what percent do i need to get to pass cfa level 1
[Updated for Nov 2021 CFA exams Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 exams – details below. To help our estimates, ship your results PDF to results@300hours.com.]
This article is about minimum passing scores. For CFA exam pass rates, encounter this article instead.
IMPORTANT: Delight do non utilise our MPS estimate as a basis to plead to CFA Institute to ask for a retabulation/recheck. Our MPS estimate is an estimate – using our MPS gauge to competition your consequence won't get you anywhere. Your private MPS may likewise vary.
What is the CFA passing score?
Unfortunately CFA Institute doesn't disclose the official Minimum Passing Score (MPS), which varies from exam to exam. We get why CFA Institute does this.
That said, we take been estimating the CFA exams' MPS as an intellectual exercise since 2012, with some help from our readers. We practise this as it can be useful for CFA candidates to have a target range of scores to aim for when doing practice exams.
Without further ado, here's all you demand to know nigh the CFA passing score: what it is, how it is determined, and what our MPS estimates are for all CFA exams since 2012.
- What is CFA test's minimum passing score (MPS)?
- Do candidates have to trounce the MPS for each topic to laissez passer, or just the overall test?
- How is the CFA passing score determined?
- Why doesn't CFA Found publish the minimum passing score for each level?
- CFA passing scores for each level: Our information-driven estimates for 2012-2021
- CFA Level 1 passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
- CFA Level 2 passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
- CFA Level 3 passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
- My results doesn't seem to fit your MPS estimate!
- Help our MPS research, send us your results PDFs!
What is CFA exam's minimum passing score (MPS)?
Merely put, the Minimum Passing Score (MPS) is the everyman score a candidate can get and still laissez passer their CFA exam.
Information technology is not published by the CFA Establish.
This should not be dislocated with the CFA pass rate published annually, which is normally lower and represents the percent of candidates that passed a detail exam.
Do candidates take to beat the MPS for each topic to pass, or just the overall test?
In that location are no topic-specific passing scores.
So equally long as your overall score beats the Minimum Passing Score, y'all should pass.
How is the CFA passing score determined?
In the before days, the MPS was a simple formula – 70% of the highest scoring candidate for that year. If the highest-scoring candidate scored 90%, the MPS would therefore be 70% * 90% = 63%.
Some candidates still mistakenly believe that this is the method used to decide the MPS today.
Soon, the MPS is determined by a custom methodology devised by CFA Establish, and one of the primary inputs is a serial of workshops based on the Angoff model.
Here'due south how the MPS for each Level are determined:
- A large, diverse group of CFA charterholders evaluate the entire exam individually question by question and makes a judgment on the performance of the just-competent candidate. In other words, envisioning a candidate they guess to be just good plenty to pass, they estimate the probability that this candidate volition get this question correct.
- Once all the evaluations are done, the charterholders take a look at actual candidate performance and the evaluation procedure is repeated again.
- Psychometricians oversee the entire process and the result of this workshop is the main reference (but not the terminal word) for setting the MPS.
- The CFA Institute Lath of Governors then puts all information on the table. All available information is considered including recommendations from the Angoff workshop (the almost important input), and then a final determination is fabricated on the MPS. The objective is to set a consistent competency level across years.
Yous therefore laissez passer past beingness ameliorate than what CFA Institute defines as a 'just-competent' candidate.
This may be indirectly influenced by the functioning of candidates taking the same exam every bit you lot, but it definitely is not a chief driver. Then remarks such equally 'bringing down the bend' are non exactly accurate.
Chris Wiese, Head of Exam Development at CFA Institute briefly summarizes the standard setting process:
Why doesn't CFA Institute publish the minimum passing score for each level?
CFA Institute's stance is that credentialing programs are designed to measure whether a candidate has the necessary noesis, skills, and abilities to perform a certain job function.
They are not designed to signal the relative performance within those skills.
The MPS can vary somewhat from year to year based on the difficulty of the questions asked, it is designed to exist a consistent criterion of the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Releasing the MPS would focus on beating a specific 'score', rather than acquiring the necessary knowledge to function every bit a competent finance professional.
Is CFA Institute right?
We think CFA Found'due south reasons are valid. The exams are just one role of what CFA Establish are about, and keeping that in mind, the desire to deemphasise comparison of CFA charterholders and various test years past MPS and/or actual scores makes sense. Of course, it doesn't stop candidates from wanting to know!
Will CFA Institute change this policy in the time to come?
It's unlikely. Nosotros've interviewed CFA Institute on this before and they've responded: "This, among other things, is to preclude the temptation for people (e.thou. employers) to compare candidates based on score, and to preserve a consistent benchmark across years."
CFA passing scores for each level: Our data-driven estimates for 2012-2021
So why are nosotros estimating the MPS so?
- Considering as ex-candidates ourselves, nosotros also understand the need to have a target score to be aiming for when preparing for the CFA exams.
- Considering through our awesome readers input, we do accept the collective info that no 1 else has to glean insights like this.
- And because nosotros're curious.
Prior to CFA Institute's introduction of the new format of results in June 2018, candidates did not receive their score, merely they received a 'score category' (0-l%, 51-70%, 71-100%) in each topic area.
To estimate the MPS, we analyzed thousands of actual, detailed, cocky-reported candidate results. Nosotros could deduce the MPS past considering extreme cases, i.e.
- candidates that passed despite showing bad topic area scores, and;
- candidates that failed despite showing good or decent topic area scores
Our method – in our stance – was quite robust, and increased in accuracy the more than cases we had to clarify.
Even though the results are reported differently now, we've developed a new method to guess the MPS. We prefer to keep things close to our chest for at present, but we practice believe that our new methodology is every bit as robust, if not better, than our former method.
And so, here nosotros go:
CFA Level i passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
We estimated that CFA Level 1's MPS ranged from 56%-74% from 2012-2021, with an 10 yr average of 64%. The latest estimated MPS for CFA Level 1 are:
- Nov 2021: 72%
- Aug 2021: 71%
- Jul 2021: 73%
- May 2021: 74%
- Feb 2021, Mar 2021, Apr 2021: 72%
Since the introduction of computer-based testing (CBT), our MPS estimates have consistently exceeded 70%.
CFA Found's official guidance states that the minimum passing score reflects the score that can exist achieved past a 'just competent' candidate, which is supposed to be consistent across the years, whether it'south 2010, 2015 or 2020. And then if the MPS has indeed experienced a step change to 70+%, this implies that the CBT exam format is easier to score compared to the older newspaper-based format.
It used to exist solid advice for candidates to aim for a 70% score in your mocks. With the latest MPS estimates, we no longer call up this is the case. The recent 2021 MPS shows that 75% and to a higher place would exist a much safer bet.
Why are February'21, Mar'21 and Apr'21 grouped together?
When nosotros performed the MPS analysis for the March and Apr 2021 CFA exams, we realized that the MPS, 90th percentile, 10th percentile, and topic weightings were the same as the February 2021 exams, so nosotros have grouped them equally i exam. This implies:
- Feb'21, Mar'21 and Apr'21 used the aforementioned exam, or the same topic percentage mix, or same pool of questions
- February'21, Mar'21 and Apr'21 used the same candidate cohort to decide the MPS, 90th percentile and 10th percentile. It'southward probable that Mar'21 and Apr'21 just used Feb'21's pool, which statistically should be fine since February'21 has mode more candidates.
CFA Level 2 passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
We estimated that CFA Level ii's MPS ranged from 60%-70% from 2012-2021, with an 10-year boilerplate of 65%. The latest estimated MPSs for CFA Level 2 are:
- May21 = 66.v%
- Aug21 = 70%
- Nov21 = 66.5%
For Aug21 the Level 2 MPS seemed to be post-obit the Level 1 tendency with a sharp increase into 70%+ territory (yikes) merely this seems to take gone back to familiar ground in Nov21, with a 66.5% estimated MPS. So hopefully Aug21 was just a temporary blip.
We won't become equally many data points equally the Level 2 exams only occur twice a year, but with future exams we'll come across a pattern sally and run across if CFA Constitute is right in proverb this is temporary. But to be extra safe, do brand sure you aim for a slightly college score (say 75-fourscore%) for your mocks.
CFA Level 3 passing scores 2012-2021 (estimated)
We estimated that CFA Level 3'due south MPS ranged from 55%-lx% from 2012-2021, with an x yr average of 58.5%.
Important note on L3 MPS accuracy: Since the change to calculator-based testing (and the fact that CFA Institute only distributes detailed results to failing L3 candidates), estimating the L3 MPS takes a lot more work and has a larger margin for error – there's just likewise big a variation of weightings to become an incredibly precise effect. Nonetheless, we endeavour our all-time.
The latest estimated MPS for CFA Level three (i.e. Nov'21 exams) is estimated to exist around 58%. (To assist us narrow this down, send your November'21 Level iii result to results@300hours.com!)
The post-CBT MPS estimates have been a mixed handbag. The Aug'21 MPS gauge shows a strong driblet from May'21 and is an all-fourth dimension low, but less of an outlier if you compare information technology with historical data. This seems to accept 'recovered' in Nov'21 – just nosotros simply don't take enough data-points at this stage to solidly conclude.
]The pass rates however are a different story: recent Level 3 pass rates plunged to 42% (May'21), 39% (Aug'21) and 43% (November'21), which indicates that between the alter to a computer-based testing format and a revised testing schedule, the Level 3 CFA exams might be harder to laissez passer than earlier.
We reached out to CFA Institute for a comment and got a response:
"Unfortunately, fewer candidates passed at each level of the May exams than we might have expected given historical pass rate trends. While some impacted candidates were able to laissez passer, we believe the disrupted nature of the deferred candidates' studies is reflected in the overall passing rate beyond all three levels.
All examinations are constructed using industry best-practice psychometric data and detailed examination blueprints. The difficulty of private exams may vary slightly, and nosotros suit the minimum passing score to compensate, but more often than not the required adjustments are small—typically just a few points. The degree of difficulty of the May exams was consistent with previous exam administrations, and this is the example whether we look back to paper-based testing or computer-based testing, which we introduced in February this year for Level I.
Estimator-based testing is neither harder nor easier than newspaper-based testing. Nosotros use robust statistical assay and processes to ensure that "the bar" remains unchanged for every exam assistants, employing techniques that are well established by psychometricians to ensure that the exam is neither easier nor harder because it is administered in a computer-based setting. In our move to computer-based testing nosotros went to great lengths to ensure the continued integrity of the exams and the CFA charter. In short, computer-based testing is not harder or easier."
CFA Found on the CFA Level 3 May'21 exam results
My results doesn't seem to fit your MPS guess!
The CFA computer-based exams are not the same for every candidate, and so the difficulty of the individual exams may vary.
When this happens, the MPS for that particular exam is also adjusted. Our MPS estimate is an amass value, so your MPS may be college or lower than our approximate "typically by a few points".
Come across relevant quote from CFA Plant:
All examinations are constructed using industry best-practice psychometric data and detailed examination blueprints. The difficulty of individual exams may vary slightly, and nosotros adjust the minimum passing score to recoup, but generally the required adjustments are modest—typically but a few points.
Then you might well be right in thinking that the MPS is college for your case.
Help our MPS research, send us your results PDFs!
To keep this enquiry going, we need your aid to estimate hereafter exam's MPS for each Level.
All you need to do is only send your results PDF to results@300hours.com. Thanks for your assist!
We sympathise the trust that you are giving united states when yous do so, and will non be sharing your information with everyone else, and volition only apply information technology to perform anonymized analyses that continue to aid present and future CFA exam candidates.
Fingers crossed for your results day!
Meanwhile, here are some related articles that may be of interest:
- When Will My CFA Results Exist Released?
- Cardinal deadlines and Important CFA Exam Dates
- How to Interpret Your CFA Results Charts
- Get and Customize Your Complimentary CFA Study Planner At present
Source: https://300hours.com/cfa-passing-score/
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