<p>"Taking and passing four tests with a 40% pass rate and passing all four is harder than passing one with a pass rate of 35%. That’s like saying rolling a dice and getting a 5 or 6 is less probable than rolling four dice and getting a 4 or above on all 4. "</p>
<p>Am I reading this right? Are you saying it’s harder to pass 4 easy exams, rather than take all 4 parts in 1 sitting? (CFA)</p>
<p>Are you saying that there are four parts of the CFA that people take in one sitting, and that each of those have a 35% failure rate? </p>
<p>What I am saying is that .4<em>.4</em>.4*.4 is less than .35</p>
<p>Again, the CFA is probably harder…just not because of the pass rates which are a silly measure of anything. The GED pass rate might be less than the CFA, that doesn’t mean it’s harder.</p>
<p>Pass rates are definitely not an accurate measure of difficulty.</p>
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<p>No way you would have accepted that argument if the CFA had a lower pass rate. You would have used it to say CFA was harder.</p>
<p>Who cares anyway? They designations for different fields. Does it, or should it, really matter to a CPA if his exam was harder than a CFA or vice versa?</p>
<p>Remember, the CFA level 2 pass rate is the rate for those who have already passed Level 1. That means for those 35% who passed level 1 and who qualify to take level 2, only another 35% passed level 2. Similarly for level 3. This is a pyramidal pass rate. So the numbers of successful candidates get smaller at each level. Plus the 4 years of relevant experience makes it harder to qualify for a CFA designation.</p>
<p>For the CPA exams, you can take those tests out of sequence, that is you take the parts of the exams in which you fail as many times as you wish, but not so for CFA.</p>
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<p>Just kidding.</p>
<p>How hard could the CFA be? Finance is like math, only VASTLY easier. Finance is basically what people like Inmotion12 think accounting is – non-challenging arithmetic for use in business. Little do they know that accounting has no math, arithmetic, algebra, or numbers.</p>
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<p>Shows vast ignorance of CFA tests.</p>
<p>I’ve seen CFA questions in finance textbooks, they weren’t that bad at all. Where is the hardness located?</p>
<p>Okay, that’s fine, but the guy didn’t post the level II pass rates. Further, my guess is that the motivation for people to carry on and work to pass level II probably plummets among those who already have gotten a job they want in the intervening year. CPA candidates are more motivated to get their CPA’s because it’s a more crucial credential for most of them.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprogram/courseofstudy/Pages/index.aspx[/url]”>Something Went Wrong;
<p><a href=“http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/index.php?23[/url]”>http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/index.php?23</a></p>
<p>That looks pretty hard, I suppose that finance also is devoid of math.</p>
<p>It seems that CFA is harder, and it takes much longer time to compleate.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprogram/exams/format/Pages/cfa_exam_question_formats.aspx[/url]”>Something Went Wrong;
<p>Whistle, don’t ■■■■■ too hard. CFA is a hard test, even engineer/math majors who take it all agree. The material is relatively difficult, but the way they test makes it even harder.</p>
<p>CPA pass rate is biased by some states letting you take it with little accounting education like CA or MA. You can go to community college or online and pick up hours.</p>
<p>States like FL, you practically need to have decided to be a CPA at 18 in order to get all the hours in 5 years.</p>
<p>A counter is the bar is considered a hard test but except for CA/NY, it has a high passage rate even at mediocre schools because you need 7 years of education (BA/JD) in order to take it.</p>
<p>CPA takers also tend to have employers paying for them to go to Becker classes. I doubt many CFA takers are spending their Saturdays at a program that’s been refined over decades to teach the average idiot how to pass the CFA as easily as possible.</p>
<p>Classes are not an efficient use of time.</p>
<p>For the average idiot it is.</p>
<p>Those classes are probably terrible. There is no substitute for taking practice tests.</p>
<p>I hold both the CPA and CFA designations and found the CFA exam to be more difficult. The CFA exam covered SO many areas - accounting, portfolio management, economics, fixed income, equities, derivatives, real estate, quantitative methods, ethics, etc. - it was very difficult to prepare for.</p>
<p>Also, to reiterate what cbreeze stated - realize that only the people who passsed Level One are now taking Level Two. Then, when you are taking Level Three, you are competing only against the people who got past Levels One and Two. So the passing rates for Levels Two and Three are deceiving - the exam population only includes the people who passed the earlier exams.</p>
<p>There are several CFA courses that you can take in an intensive three or four day period - Stalla and Schweser, most notably. They have review material, like you would find for the CPA exam.</p>
<p>I don’t want to make light of obtaining the CPA designation - that’s a great accomplishment, too. I just felt that the CFA exam was more difficult. Just my opinion.</p>