*** P4 December 2014 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

It’s reassuring to hear so many brothers and sisters suffering the plight of P4 Dec 14 with me. Was solidly getting over 50% on exam attempts at home, studying for 4 months with little life to speak of and then hit with that car crash of a first question (and I literally felt like I had been hit by a car!)

Can anyone explain something to me: the average pass mark for this paper historically is in the mid 30s and even the 20s according to the ACCA website. What does that even mean? Does that mean they had to mark people up who got that far below 50??? I’m going to need a hefty mark up on this as I realistically scored between 30 and 40. What an absolute nightmare!!! Need to start going to classes to learn how to do it with extreme hand crippling and brain ratcheting speed!

Can anyone remember the marking scheme for questions 1, 2 and 4?

Agree with everyone’s comments – q1 was awful. I muddled through and managed the bsm and put option. I knew the answer was wrong so I substitued some numbers, hope it gets me some scores.

I also hope the discursive elements get me somewhere.

With all what I have done in preparing this exam today has given me peace not to prepare again!!! Am just disturbed that the examer can’t even time himself on what information to put and its all about speedy. Was killing myself were am I not getting it right on the last course yet I wrote all others without challenges and now the last one is stopping me to see my end. I now have comfort from what you have experienced but surely something has to be done for a fair exam. Q1 had all scattered information and as if it was enough many requirements to calculate options, CF, probabilities, tricky beta and valuations whole lot of stories. Moderation should be very generous but looks like acca is enjoying that suffering of us am tired not sure what to do red the book from cover to cover and what was in all the questions all gud but too much information to do a decent solution in the time allocated. Q1 looks it was worth 75-80 markes alone to finish all.

my class teacher told me the last examiner was quite intelligent and had a vast knowledge while setting a question ….but this new examiner is *STUPID* and he dont have the scope of setting a real difficult exam ….and guess what he proved everyone wrong this is the most terrible exam i have ever experienced ….i had now idea what he actually wanted me to do how he wanted me to do …He knows all over the world lots of different nationalities are sitting this exam then why use the word (multiple of FCF)
2 seats behind me was a girl and i heard the invigilator asking her why aint u attending the exam to which she replied …” its not do-able and i laughed that atleast she had the courage to say the fact . i studies so hard yet i feel like i wont pass …aims of EU oh comeonnnnnn …. if any acca personel visit this site kindly pass on this message to examiner …if u cant stay happy try not to spoil others mood ..
Nutshell : worst paper set

@andyrenouf said:
It’s reassuring to hear so many brothers and sisters suffering the plight of P4 Dec 14 with me. Was solidly getting over 50% on exam attempts at home, studying for 4 months with little life to speak of and then hit with that car crash of a first question (and I literally felt like I had been hit by a car!)

Can anyone explain something to me: the average pass mark for this paper historically is in the mid 30s and even the 20s according to the ACCA website. What does that even mean? Does that mean they had to mark people up who got that far below 50??? I’m going to need a hefty mark up on this as I realistically scored between 30 and 40. What an absolute nightmare!!! Need to start going to classes to learn how to do it with extreme hand crippling and brain ratcheting speed!

Andy doesn’t this mean that only 30% of people who sit the exam pass?

I never got time off work to study and from the comments I am reading, it seems I am not any worse off. I do believe the examiners would cut Us some slack in the paper. there were too many variables so it’s quite easy to muddle things up.

Q1 – Attempted only the Probability based NPV & the degearing and gearing bit. Am sure I messed up the figures but hope to get marks for trying at least
Q2 – IRS swaps was straight forward but had a bit of twist, settled for a put option (initially thought it was call) but didn’t get to analyse if this was better than a swap. the listing of the basis risk across the months was a further confusion
Q3 – Only did the IRR – 16%, messed up the MIRR computation and couldn’t attempt the VAR – i did write out the formula before they called time.

Let’s hope the examiners are a little more lenient, one would be a genius to attempt at least 70% of this exam within the allotted time.

OK so , does ACCA use any kind of percentile system which effectively reduces the pass rate to a adjusted exam difficulty level , say a pass at 45 or 43 ? Of course when they read all the scripts which might be below par, they would have to pass people on a lower percentage or else i see the pass rate for this session significantly dropping to early twenties which might be the worst ever pass rate for p4 . Also i heard is some where that there is some sort of quota of maintaining the pass rates so that might be the underlying variable to adjust the percentile.So lets hope that there are not those geniuses who fill up that quota and the rest of us talking here are, well left talking !

Now to the value of option to sell , even though the S.D was not given and that technical article mentioned before does kind of tell us that BSOP was not to be used. I still believe that as business valuation are not an exact science but an art . For all those who applied BSOP to any extent would get credit according to their efficacy of application.

U calculate the total of the proxy company first…..
Then u calculate the component beta
In this exam ….should have been

Tb=luxury bata + non-luxury beta

Well, I cant resist not to write a few words about this exam. I have taken 2 weeks off purly for practicing the whole book and doing every single practice kit question including the 50 markers, so was hopping to come back from exam confident, but what a mess! This examiner is a disaster!!! I hope he reads this note and realise. Test us on knowledge, not your native trickly slang words put in between the text and you expect the students to read your mind and figure out what you mean!!! In Q1 I have missed to realise the need to cacluate options, I did think about it, but than i said, if options were requried than there maybe some indication of volitality. I just did not realise the proabilities were indication for the strategic options! The requirement stated was keeping students confused, what is wrong in being a bit more clear in your expectations?

This paper (Q1) been a disaster and it has confused most of students. Other questions were fairly okay, but like me many other students got trapped with reslovling the big mystry of Q1 first which left us hardly any time for other questions!

ACCA is certainly not after testing knowledge, rather they are testing you on how well do you guess the the full sentence when only one word of a sentence is quoted and how fast can you write..

As students we will have a chance to convey our concerns in next survey, so lets remember to do that. I think its fair to expect a fair amount of guidance from the examiner and being a student does not mean they can through anything at you as they want, even though its not fair! I certainly see I was not the only one confused about the Q1 and if that was the examiners intention than i guess objective well acheived Mr. Examiner! For next sitting I will make sure I take some scrabble training so I can become an accountant!!!

Entered the exam with all bases covered but was definitely cooked after p7 previous day so this is moot! HOWEVER, overall I felt it was a very unfair paper.a) Q1 was poorly worded and some of the terms used were untypical of syllabus eg FCFE times b) the probability theory was hardly covered at all in my syllabus notes.c) Q2 was confusing, for example the basis on the option future and the fixed/floating choice on the swap. Throw this in with the existing time preessure and it just makes it very difficult. This is my first time sitting this paper and key lesson is do Q1 last. I couldnt really make any decent attempt at Q1 butstill spent a large chunk thinking Iit through. When you’re in this position in an exam its demoralising. Did Q2 but didnt have time to consider a collar, just the cap. Q3 was fine. I really like this paper, its the best course on the ACCA syllabus by a mile but I think this examiner needs to think and make an effort to give students a fairer. The simple things are all wrong!!

See you p4 in June 2015… I honestly felt i was prepared enough???? But i didnt know how to do question 1 at all… Stuck for 30mins thinking and moved on… and i wondered why am i even wasting 3 hours of my time doing a paper which i would surely fail……

@andyrenouf said:
Ashetray: Of course yeah that would make a lot more sense! God that question 1 has ruined my rational thinking process. Should be studying for P5 on Thursday but that question has made me feel like my brain cells have been violated! Demoralisation doesn’t even cover it

My thoughts exactly. To think that I used up all my annual leave just to prepare for this exam n I m back to work today without any rest. For 2 weeks I locked myself up in a room, and ignore my 18 month old baby’s knocks n cries who wanted to spend time with me.

My friend resigned from her job to prepare for this exam because her boss wouldn’t approve her leave. She n I worked hard, harder than we have worked for any other paper and we have never failed an exam before. We are in love with the syllabus because it’s so interesting.

I question what is ACCA’s objective of this exam? To test the knowledge and pass the students who demonstrate good understanding or to generate more revenue by means if additional exam fee.

If I could go back in time and do everything again, I will use 10 days to go on vacation and 4 days for exam preperation and the result would be the same.

It is really not enough time to do Q1! I just do half of part(ii), want to use bsop to calculate the option price but even cannot find the volatility! then i stop and quickly move to next question. All info are not directly given,need to do many calculation, how three hours enough to do all of these? Really terrible!