BESS Thread

Running Bing

europerson wrote: »

I echo the points about knowing so much and being able to show so little. People will see my result (particularly potential employers), and say "hey, this guy knows nothing about securities markets: let's not hire him". Of course the correct conclusion would be "This guy doesn't know a couple of particular papers inside out." I can't see my transcript saying that though. It's all just a big pile of ****.

Agree pretty ****ty day.........but at least Im not a chelsea fan, that would be too much to take.:D

I can't seem to get in gear for studying international.... and its on tomorrow

I did 2 and 4 for Seb and EMH and Ex Rates for Dudley.

Privateer

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found securities markets to be about as fun as having your nipples blow-torched off.

Learning the Markowitz problem, mean variance criterion, single index model... What a sodding waste of time!

As for Dudders, his part of the course didn't so much suffer from vagueness as rejoice in it. When I pointed out that the text books were rather unhelpful he almost wistfully said "Yeah, they are a bit"...

Oh well, I'll have to make it up on International Economics tomorrow...

manicmonoliths

manicmonoliths wrote: »

Ideologies, Democracy, Constitutions and States/Nations would be nice:)
Power is a dead cert though. (I probably should study it:o)
13 questions so I'd agree everything is likely to come up.

Beautiful exam. I did the questions on Ideologies, Power, Constitutions and Democracy. Couldn't have hoped for a better exam. Though my answers were fairly ****, I was just happy I could accurately predict the topics

Day off!!! Thank god!! I'm almost ready to die at this point. Not too worried about Maths, it's the Stats that I'll probably fall down on, I'm banking on the fact that it's identical to the mock, if it's not, I'm f***ed.

Tricity Bendix

Babybing wrote: »

It does feel an awful waste of knowledge. All the ****e I learnt, the hours spent hunched over flashcards learning equations and models and how to test for such and such and it all came down Fama and Macbeth, a couple of things on the term structure and pure waffle:(

flashcards ftl. I could have written a twelve page essay on the history of tests of the CAPM. For a course that was characterised by waffle and lack of structure that was a ridiculously specific exam. I was only able to answer one and one third of a question. My answers were epic, but I basically had to jettison 70 marks because I didn't study the derivation of the Sharpe-Lintner (yes, Dudders, its Lintner, not Litner) CAPM and a specific paper on the 'death' of Beta. He actually stood in front of us and said the questions would be 'how do you test X.' I, in my infinite stupidity, then went and learnt how to test for the CAPM. This enabled me to answer one ****ing third of a question. Derivations should play no part in a course based on the testing of models. And putting both the yield curve and the exchange rate (etc) on the exam was sickening. They were both taught with the gusto of a sea cucumber, I had no idea what he was going on about.

I'm also pissed off at Seb for question one. That was background stuff. It shouldn't have been tested in a final exam. Still, at least I was able to answer two questions. Although, I would have loved to have shown the mathematics of the c-CAPM.

Basically, I was relying on this paper to pull me up to a 2.I. Thats pretty much out the window. I'll have to study like hell in my last exam to ensure I get a 2.II.

I know more about asset price volitility than Dudley Cooke. FACT.

I also find it funny that I'm talking to people in my class who I've probably never even looked at in real life.

Jagermeister eases the pain.

b.ie curious

b.ie curious wrote: »

I know more about asset price volitility than Dudley Cooke. FACT.

Right, you and him, on the steps of the exam hall.

Its time for a 'economics-off', I'll get Prof. Honohan to adjudicate.

House of Wolves

manicmonoliths wrote: »

Beautiful exam. I did the questions on Ideologies, Power, Constitutions and Democracy. Couldn't have hoped for a better exam. Though my answers were fairly ****, I was just happy I could accurately predict the topics

Day off!!! Thank god!! I'm almost ready to die at this point. Not too worried about Maths, it's the Stats that I'll probably fall down on, I'm banking on the fact that it's identical to the mock, if it's not, I'm f***ed.

Yea it was a pretty fair test. Fair enough raj didnt give us any tips, but it was pretty obvious that you study a few topics they are bound to come up. There was 13 questions and there was even choice in some of them. Managed to get the 4 pages on the majority of them. (very waffly) Good exam, although I had a mind blank once or twice. I still like raj.

Ugh now to try and learn stats....I cant wait for my sleep in tomorrow. Getting up early and going on crowded buses, what hell...

Running Bing

b.ie curious wrote: »

flashcards ftl. I could have written a twelve page essay on the history of tests of the CAPM.

Everyone has their own way of doing things. I cant just read a regression model or a mathematical equation and have it go straight into my head, I need to keep looking at it to keep it fresh and I find cards the easiest way.....and given he said there would be no equations written in the exam I thought that would be important. I had a bloody good understanding of things on the course I dont mind saying, and just because I use cards to remember things shouldnt suggest I did not:mad:

b.ie curious wrote: »

For a course that was characterised by waffle and lack of structure that was a ridiculously specific exam. I was only able to answer one and one third of a question. My answers were epic, but I basically had to jettison 70 marks because I didn't study the derivation of the Sharpe-Lintner (yes, Dudders, its Lintner, not Litner) CAPM and a specific paper on the 'death' of Beta. He actually stood in front of us and said the questions would be 'how do you test X.' I, in my infinite stupidity, then went and learnt how to test for the CAPM. This enabled me to answer one ****ing third of a question.

Yeah agree that p1ssed me off as well. The whole focus of my study was on learning how to test for things and the fact that on each question that only made a up a third (after him telling us that) was ridiculous given the lack of guidance such as tutorials or sample questions.

Derivations should play no part in a course based on the testing of models. And putting both the yield curve and the exchange rate (etc) on the exam was sickening. They were both taught with the gusto of a sea cucumber, I had no idea what he was going on about.

Did he even derive Beta in the class? I dont remember doing it and I dont think its on anything in the reading list

I'm also pissed off at Seb for question one. That was background stuff. It shouldn't have been tested in a final exam. Still, at least I was able to answer two questions. Although, I would have loved to have shown the mathematics of the c-CAPM.

Haha I was all ready to get the C-CAPM out of me. Would have been a perfect question:(


As for Q1 I thought it was stupid tbh. I felt it was there for people who couldnt answer the other Q's to waffle on. It penalised the students who actually knew the real stuff imo, was amazed when I saw it on the paper.

I know more about asset price volitility than Dudley Cooke. FACT.

Dudleys a smart dude to be fair but hes hardly a great teacher and I feel he had little enthuiasm (not to mention substandard understanding) for the subject matter. Feel a bit short done for a final year course tbh(My world economy lecturer is'nt exactly stellar either)

I also find it funny that I'm talking to people in my class who I've probably never even looked at in real life.

Yeah, I thought the bess course was good on the whole but one of the unfortunate aspects is the lack of class spirit and camaraderie.

Running Bing

The other thing is I felt the weighting in the exam was all wrong:

20 marks a piece for explaining the b's in APT and E(e(I-I))=0:rolleyes:

zuchum

House of Wolves wrote: »

Ugh now to try and learn stats.....

whats the story with the 10% attendance marks for maths? is it attendance or attendance and homework? and does jacco use the standard distribution tbles fromt he maths tables or diffrent ones?

I want to get over forty in this..but over 30 might be enough,because i may have passed economics,and everything else seems grand...

thats how it works right...?

Awayindahils

I hate Research Methods.

As I reckon I'm the only one afflicted here's a sample question-

"What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory? Use examples in your discussion."

Vomit. And this so should be in the BESS thread as only BESS would have such a stoopid course.

House of Wolves

zuchum wrote: »

whats the story with the 10% attendance marks for maths? is it attendance or attendance and homework? and does jacco use the standard distribution tbles fromt he maths tables or diffrent ones?

I want to get over forty in this..but over 30 might be enough,because i may have passed economics,and everything else seems grand...

thats how it works right...?

Im not sure about the standard distribution tables so i cant answer that question
The attendance element i know that you need to have handed up your homeworks for the maths part of the course to get marks. simply ticking the boxes doesnt work. The stats side i dont no...im quite ill informed

i heard that we needed to get an average of 50% overall in our courses to pass the year, is that right do you?

zuchum

I think what it is you have to get over 50% in one exam,and over 40% in all the rest,and then you're allowed over 30% in one of them as far as i know...

xebec

Awayindahils wrote: »

I hate Research Methods.

As I reckon I'm the only one afflicted here's a sample question-

"What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory? Use examples in your discussion."

Vomit. And this so should be in the BESS thread as only BESS would have such a stoopid course.

We've a course similar to that, except ours is called Data Collection, Analysis & Presentation. There's no exam in ours, but it seems equally as useless as yours... I still haven't figured out what post-partum urinary retention has to do with MSISS...

Pet

Awayindahils wrote: »

I hate Research Methods.

As I reckon I'm the only one afflicted here's a sample question-

"What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory? Use examples in your discussion."

Vomit. And this so should be in the BESS thread as only BESS would have such a stoopid course.

In my Geography statistics exam the other day, I had to calculate the mean and median of a set of numbers, and comment on the difference between the two values, then make a histogram and calculate skewness. The second question involved making a scatterplot of X and Y values, and calculating the correlation coefficient--with formulae supplied and precalculations already given.

These two questions were 75% of the paper, which lasted three hours.

Even Maths Methods was harder.

In fairness, the sheer horror that was today's Biology 2 paper more than compensated for that.

shay_562

Moorsy wrote:

Then Accounting today which was a bit dodgy in parts and time was a problem as always!!

Fair play to Pat McCabe though, did exactly what he said he would (and having read the 4th years' posts today, I'm even more grateful for that - harsh luck guys, but if everyone had this much trouble with it that should bring the curve crashing downwards, right?) - he literally gave us the exam paper during lectures, so there were no surprises. Which didn't stop me completely banjaxing my cash-flow question and having to re-do the entire budget in about 4 minutes at the end, but still. Fair paper.

Economic Analysis tomorrow, Scanlon's part is grand, but I'm really worried Somerville is going to throw me for a loop again - this'll be the fourth time I've sat one of his papers and I always find his questions incomprehensible. Quants next year should be fun...

Applied Finance on Saturday (whats with that!) hopefully it goes better than the others and brings my average up.

AF is your "average up" paper? God, it's my worst to date - if this exam and the project (which we're never getting back, by the way) go OK, I might salvage a 2.1, but that requires Lucey to set an identical paper to the last few years, and every year he's thrown something new and different in. Could be shaky.

manicmonoliths

zuchum wrote: »

I think what it is you have to get over 50% in one exam,and over 40% in all the rest,and then you're allowed over 30% in one of them as far as i know...

If you get one between 30-39% you can compensate with a grade of 50%+, you can only do it once though. Anything less than 30% you have to repeat.
Bare minimum needed to get into SF is 30,40,40,40,40,50, or 40,40,40,40,40,40. If you fail 2 or more subjects, you have to repeat. You only repeat the subjects you failed in JF.

There's more info on the overall grade on the BESS Exam website, it tells you what you need to qualify for an overall 1st and stuff like that and it explains things much better than I can what you need to pass the year.

http://www.tcd.ie/bess/downloads/examconventionsdec07.pdf


Only Maths tutorials were compulsory and as far as I know you had to submit homework, the quality of the homework doesn't matter though as long as you 'made the effort'. It could be worse, apparently up until pretty recently lecture attendance was compulsory, you had to sign in! Madness that!

2 exams left!!!Please be easy!!

Running Bing

shay_562 wrote: »

Fair play to Pat McCabe though, did exactly what he said he would (and having read the 4th years' posts today, I'm even more grateful for that - harsh luck guys, but if everyone had this much trouble with it that should bring the curve crashing downwards, right?) - he literally gave us the exam paper during lectures, so there were no surprises. Which didn't stop me completely banjaxing my cash-flow question and having to re-do the entire budget in about 4 minutes at the end, but still. Fair paper.

Economic Analysis tomorrow, Scanlon's part is grand, but I'm really worried Somerville is going to throw me for a loop again - this'll be the fourth time I've sat one of his papers and I always find his questions incomprehensible. Quants next year should be fun...

Pat McCabe=Legend

Andrew Sommerville exam Q's=reproductive system of an ostrich (complete mystery)

House of Wolves

manicmonoliths wrote: »

If you get one between 30-39% you can compensate with a grade of 50%+, you can only do it once though. Anything less than 30% you have to repeat.
Bare minimum needed to get into SF is 30,40,40,40,40,50, or 40,40,40,40,40,40. If you fail 2 or more subjects, you have to repeat. You only repeat the subjects you failed in JF.

There's more info on the overall grade on the BESS Exam website, it tells you what you need to qualify for an overall 1st and stuff like that and it explains things much better than I can what you need to pass the year.

http://www.tcd.ie/bess/downloads/examconventionsdec07.pdf


Only Maths tutorials were compulsory and as far as I know you had to submit homework, the quality of the homework doesn't matter though as long as you 'made the effort'. It could be worse, apparently up until pretty recently lecture attendance was compulsory, you had to sign in! Madness that!

2 exams left!!!Please be easy!!

Ah thats alot better than i thought. I thought ur average had to be 50% overall, which is harder than 40%.

zuchum

Pat McCabe=Legend

nice to hear that..he's my college tutor and has been amazingly helpful with problems I've had this year,really nice guy.

If you get one between 30-39% you can compensate with a grade of 50%+, you can only do it once though. Anything less than 30% you have to repeat.
Bare minimum needed to get into SF is 30,40,40,40,40,50, or 40,40,40,40,40,40. If you fail 2 or more subjects, you have to repeat. You only repeat the subjects you failed in JF.

There's more info on the overall grade on the BESS Exam website, it tells you what you need to qualify for an overall 1st and stuff like that and it explains things much better than I can what you need to pass the year.

http://www.tcd.ie/bess/downloads/exa...tionsdec07.pdf


Only Maths tutorials were compulsory and as far as I know you had to submit homework, the quality of the homework doesn't matter though as long as you 'made the effort'. It could be worse, apparently up until pretty recently lecture attendance was compulsory, you had to sign in! Madness that!

wicked. I was planning on trying to get between 30-39 on this one cos I thought the other exams I'd get over 40 and over 50 in one for sure. But after Economics...I'm getting worried...

House of Wolves

Well some comfort is that everyone is terrible at stats so they are going to make it so we can pass. The mock exam and the Hilary Term are almost identical, i think if i can do them questions i sud be able to pass. im teaching myself the basics of the stats course at the mo, instead of trying to do everything. thankfully we have 2day 2 study

also economics was dreadful for me too

shay_562

shay_562 wrote:

Economic Analysis tomorrow, Scanlon's part is grand, but I'm really worried Somerville is going to throw me for a loop again - this'll be the fourth time I've sat one of his papers and I always find his questions incomprehensible. Quants next year should be fun...

Duly rescinded - wel, partially at least. Actual comprehensible questions and a good mix of stuff; I'm conservatively hopeful about this one. So that's two down and two I'm happy with - woot! Now I just need Finance tomorrow to go OK and I can destress for a while.

zuchum

I can now officially do 3/5 of Jaccos Mock exam,and the last 3 topics Carol Newman did...

If the mock exam isn't the same,or similar,im absolutely boned. please be kind jacco.

EGaffney

In fourth year, Jacco teaches you why you shouldn't ask for sample papers or previews of the exam. (Signalling.)

Time Magazine

EGaffney wrote: »

In fourth year, Jacco teaches you why you shouldn't ask for sample papers or previews of the exam. (Signalling.)

Correction: In fourth year, Jacco teaches you why you shouldn't ask for sample papers or previous of the exam. (They're not going to be any sort of a guide.)

EGaffney

Antithetic wrote: »

Correction: In fourth year, Jacco teaches you why you shouldn't ask for sample papers or previous of the exam. (They're not going to be any sort of a guide.)

I don't understand the anti-Jacco vibe since Tuesday. I thought the exam questions were quite legitimate.

zuchum

Antithetic wrote: »

Correction: In fourth year, Jacco teaches you why you shouldn't ask for sample papers or previous of the exam. (They're not going to be any sort of a guide.)

he told us our one would be a good representation of the real exam..i hope so..

I guess i'll bring word back tomorrow

House of Wolves

Yea it was pretty similiar to the mock....the maths was harder than i expected tho and the stats easier. weird...

manicmonoliths

Maths was grand I thought, Stats was a bit tougher but I hadn't studied it as much.

Jacco's a ledge!

bright

....Math and Stats - compensation pass, please. I just blanked for all of stats.