was to not spend enough time on the Investment Discipline and all the different VARs. I would make the point to FRM candidates next year to not see the Investment discipline as “the last 10%” but rather the “last 10% that ties it all together.”

I dont know if I will write the exam again next year if I fail. But i might just subscribe again to Bionic Turtle for the movies.

Regards,
Philip