Wow, this has been a trip. Actually a trip isn’t nearly the best word, as that makes it sound fun. A challenge? An obstacle?
I can definitely say I’ve never worked this hard for this long at anything before, and it has been a tremendous challenge. I worked really hard in Feb and March in anticipation of being ready a few weeks early, and it is a good thing I did so, because this exam required a lot more work than I anticipated. Even at this point, I’m not overly confident of passing. I think I have a good shot, but there are still a lot of questions I know I can’t answer. I know I’m never going to be able to answer 100% of questions on any exam, so we’ll just have to see how it shakes out tomorrow.
The road to this point has been very challenging. I don’t know that I could ever tell someone to try to prepare for this exam without giving them a lot of caveats. Although each piece of the material by itself isn’t too hard, there is a TON of it, and for much of the material you have to know a few alternate ways to approach things, exceptions, etc. As I have been taking practice exams, I have rarely been able to score above 50%. I have been learning from the things I missed, but it is really discouraging to put in over 400 hours of study and still have a ton of trouble with a practice exam!
I’m not exaggerating when I say over 400 hours. Since I took MFE, I have studied approximately 5 out of every 6 nights for 2 hours or more. That doesn’t include some extra long sessions I got in, entire days I took off to study, time I spent during lunch, study time at work, etc. After the exam, I will have to look back and think about whether all the time I spent was effective. I plan to write a post exam post outlining the schedule I followed and my thoughts on it.
As for my overall confidence, I really don’t know what to think. I know I know a TON of the material. I am pretty well versed in almost every topic, I know almost every formula, and I have been through every type of available practice question. That being said, there are still approaches I struggle with, and certain questions that just stump me. I have to keep in mind I don’t need to know 100% of everything, but that being true is part of the reason I never feel that comfortable going in to an exam. If I had to rate my chances of passing on a 1-10, I’d want to say a 7, but I’d bump it down a little bit to 6.5. Realistically, it could be as high as 8 and as low as 3. That is part of the fun of this process!
