Did you fail your recent FINRA or NASAA exam? If so, you may be tempted to review your FINRA exam results for clues. After all, the feedback seems likely to help you improve for next time.
But…does it really?
In today’s post, we address whether or not the feedback provided after a failed exam is a helpful guide for your future studying.
FINRA Exam Results
When you get your FINRA Exam results back they will include one of two possible pieces of feedback.
First, if you passed, you will not receive a score. While some would like to know, the next best thing is at least being notified that you passed.
Alternatively, if you happen to fail your exam, the testing center will provide you with your score, and sometimes (depending on the exam) a breakdown. This breakdown of your performance will often include some very broad sections.
The feedback is generally very vague. Language such as “Adequate” or “Borderline” is what you can expect. Gauging your performance is even harder given the fairly undefined contents of each subsection evaluated.
Naturally, this is not totally helpful. The section breakdowns make it difficult to judge where you went wrong.
So Then Is the Breakdown Helpful for Further Studying or Even a Tutor?
Generally the answer is: Kind of, but not really.
What helps us the most is your overall score. It gives us a much better sense of where you’re from a high level, than what the section scores can tell us. While the breakdown does help in a very vague sense, there is so much overlap within the broad subsections that it’s impossible to know from one exam to another what areas you need to work on.
In short, at Professional Exam Tutoring, we don’t typically rely on students breakdown on their exam.
That said, all hope is not lost in identifying specific subtopics. What is most helpful, is a students’ practice exam breakdown. If we can take a look at the breakdown provided by either Kaplan, STC, or any other prep company, we can usually very quickly get a sense of where to focus our attention for a student.
In a nutshell, don’t worry too much about the breakdown you receive from the testing center.
What’s most helpful is your study material. For a really good sense of where you’re at, take as many practice exams as possible, and review them thoroughly. Take notes on any wrong answers, and study those notes.
For more tips and tricks, feel free to reach out. Good luck!