Quest Complete

Or maybe I should say quest mostly complete.

I passed SDM finally.  Now I just have to go to the FAC and get my FSA.

In thinking about it, the name of this blog isn't FSA quest, it's exam quest.  I declare the quest complete!

Thanks to everyone who has made kind and supportive comments over the years, I do appreciate it.  It is interesting to think that I wasn't even sure I could pass one exam 6 years ago, never mind pass all of them!

I still have that Fellowship exam advice post in draft form, I'll have to get that up soon, especially as exam season will be ramping up again.

Post Exam Update

I felt like I did pretty well.  I would guess I confidently answered 80% of the points, and still provided decent answers for the rest.  There were very few points I didn’t feel like I had a chance for at all.  Of course I won’t get everything I confidently answered correct, but hopefully I’ll be able to get enough correct to pass.

Now on to the waiting…  I always find it a little weird to decompress after an exam.  Given the high level of productivity I am in the last 2 months before an exam, I am in the mode to want to be doing productive things constantly.  I start some online classes, I start doing projects around my house, etc.  It usually takes me until about now (2.5 weeks after the exam) to really start to relax.  I’ll still keep doing the productive things, but I might occasionally watch a movie or read a book as well.  You know - actual relaxing.  I think I remember how to do that...

I have to say the last month of studying was pretty stressful.  I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that stressed – certainly not in a long time.  While the whole process of taking any exam is stressful, this being my third attempt on this exam made it my last eligible attempt in the student program here at work, and I think that added more stress.  Never mind the pure fact of it being my third try on my last exam.  For all of April I constantly felt stressed out – I really had to limit the amount of external stress I put upon myself.  Even post-exam, it has taken a while for the stress to work itself out.  I still have some of it, maybe that is just going to continue until results come out??  On the positive side, the stress has helped me improve my overall health.  I’ve taken to running or walking pretty much every day now in order to help deal with it.  It had been hard to keep up my exercise and eating discipline while studying, and I had gained a fair amount of weight over the last 6 years.  I had planned to really work on that post-exam anyway, so I got a little bit of a head start!

After I took the exam I started a draft of a “How to study for FSA exams” type post.  The one caveat being the different tracks might require different approaches.  I’m going to circle back to it and hopefully post it pretty soon.

For everyone else out there who just took an exam, enjoy the break!  Or enjoy the modules… or studying for the next exam already…

SDM Result - Try 2

January 2015:
I’m meeting with the head of my department in a scheduled 1 on 1, and I show him the histogram of my exam scores.  I had just received a 6 in CFE, and was explaining to him how fortunate I was to receive so many 6s and 7s without ever receiving a 5.  I had received three 4s as well.  The point I was making was that whenever I was close to the line, I passed, and whenever I failed, I failed by enough that it didn’t feel tragic.

January 2016:
I get a 5 on my second try of SDM.

I really don’t know how I got a 5, except to say that I believe it was the lowest score I possibly could have gotten.  I studied a ton for this exam, and as it was my second try on the same exact syllabus I felt really comfortable with the material.  I remember thinking as it got close to exam day that the only thing “more” that I could do next time would be to make flashcards for the case study.  I was being humorous obviously (maybe?), but the point being was I felt I had covered the material a ton, and knew it really well.

As I left the exam, I felt I had really good answers for all but one question.  During the exam I changed a few answers I had already written after thinking I had discovered a trick in the question, only to realize after I left that the question was straightforward and the answer I threw away was actually the correct answer.  That was about 4 or 5 points of answers, and I was hoping I had enough other points that it wouldn’t come into play.  Also, the time I took to do that cost me in that I ran out of time at the very end, costing myself perhaps 1 point on a sub-question I knew but ran out of time on.  Still, I was thinking I had plenty of other points elsewhere.

BUT, given my experience last time, I spent the time waiting for results not thinking about it as much as possible and certainly not thinking I had passed.  I was prepared for anything.

So on results day, I open the passing exam candidate list and don’t see my number.  After looking at it for maybe 30 seconds, I realize there are no other numbers near mine.  I look at the file and realize I called up the passing numbers from the prior sitting.  Ha!  What a funny story that would be to tell people - I thought I had failed at first!

Then, I call up the current sitting results, and I’m not on there either.  This story isn’t so funny anymore…

The SOA has released the question by question results (you get a score for each question if you fail and upper level exam), and there are two questions for sure that I can’t believe I got as low as I did.  I’m not trying to sound like sour grapes here, but I did really well on certain questions I expected to, and middling to poor on my weaker questions, but there are two I thought I should have nailed and my scores were really low.  Since I got a 5 my exam would have been graded twice, so I’m sure the scoring is correct.  I have reviewed the answers the SOA has released and thought I would have gotten the bulk of the content of those answers, but apparently not.

So, I’m going to be studying one more time.  About 25% of the syllabus has changed, and I’ve been trying to both get familiar with the new stuff as well as refresh on the old stuff.

When I first started this blog (or quest if you will), my oldest was aged 2 and the twins were 3 months old.  Now that they are 8, 6, and 6, it is a lot harder to study.  They require a lot more energy to parent during the week, and they stay up later so my windows of study time are both shorter and I have less energy to study when I can.  That’s not an excuse by any means, just reality.  I will have to figure out how to make it happen one more time.

I’m finding right now that while I am pushing through starting to study again, I definitely am not in the zone.  I find with upper level exams I tend to peak in the last 6 weeks, so as long as I get my time in now building the fundamentals and try to get ready to maximize my time of peak studying focus, I should be ok.  I remember when studying for the prelims I could stay in peak studying mode for 3 - 4 months, but I don’t know if the nature of upper level material lends itself to that.

Thanks to those who have posted comments of support. I am glad people are getting something out of reading these experiences, and is nice to know there are those who would like to see this quest completed!  Hopefully we can finish this!

SDM Result

The more time went on after I took SDM in the spring, the more I was sure I had passed.  I told everyone – bosses, coworkers, friends, anyone who would listen – that while I still have to wait for results to be released, I was sure I had passed.  I was planning to go to the FAC in Seattle, already thinking about what books I should read on the plane and what activities I should do in the off hours.  I was ready to go off into the sunset into a study-free life…

So you know how this story ends, right?

My number wasn’t on the list.

While I knew I had to wait for official results, as mentioned above, I was sure I had passed.  Even now (grades have not been released yet) I have no idea how I didn’t pass.  I’ll review the exam in detail at some point once the answers are released, and hopefully I can make some sense of it.

The interesting thing as far as this blog goes though, is that this was a total gut-punch.  I’m not going to say my world came crashing down, but I was about as devastated as I get while still functioning.  This is maybe the first real setback as far as this blog is concerned.  While I have failed exams before, they were always exams that I was prepared to have failed, and it wasn’t a huge disappointment.

Looking back to my exam wrap up actually helped me deal with failing.  While I had become really confident of passing in the interim, I had forgotten just how difficult my studying in the spring session was, and how I had a sick kid with me on 3 of my 5 study days before the exam.  While those are by no means excuses, they at least serve to remind me that passing was by no means a lock before I took the exam.

I am still pretty upset.  I’m not upset at anything specific, I think it is just more the fact that in my mind I was done, and this is a pretty big setback.  I have to get into the studying groove again, and figure out how to get myself through the whole process and work to ensure a pass.  I REALLY didn’t think I was going to have to do that, so I’m still adjusting to the disappointment.

I imagine most of those who are taking exams and will eventually read this will come to a point like this in their exam-taking journey.  Hopefully seeing that it happens to a lot of people can be some comfort, and perhaps I’ll be able to blog a little bit more this time around to provide some perspective on how I am adjusting to the setback.

Maybe I should think of this like a concert…  The band went off the stage, but we’re coming back out for one more encore, which will include a couple of our greatest hits!  Ok, that is a little bit of stretch, but let’s go with it for now.

I think grades will come out later today, so I’ll provide some kind of update when I have more information.

Post-SDM wrap up

I considered typing up a post the day before I took my exam last week.  I was exhausted, stressed, almost non-functional as a human being.  I still participated with my family and took care of my kids, but the glaze of exam burnout had hit.  I decided from an efficiency standpoint not to expend the energy to type up a post, but I’ll try to relate the whole study sitting’s experience here.

I had a strong suspicion that I passed last time I took CFE, so I downloaded as many of the readings as I could before I got the official pass in January.  There weren’t a ton, but I did try to read up as much as I could.

Once I got the official pass in January, I ordered the source material as well as the PAK study manual and online seminar.  I was a big fan of the PAK material for this sitting, especially the videos.  I felt the PAK study notes by themselves were a little tough to get context on without either watching the videos or going back to the source readings, and I did both of those things many times.  I seem to remember that for ERM and CFE the study notes by themselves were sufficient a lot of the time, but in this case without larger context I found even using them as review material was difficult without more explanation.  This might be a symptom more of the material than of PAK’s presentation, as there was just a ton of information in seemingly every reading on the syllabus.

I found that my study sessions for FSA exams have been more efficient in short chunks rather than huge blocks (huge blocks worked for prelim exams), so I would do 30-45 minutes in the morning and at lunch and then 60-90 minutes in the evenings.  I didn’t study much on the weekends, because having 3 kids on weekends really saps all your energy!  Even trying to study after the kids went to bed would not have helped very much.

So, armed with that material and a structure, I began my studying in January.  It was rough going the whole way through.  While I found the material interesting, there was SO MUCH of it that it really made it hard to feel like I ever had a handle on it.  There must have been well more than 250 lists I could possibly have tried to memorize, and just so much material that could be tested that it often felt hopeless.  My strategy was to memorize a few formulas, but beyond that not to try to memorize anything specific, just to learn the material as well as possible and be able to understand and apply it.  Now, even with that strategy, every time I opened the study material there was always more and more concepts that could possibly be tested, and there is no way I would ever have been able to learn them all.  Every single week I just felt like I was trying to hold back a waterfall – I was tired from trying and it just kept coming!

So, at no point did I really feel confident.  I had some ideas of what techniques I would like to use for taking notes and reviewing the material, but by the time I finished my read through and initial review, there wasn’t enough time for me to really work with the material.  Keep in mind, I only had 3.5 months between finding out I passed CFE and taking SDM.  If you’re throwing family responsibilities in there and weekends are out for the most part, that isn’t a lot of time.  So, the last few weeks before the exam I started to formulate what I would try to do for next sitting and had a good strategy to pass in the fall.  Unfortunately, I still had to prepare for spring!

I am fortunate to have study time provided by the student program at work.  Most students take the 5 days prior to their exam off from work to study.  I have always done this, and found it very effective. Well, for the first 3 of the 5 days I had a sick kid at home!  While I should still be able to study with a sick kid at home, it was definitely a constant distraction and made it difficult to get into the full mindset or “zone”.  Also, I couldn’t take study breaks like I normally do.  A mid-afternoon trip to the grocery store has always been a good study break for me, and I couldn’t leave the house with a sick kid.

Halfway through the third study day, a coworker of mine who is taking the same exam called and we chatted about how we felt about our chances.  He was feeling positive, but I was not.  I felt like I knew nothing!  Keep in mind, the exam is in 3 days at this point.  He was encouraging, and after he called I decided to try to use one of the methods I was preparing for the fall, which was to take notes on all the sections by hand.  Essentially, extract what I felt was most important from the PAK notes (based on my highlighting and handwritten notes in there) and put it all in a notebook.  2 full days and 30 handwritten pages of notes later, I had given myself and handy mini review book, and had reinforced many of the concepts in an efficient manner.

At this point, I still felt like I didn’t KNOW anything from a memorization standpoint, but that I was pretty familiar with over 80% of the material based on my crunch-time hand written note taking.  If they asked me to apply concepts, I would be in good shape. If they wanted lists from the study material, I would come up short on most.

Well, the exam didn’t ask for a lot of lists to be regurgitated.  It turned out to be application of concepts and a lot of applying concepts to the case study.  My preparation was targeted towards that, and I feel like I got at least somewhere between 60-70% of the points, and quite possibly more than that.  Based on feedback from other students, all of us seem to agree that the exam felt a little bit easy, so we shall see where the pass mark and pass rate end up, but I am cautiously optimistic at this point.  I was able to answer every question with something, even if I thought it really wasn’t 100% correct, and I finished both the morning and afternoon sessions with at least 15 minutes to spare.  This is the best I have felt out post-exam of my 4 FSA exam sittings, so we shall see if that holds up when results are reached.

If the result in July is a pass, the quest is complete!

Passed CFE, on to SDM!

A bit of a late update on this one - I got my result for my second attempt at CFE in January, and I passed with a 6.  I feel like I am very fortunate to have gotten four 6's and no 5's at this point!

I have started studying for SDM, using the PAK online seminar and study guide.  I have been a little slow to get fully into gear, mostly due to "busy-ness" associated with family, but hopefully I can get two really strong months of studying in.  I am finding the material so far to be both interesting but seemingly challenging to learn at a level required for a FSA exam.  I could see some really challenging questions coming out of it asking very specific things, and it would be incredibly difficult to master every reading.  As I mentioned previously (I believe anyway), the only strategy I have developed for upper level exams is just to try to learn everything!  I'm going to keep doing that, and using the flashcards PAK provided as short term refreshes in between times I can make passes through each reading.

I did get a pass for my third and final FSA module, so I only have the DMAC left after this exam.  Wow, it has been a long 5 years!  

Post CFE thoughts

Well, I feel better after taking CFE that I did last time.  I think I got around 58 of the available 100 points.  For my previous 2 FSA exams, I estimated that 54 or 55 percent of the available points was the pass mark, so hopefully I can squeak by on this one.

As for the exam, I felt the morning session was pretty fair, and the afternoon session was pretty rough.  Based on comments online that seems to be a pretty universal feeling.  For the morning session, I felt that if you studied the material you would have a decent grasp of most of the things they were asking for.  In also felt the morning questions were pretty creative approaches to the material and I enjoyed reading and thinking about them.  The afternoon session was not like that.  I thought it was more representative of what a very difficult version of the exam would look like.  I’m not saying it was unfair, but more on the highly challenging level.

So, we shall see how results go.  In the meantime, I’m going to work on my final module and the DMAC, and start to review the syllabus for the next exam once it is released.

If you are waiting on results as well, good luck!