I’ve read posts of folks on other forums who have recommended Achievable for the SIE to understand the material but found that Achievable’s practice questions and exams were much easier than the actual SIE exam, so they were a bit blindsided (and in a few circumstances, those folks had to redo it, as they failed the first time). Still, others say that they used Achievable in conjunction with Kaplan’s QBank to have a different perspective on how questions could be worded and as additional practice if they needed it—and said that how the QBank presented the questions was more in line with the actual FINRA exam.
I’m going through the material as the study plan recommends: read, do the section quizzes, keep reading, do practice exams, repeat until finished. I’m not skipping anything.
Still, I want to know if Achievable by itself was enough for you to pass (assuming you did the studying). Was it? The SIE exam is claimed to have a pass rate of 74%, which I find surprisingly high (for something to be a low pass rate for me personally, it’d have to be less than 40%). So, it can’t be that hard, can it?
The reason I’m blabbering on is because I don’t want to fail the first time and have to wait 30 days for the second go-around. If Achievable is not enough by itself to near guarantee you’re not part of those unfortunate 26% that don’t pass, then I question what their “98.2% success rate” alludes to. Is that first-time pass rates or overall pass rates (counting even people that pass on their 3rd try)?
Achievable is all you need to pass. People using us as their primary materials have a 98%+ first-time pass rate, which is much higher than that of other vendors, including Kaplan.
We make hundreds of updates to our questions and content every month to ensure we’re as similar to the actual exam as possible. By contrast, most other vendors only update their materials once or twice a year for major rule updates.
The SIE is not a particularly hard exam, but it does cover a large amount of content. We like to say that “it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.” If you stick to the plan and approach it thoughtfully, you’ll be in good shape.
Thanks to this program, I passed the SIE this morning. The test started out easy, got a bit harder, then got easy, and ended a bit difficult. There were a few questions that were very vague, but that’s the nature of the exam. Overall, I think this program covered 85-90% of the questions asked on the exam.
I studied 64 hours, completed 4000 practice questions, and scored 93%, 95%, and 88% on the three final exams.
Thank you again for this wonderful program! Looking forward to using it again for the Series 7.
Hi Ethel, and congratulations on passing the SIE exam!
I’m preparing for the SIE and could use some insight on what to expect, particularly which topics were tested most heavily and if the question wording was confusing.
So far, I’ve put in about 150 hours of study time, with over 7,800 practice questions answered and 13 practice exams (scoring between 83-88%, and over 90% on the final exams). I also completed the Series 63, which helped me better understand some SIE topics. However, I’ve heard the actual SIE exam questions can be much more difficult, and I want to be sure I fully understand the material, not just memorizing practice questions.
How did you feel during your exam, and are there any specific areas you think I should review more closely? I’m debating scheduling my test for next week but still feel a bit unsure.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Thank you! The version of the test I took contained quite a few muni questions, about 6 math questions, only a handful of options questions, but had a large number of regulations and fixed income questions (Rule 144, 147, 1933/34, etc., Preferred Stocks, Bonds).
The wording on the regulatory questions was a bit tricky.
If you are using Achievable and getting those scores, you should be fine.
Simplest advice I can give: do all 35 practice exams and then some more.
Flag every question you did wrong and do all of those wrong questions in one go.
Optional: You can also flag questions that took you forever to reach an answer for, even if you got them correct, but might just quadruple the amount of flagged questions you do, but up to you.
In regards to Ethel’s remark, Achievable will make you feel fine for the exam, but it will not make you feel comfortable for the exam unless the test software decides to bless you with an extremely easy version of the test. If you want to be “comfortable” (AKA: your brain is basically falling asleep at how easy your version of the test is, no matter what variant the testing software pops out), you’ll need to add in additional test bank questions from other sources.
You know yourself best. If you have poor intuition, processing speed, or just plain old memory recall, Achievable is not going to be enough to not make you grit your teeth in frustration at the SIE unless you overdo the studying to a degree. If you’ve had years of experience in the financial services industry, then the SIE is a joke.
What Achievable has going for it is a not-boring way of reading through all the material and a modern UI interface, plus very quick turnaround time from its employees in regards to questions. But all it does is teaches you what is most important for each and every FINRA test—it does not teach everything or quiz you on everything that could be on the test. And this is coming from someone who passed the SIE with Achievable, but it was still very hard regardless, because FINRA has likely picked up on the study prep courses’ wording of their questions and made it completely different to throw you off on the actual exam.
For me, Achievable was the ONLY thing I used for the SIE, 7 & 66. I had to use a different provider for the 50 because Achievable doesn’t have that one (too nuanced). I’m 54 and am changing careers (a job was waiting for me but I had to complete the exams, which I am now done with all of them!), with no prior experience in the financial world.
I passed each exam the first try, thanks to Achievable’s intuitive platform and their steady study progress program.
On the SIE, 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).
In terms of my study habits, 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, as they state will happen. 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 built-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.
For those who still have to take the test, 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.