Hello Everyone.. Here is my FAR test experience..
This was my first test ever at Prometric, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Even after you read about the procedures you will be made to follow, you do feel unsure, right? But everything went well and I was done with Biometric and all in 15 minutes of reaching the test center and started my test 10 min before my scheduled test appointment (I didn't want to delay it either!)
1st testlet- was a cream walk, I hardly marked 2 or max 3 questions. Not calculation intensive but easy conceptual questions. I completed the testlet in 40 mins.
2nd testlet- The difficulty level increased and I must have marked at least 6 questions, if I remember correctly. Two were definitely out of no where. In my entire study material of FAR, I don't remember reading about those concepts or even the phrase of the question. I completed the testlet in 50 mins.
3rd teslet, darn.. this one bumped me.. I ended up marking 6-7 again but this time I wasn't sure on any of them and must have guessed on 4 at least. Again, I was not familiar with three of them and others I couldn't concentrate enough to solve them through the details. I think I tried my best to survive there..
SIMULATIONS: The most dreadful part of the exam! I don't believe it anymore. I would differ from most of the reviews I've read here and on other groups.
I entered in Simulations with 1 hour 25 minutes left on the clock. I thought that all of them were pretty much doable except one (one has to be like that). Like they say, simulations were JE focused, but pretty much doable. One which was tough, was doable too, but with the amount of information available in resources and scrolls through the screen, it was a time consuming one.
In a nut shell- I would say Simulations is not something always out of the box and difficult questions, they are pretty much doable if you leave yourself 1 hour 30 minutes or plus. I missed on just one simulation (it was too lengthy) and for the rest I think I must have done 50% right on each simulation.
Advice/Tips: When you practice Simulations, try and set your laptop display settings to Large size, to make your navigation through SIMS difficult. Yes, you heard me right. This will help you be better prepared, as in exam it just fits to the big desktop screen and when you use split horizontal, it makes it worse (i believe). So what happens is, you already consider SIMS as difficult part of exam, and in exam you just freak out looking at so much of textual information. Scrolling through screens just adds to the stress. You see a very scattered picture of Simulation.. and then scroll up, down, up and down again. This is one point I mentioned in my feedback towards the end. I suggested may be having some feature like zoom in and zoom out, so that you can refer to say two screens in split screen at same time and not scroll much..
In the end, I'm happy I'm done with this. I think I did fair, but need to see what NASBA has to say on May 24 😛
Good luck everyone!
FAR - 85 (5/10/2016)
AUD - 89 (7/12/2016)
BEC - 9/07/2016
REG - TBD
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