Took my first go at the SIE today and ended up with a 68% on it. I could tell the questions that were experimental but the thing that threw me off the most was the change up in verbiage. Even after reading multiple times it as a still a handful of questions that threw me completely off. Pretty sure im not the only one though but only 30 more days to take it again.
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Hi @Howard_Kuhn, I’m sorry to hear that you were so close, but the good news is you are very close and it’s likely you’ll pass on your next take.
I looked at your account to see if I have any advice, and it looks like you’re on the right track. I see you’ve skimmed over a few chapters but have read most of our content, and it’s great that you’ve taken a lot of practice exams. I’d recommend you spend a bit more time reviewing the exams after you’ve taken them - it’s that focused review that helps you identify your weak areas and improve for next time.
I noticed that you went pretty far over the time limit on your last few practice exams - was the timing of the exam a challenge when you sat for the actual one?
Yeah I still have the review sheets from all the practice test & go over those on the regular. I was over on time for some tests due to work conflicts, so time was off but it wasn’t an issue during the actual test. I think I should be fine the next go around. I know what to expect as well.
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I am a medical professional and I am also an Insurance agent. I have taken state boards with information that is far more difficult then SIE exam. Finra SIE exam is fairly new and I failed it as well on my first try. I received scored 65%. Never have I failed an exam. They don’t know how to word these questions and they try to hard to throw you off. This needs to be called to their attention. I took four different practice exams online several times and passed each one with no less than 85%. Finra is not as important as my medical exams but their content is not straight forward and very deceptive in my opinion. Its like this " You study the important features of an ant. They are small, some are brown red or black. They are hard workers and they work as a team. Finra’s ? " What color are ants eyes?" This is how their questions are. You study the important features of securities and they ask questions so insignificant.
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Thats a very accurate assessment. It was pretty much a 180 in verbiage which in my head made zero sense. Why completely such a simple thing as the verbiage which is at the core/base should be the same across the board.
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I just had the same experience on the Series 65. Passed ~10 practice exams and felt strong, scored about a 68%. I was so thrown off by the wording.
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Hi @Josephine_Runte, thanks for posting your feedback. It is quite frustrating that these exams often seem to test reading comprehension more than financial knowledge, but we can only assume that they are very intentionally and specifically written.
FINRA and NASAA are constantly updating their questions to ensure the integrity of the exam, and we make hundreds of updates to our content every month to ensure we stay as close as possible.
I looked at your study history and have some specific feedback - I’ll follow up in a private message!
After you have completed your Achievable study material and taken a few mock finals, I recommend looking up Series 7 Whisperer and Series 7 Guru exam reviews on YouTube. They run through practice exams from STC, Kaplan, Knopman, etc. You can test your knowledge with these exams that use different verbiage/sentence structure.
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