Friday 26 June 2015

CIMA official pass rates - F3 has the lowest pass rates at Strategic level


Hi everyone,

As you are probably aware, yesterday CIMA published the pass rates for the Objective Test exams. These statistics are based on students who have attempted the exams between January and May 2015. 



Here are the key points to take from yesterday's pass rates:

  • The performance pillar is achieving the lowest pass rates with only 54% of students passing P1, 57% passing P2 and P3
  • The enterprise pillar is achieving the best pass rates overall. 83% of students passing E1, 91% passing E2 and 71% passing E3 
  • P1 has the lowest pass rates at Operational level
  • P2 has the lowest pass rates at Management level
  • F3 has the lowest pass rates at Strategic level
  • Overall the F1 and P3 exams have the lowest pass rates
  • Overall the E2 has the highest pass rate
  • In more than half of the objective test subjects less than 50% of students are passing first time



Although the exam style and format has changed for these subjects, it is interesting to compare the pass rates from last year to this year. As you can see from the table above the pass rates have generally been a lot higher since the implementation of the objective test exams

Astranti Financial Training 



Friday 12 June 2015

The secret to passing the CIMA OT exams revealed

Hi Everyone,

Thanks to those of you that completed our survey to find out - What does it take to pass an Objective Test exam?
So far we've had a great response with over 60 students taking part!

We've received responses from students who've passed and failed exams across all CIMA subjects, This means we have good range on which to base our findings.

These findings should definitely help you in your upcoming exams and will surely be beneficial to future students.
Here is an overview of the key points:

The secret to passing is...

Putting in the hours!
We were able to break down the exam pass rate by hours of study and the results were clear.
Hours of studyNumber of PassesNumber of Fails
40-602210
Less than 404041
  • Students that studied for between 40-60 hours had a pass rate* of 69%
  • Students that studied for less than 40 hours had a pass rate of 49%
If you want to increase your chances of success, you should aim to study for 4-6 weeks and put in 10+ hours each week.
*Pass rate= number of passes/total number of attempts

The toughest exam is...
  • Based on the survey, students are failing P3 and F3 on more than one occasion before they pass.
  • So far P3 had the highest failure rate in our survey proving to be the toughest exam.
  • Now that CIMA have changed the pass mark, I would hope that the pass rate in these exams falls into line with the others!
What materials should I be using?
  • Study Texts, Mock Exams and Revision Questions were the most popular study materials used by students, with a majority of respondents finding them 'useful' or 'extremely useful'.
  • Everybody (that's 100%!) who had passed an exam had used Study Texts as part of their revision and 95% had completed Mock Exams.
  • 80% of those people who have used Mock Exams had completed 3 or more.
  • More than three quarters of students who had passed exams had used Revision/Practice Questions.
  • A combination of study texts, revision questions and mock exams was seen by students as the most useful revision materials.
  • By contrast, the use of these materials was much lower for students who failed exams. More than half of the students who had failed, did not use revision/practice questions as part of their preparation for the exams.
Lastly, we were pleased to see that every student in the survey that used our Astranti materials had passed their exams.

You can still take part in the survey by going to the following link. It's totally anonymous and will only take a few minutes - What does it take to pass an Objective Test exam?

Astranti Financial Training.

Friday 5 June 2015

28.6% find SCS exam harder than expected - see the results of our survey

Hi everyone, 

We recently asked our students to complete a survey based on their experience of their recent Strategic Case Study Exam. 

We've been looking at the fascinating feedback very carefully and here is a summary of the key points:

54.8% of respondents found the difficulty of the exam to be 'as expected', with 28.6% finding it 'more difficult'.

Students commented that that there weren't any big surprises in the exam and the questions were fair in comparison to what they anticipated.

Some students commented that their writing approach and structuring of answers went well in the exam, with many saying that the Astranti study text was helpful in these areas.

They also felt they did well in applying the pre-seen into their answers which is a good sign!

Time management was stated as an issue by many students, emphasising the need for mock practise.

Other comments indicated that many students found they had a good understanding of the theory but found it difficult to apply the models within specific questions.

Almost 50% of students concluded that they should have spent more time on mock exams.

36.8% said they would revise LESS theory

Here are 5 tips from the survey for future students:
  1. Become an expert on time management
  2. Complete as many mock exams as you can
  3. Understand the pre-seen and industry in-depth
  4. Don't put too much time into the study of theory (but do enough so you are competent!)
  5. Make sure you answer the question!
We hope you've found this information useful.

If you've took your strategic Case Study exam and you've yet completed the survey we would love to hear from you - SCS Survey 


Astranti Financial Training.