Today I took the SIE exam and passed it. I initially started studying with Achievable in March, on my own because I knew I wanted to transition into the financial advisor role with the bank I currently work for (I’m currently a mortgage loan officer). After a colleague of mine got hired for the role and failed the test twice and had to find a new job, I decided to take it upon myself to initiate the sie on my own. Luckily I did because now the firm is waiting to give me an offer, which includes a sign on bonus if I already have the air, Since they won’t have to pay for me to study for this exam. It will also give me more wiggle room to negotiate my pay.
Thankfully I passed today!!! My anxiety was through the roof these past few days. I started to doubt myself so much, the negative thoughts started rolling in. Even though my achievable readiness was at 93% last week. Lastnight it went to 98%. This morning I took another exam and I was at 100% readiness!! Even with that, I was still doubting myself because of the information overload and some topics I was still struggling with.
With all of that said, the test wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I don’t feel it was too much more difficult than the achievable final exams. However, I do feel the study topics on finra is intimidating compared to what your actually tested on. I almost ran out of time. I had to pick up my pace and completed the test with 4-5minutes to spare. Needless to say, don’t give it. Give it your all and you will come out on the passing side.
Congratulations @Delbert_Runolfsson! That is all exciting news. Thank you for sharing this awesome experience. I am happy to hear that Achievable prepared you for the SIE and that you passed! Your words at the end are helpful for all—give it your all, and you will succeed.
I passed my SIE today, actually. Everything that you said is true. The study material is very intemidating compared to the actual exam. I feel as if this study program is very good for passing the exam. I just bought the Series 6 study material, and I plan on passing it to! Congratulations on passing your SIE, I know you have worked very hard on studying and trying to understand the material. I just want to let you know I am very proud of you, man, and you will do great things with your life.
Thank you! Congrats to you as well! Time to pass the next test for both of us. I’m doing the 7next. I’m going to purchase the study guide from Achievable again for this one. Then I’ll have to do the 66.
Explain to me what you mean by some study topics being more intimidating than what is actually tested. Are you telling me that Achievable just gives you more information than you actually need to pass the exam, or that the test is actually harder than the Achievable practice exams?
Also, were you scoring 90s or above on the practice exams? I can’t seem to get anything above an 85% max. Always missing at least 10 questions every time.
Hi @Myra_Kunde, we align our tests to match the difficulty of the actual exam.
There’s significant natural randomness on these exams since you’re only asked ~75 questions from a pool of thousands, but on average, our scores are within a few percentage points of the actual one.
If you’re hitting a plateau in your studying, slow down and spend more time reviewing! Approach your tricky topics as if you’re learning them for the first time, with complete focus, and you’ll find the topics will stick better.
My critique with Achievable is that “reviewing” the tricky topics doesn’t work after you read them once unless they are truly indecipherable that a reread is required. I’ll keep this imaginable, but imagine you have a generic topic that is structured like so:
[Topic X]
Fact 1
Fact 2
Fact 3
Fact 4
Whether because it conveys too much work on your end or is just unrealistic, you don’t write questions for all 4 facts. Achievable might have, in its test bank, just questions related to Fact 1 and Fact 3, for instance—maybe that section takes 20 minutes to read, so you can’t write 40 questions that would go through Facts 1-4 without making it irritating to get through. See what I’m saying? You only quiz on what you think is important, not every little detail. But that lack of quizzing is what leads to me forgetting it. Rewriting each section of the textbook isn’t an efficient use of my time—even the sections I seem to get wrong often.
Maybe a better way to picture: Say you gave me a quiz question on Fact 1 that I got wrong because I forgot that it had Detail 1. I reread it, try again a day later, get it right—but hold on, Fact 1 also has Detail 2, but your test bank never goes over that, and oops, the actual test asks about it. The fact I never had an opportunity to practice a question where I’d get Detail 2 wrong is why I forget things. The frustration brought about getting questions wrong is why sections like Options and Corporate/Municipal Debt see vast turnaround improvements: because I realize where I’m screwing up—it basically is a roundabout way of teaching me those clever little tricks.
I understand the SIE only requires 70% passing rate, but I perceive that on the actual test, I’ll do 20% worse, so 90%+ is required to feel cushy.
Hi @Myra_Kunde, I understand your point and can see how it might seem that way, but it’s not entirely accurate. In fact, we have 2x to 3x the number of quiz questions as other programs—about 5,000 in total for the SIE! We aim to have at least one question for each testable learning objective. If you feel some areas aren’t covered appropriately, please let us know, and we’ll make sure they are. Btw, we don’t use competitor materials for legal reasons, but I believe someone told me Kaplan only has about 2,000 questions.
And despite having significantly more quizzes, our customers pass in about half the study time compared to using materials from our competitors.
You’re absolutely right that exam day stress is real, so we recommend people consistently score mid-80s on practice exams to feel well-prepared.
One final thought: almost all of our customers pass on their first try, but keep in mind that the national pass rate for the SIE is thought to be between 70% - 80%! Said another way: 20% to 30% of people who take the SIE are never able to pass it.
@Myra_Kunde hi Myra. I stated Finra’s study material is more intimidating than the actual exam. Meaning the topics finra list on their website with the subcategories that they tell you, you will be tested on is intimidating. I say this because it looks like soooo much info (well it is a lot of info). The test is mainly about how much you’ve studied and prepared for the test and understand main concepts. The highest I got on an achievable full exam is 89%, which was once or twice. I was then getting between 83-85%. I know it can be stressful and you can start feeling negative about the process, but if you do your part (study hard), you will be just fine. Don’t stress over the things you can’t control and put your focus on what you can control. You got this! Stay positive and trust everything will work out.
I recently passed the SIE as well. The course was great and makes you learn the material instead of memorizing questions. This was my experience with the life and health exam course. I was able to pass the SIE with 40 minutes left on the clock. Thanks to Achievable.
