Most mock tests tell you one thing: your score. You got 50 out of 90. You passed. And then you are on your own to work out what to do next.
That is the wrong problem to hand a candidate two weeks before an exam.
From today, every mock test on Finance Certification Prep returns a topic wise performance breakdown. Your report card now shows exactly which subjects are pulling your score down, and by how much. It is live across CFA Level 1 and Level 2, FRM Part 1 and Part 2, and every NISM series we cover.
Why a single score hides your real problem
Here is a real report card from one of our CFA Level 1 mock tests. The candidate scored 55.6 percent. Respectable enough to feel reasonably good about walking away from.
Then look at the split by topic:
- Ethical and Professional Standards: 7 out of 20, or 35 percent
- Derivatives: 6 out of 15, or 40 percent
- Fixed Income: 11 out of 20, or 55 percent
- Alternative Investments: 11 out of 16, or 69 percent
- Equity Investments: 5 out of 7, or 71 percent
- Quantitative Methods: 4 out of 5, or 80 percent
- Portfolio Management: 5 out of 6, or 83 percent
Three topics sit below 60 percent. Three sit at 80 percent or above. The single score of 55.6 percent tells you none of this.
Ethics alone accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the actual CFA Level 1 exam. A candidate scoring 35 percent there is losing marks in the one area that is guaranteed to appear heavily on exam day, and a bare percentage figure would never have revealed it.
What most candidates do without a breakdown
They do the only thing available to them. They revise everything again, evenly, from the start. Two more weeks spent polishing the topics they had already mastered, while the three genuine weak spots stay exactly where they were.
Revision time is the scarcest resource any candidate has. Spending it evenly across topics you have already secured is the single most common way to waste it.
What the breakdown changes
With the topic wise report card, three topics are named. That is where the marks are. Every hour of revision has a target.
We put the same candidate back through the same paper after focused revision on those three areas only. The results:
- Ethics moved from 35 percent to 80 percent
- Fixed Income moved from 55 percent to 75 percent
- Derivatives moved from 40 percent to 53 percent
- Overall score moved from 55.6 percent to 75.6 percent
Same candidate. Same question bank. Roughly 20 marks gained purely from better aimed effort.
Notice that Derivatives is still flagged in red on the second report card at 53 percent. That is the feature working correctly. It is not there to tell you that you are doing well. It is there to keep pointing at the next thing costing you marks.
How to read your report card
Each topic gets a status:
- Needs work, shown in red, means you scored below 60 percent on that topic
- Almost there means between 60 and 80 percent
- Strong, shown in green, means 80 percent or above
At the bottom of the table you will find a Focus on line naming every topic that fell below 60 percent. If you read nothing else on the report card, read that line.
One caveat worth understanding. If a topic shows only one or two questions, treat that percentage with caution. A single question answered correctly reads as 100 percent, and that is not evidence of mastery. Look at the topics with a meaningful number of questions behind them.
Available now across every exam we cover
The topic wise breakdown is live on all existing mock tests at no extra cost. If you have already bought a test, it is already there on your next attempt.
What is coming next
Three things are in build.
Insurance exam mock tests, covering both IRDAI IC 38 agent licensing and the insurance sector recruitment exams including LIC, NIACL, UIIC and OICL. You can join the waitlist here.
Bank PO mock tests, covering IBPS PO, SBI PO, IBPS RRB PO, RBI Grade B, NABARD Grade A and the major clerk exams. The waitlist is open here.
Topic wise mock tests. Once your report card tells you Ethics is the problem, you should be able to sit a paper that is nothing but Ethics. That is the obvious next step, and it is being built now.
The point of a mock test
A mock test is not there to give you a score. It is there to tell you what to do on Monday morning.
A number on its own cannot do that. A breakdown that names your three weakest topics can.
