P4 Toughest paper?

Well… Personally I found P5 the easiest of the Professional Level exams. But others hated it as much.

As far as P4 is concerned… question practice is essential. You can know the entire syllabus (course content) inside out but if you don’t put in practice hours, there’s a VERY high probability that you will NOT be successful… and I’m trying to put this across as subtly as possible here.

And even with all that practice… the exam day (like all other exams) matters the most. Which area of the syllabus is examined, what’s the difficulty of the question examined… a lot of things make up the paradigm. You can be examined on an area in which you might feel that you are very good, and still the question might be so tricky that you won’t even understand it in the Examination Hall i.e., under exam conditions (given that you’ll be badly crunched for time and *calm thinking* can become such a luxury at times that most of us can’t afford in there).

Most importantly, a lot of candidates feel that this paper has the luck factor as well… you think that you’ve failed it for sure and end up passing it with a score of 60+… on the other hand, you feel that you have done reasonably well, and only end up with a score of e.g., 28 or 30. Personally it’s the time management factor that’s the most difficult part for me, not the exam difficulty or the course content of P4. If you’re good with time management then I’d say go for it! But I already had a couple of advanced qualifications in Finance at my back when I attempted P4… so the type of difficulties that I faced might be a bit skewed in comparison to what you might face.