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Exam playbook

How to answer, not what to know. Technique is the cheapest marks available at this stage.

Constructed-response technique

Roughly 30% of the score sits in three sets over two hours. Most lost marks are procedural, not knowledge-based.

Read the verb
Identify and list want items, no elaboration. Explain wants a mechanism. Compare wants both sides on the same axis. Recommend or advise wants a decision and a justification — an answer without a recommendation cannot score the recommendation marks.
Count the marks
Marks signal the number of distinct points expected. Two points for two marks; do not write six sentences of context for a two-mark item.
Budget the time
Roughly a minute and a half per mark, minus reading. Write the time budget on the paper before you start and abandon an answer when its budget expires — a blank later question costs far more than a thin one.
Answer in the frame
Point → mechanism → consequence for this investor. One idea per bullet, no preamble, no restating the question.
Name the investor
Tie every recommendation to the stated horizon, liability, liquidity need and governance capacity in the vignette. Generic answers cap out at half marks.
Use the vignette's numbers
Facts given are given to be used. Quote the funded ratio, the payout requirement, the commitment level. Show any calculation's inputs — method marks survive an arithmetic slip.
The highest-yield habit
Bullets over prose. Graders look for identifiable points; a dense paragraph hides them. Bullet, bold the point, then one sentence of consequence.

Multiple-choice tactics

Pace
100 questions in two hours — about seventy seconds each. Take a first pass answering everything you know in under a minute, flag the rest, and spend the remainder on the flagged set. Never leave a blank; there is no negative marking.
Answer before reading options
For conceptual stems, form your answer first. Distractors are written to be attractive once read.
Spot the qualifier
Most likely, least accurate, best — these invert or rank. Underline them. A large share of errors are answering the opposite of what was asked.
Recognise the pair
Most conceptual questions are a confusion pair in disguise. Identify which pair is being tested and the answer usually resolves itself.
Quantitative stems
Identify what is being asked before computing, and sanity-check the sign and magnitude. Distractors are typically the right formula with a wrong input — annual vs quarterly, gross vs net, committed vs invested.
Absolutes
Options containing "always", "never" or "eliminates" are usually wrong; alternatives are full of conditional statements.

An eight-week plan

Adjust the start date; keep the sequence. The principle is that reading is the least efficient way to spend the last month.

Weeks 1–2
Models and Risk first — they are the most quantitative and everything else references them. Read a section, then close the notes and reproduce its formulas and confusion pairs from memory before moving on.
Weeks 3–4
Methods, Accessing and Asset Owners. Do every fee, waterfall, IRR and pacing calculation by hand at least twice; these are the most reliably computed items on the exam.
Week 5
Due Diligence, Volatility and Complex Strategies. For each strategy write one sentence naming what it is short.
Week 6
Emerging Topics and Universal Considerations, worked entirely as essay practice — six full constructed-response answers under time, not reading.
Week 7
Full mock under exam conditions. Score it, then spend two days only on the categories you missed. Re-drill the formula sheet by recall, covering the right column.
Week 8
Second mock early in the week. Then taper: confusion pairs, formula recall, and one essay a day. No new material after this point — it displaces retrieval practice and raises anxiety without raising the score.

Weekly rhythm that works: new material in the morning when attention is highest, retrieval practice of older material in the afternoon, and one timed writing exercise every second day. Spacing beats volume: revisiting a topic three times across three weeks beats three consecutive days on it.

Exam day

Before
Confirm the test-centre logistics and identification requirements the day before. No new material. Sleep matters more than one more reading — recall degrades measurably on short sleep.
Part I
Two passes with flagging. Watch the clock at question 50; if you are behind, speed up on recognition questions rather than skipping them.
Between parts
Reset deliberately. Part I performance tells you nothing about Part II, and carrying frustration into the essays costs marks directly.
Part II
Read all three sets first and start with the one you know best — momentum matters. Write the mark budget beside each item. Bullets, bold the point, name the investor.
Last ten minutes
Fill every blank with a structured half-answer. Partial credit is real, and a defensible framework with no numbers still scores.

Exam structure, weights and timing here reflect the standard published format — confirm the details for your sitting in the current CAIA candidate handbook.

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