Long time lurker, first time poster.
I found myself in a similar situation when I took FAR, so I thought I would share my story to provide some hope to the hopeless.
FAR was the first exam that I took, November of 2014. I was pretty well prepared for the exam, having studied for a couple of a couple of months.
Got through the first testlet without many flagged questions. Next two testlets were not necessarily “harder” but defiantly required more reading and therefore drained my timer more than I had anticipated.
When I finally reached the sims, I think I had around 90 minutes left (not ideal). For starters, I clicked through them to see what I was up against. Not good. Everything that I had focused heavily on (bonds, leases, pensions, etc.) did not show up in my sims. This left me feeling a little lightheaded and it took me a few minutes to regain my focus. Out of the 7 sims, I was confident with 2 of them, one being the research question. The other 5 were basically a crap shoot. I filled them out to the best of my ability, got up and left.
I left with my tail between my legs, feeling defeated knowing that I just “logically” guessed on questions that were “technically” equivalent to almost 30% of my exam grade. After a week or so I had accepted failure and started to pick up my study materials again. A week later I received my score….83. Couldn't believe it. I must have hit the refresh button on my laptop 100 times to make sure it was for real.
Moral of the story is you never know with these exams until you actually receive your score. Don't let others try to explain to you how these exams are graded. They have no clue. I have walked out of Prometric feeling like I got a 99 on Reg to find out that I got a 77, and walked out of there feeling like I got a 50 on FAR to find out I really got an 83.
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