Passed this morning and what a relief! Took about an hour and 15 minutes.
I’m 53 and am changing careers (yes, this late in my working life) to be a Municipal Advisor in a very small municipal bond firm (in a very niche space) owned by a friend. I haven’t taken any test of this magnitude since my college days (almost 30 years ago), but I do have to greatly thank the folks at Achievable for the comprehensive content and user-friendly interface! I have almost no experience in this field except for personal investments and you made it manageable (although not easy) to understand and learn! It took about 2.5 months of study, but I am still doing some part-time work to supplement the savings we are using during this transition period. I did end up taking all of the section quizzes, all chapter tests and did 10 practice tests at the end. I scored in the mid-80s, pretty consistently on the practice exams. I also took the FINRA practice exam to see what the questions would actually be like and scored an 84 on it.
As many other posts have stated, the SIE test questions aren’t completely worded like the test questions in Achievable but if you focus on knowing the concepts, you can work your way through. I just wish that they would give you your score and let you review the questions you missed. All they show is that you “Passed”, but that’s still good enough for me!
Also, I think I could pick out most of the 10 experimental questions, as there were some concepts that I don’t recall ever studying.
One other note, utilize the “Review Questions” function during the actual test. I did that with 4 or 5 of them and ended up changing my original answer on 2 of them, because I didn’t fully comprehend the question the first time around. I’m fairly certain I did right by changing the answers on those.
How many questions did you get relating to calculating yields? Did they have a lot of questions where you needed to have formulas memorized?
I’m 46 and doing a career change and got hired at a firm and need to pass the SIE, 6 and 63 and a state life insurance tests all within 140 days or I lose my job. I don’t start the job until 12/1 and they will be training me using pass perfect.
Pressure is real. And stress level is high
I just started the achievable material a little over a week ago and currently finishing up chapter 7. Most of my quizzes are in the low to mid 70s test are in the mid 70s. I’m really having a tough time retaining the info I’m reading.
Not sure if my scores are normal since I just started over a week ago.
I don’t have to take the test until the end of December so I have plenty of time to study for this test.
Hey, @Charlie_Ondricka . I recall only one math problem on calculating current yield. That one was pretty straightforward. There were only a few math problems in total (maybe 3-4, I can’t recall for sure).
It looks like you’re making good progress being in chapter 7 after only a week. One thing I didn’t do, at first, was to do the review questions, as they built up. I did all of the section quizzes, chapter tests and quadrant tests but I started to lose what I was learning early on, as new info is presented. I comprehended things as I was learning them and did pretty well on most quizzes but that started to fade. Once I started to do more review questions (in additions to the bulit-in quizzes and tests), I started to retain the info more easily. I did have to go back to the Options chapter once or twice to refresh myself.
Like most everyone has said, be sure to get the concepts down, as the actual FINRA exam questions are worded slightly differently than the ones in Achievable. I don’t remember any questions on the actual exam that had answers where you had to choose two answers, three answers, all of the above or none of the above, like Achievable quite often has. However, I think questions like that on Achievable help you think through the information more and help better understand the concepts.
Thank you for sharing your experience and answering my questions. I really appreciate that! Also, thanks for sharing the part about forgetting info and new info is presented. I’m not scoring in the 80’s on the practice exams, just yet. Most of my scores are in the mid 70’s. I just finished the 1-8 recap and scored a 70, not good… Most of the questions I’m missing require a formula and I haven’t memorized them yet. I thought the 1–8-week recap was too heavily focused on formula questions, like 5-8 questions but the actual test doesn’t require that much math from what I’ve been told. Anyway, I need to spend some more time memorizing the formulas just in case. I hope one of these days I will start to feel confident about passing but I’m not there yet. So many nuances to everything and synonyms meaning the same thing and a lot of the definitions are called two and three different names. It’s irritating lol. Just call it one thing and be done with it already hahah.
