This past Tuesday was marked on every calendar of the more than 30k people who took the CFA Level III exam back in June. It was results day. But as it turned out, much of the action took place on Monday, when one test taker went to the forums to let others know that he had a strange “Congratulations!” message sitting in his CFA Institute account.
Some were quick to dismiss the claim, noting that it was probably an error, leaving the originally poster regretting logging in to his account in the first place. “The rest of my work day is gone, now sitting at my desk wondering if what I saw is real. Sigh,” they wrote. But soon a few others said they too received the congratulatory message in their account. This caused mass unrest among those who didn’t receive the message, assuming they had failed. “Well, this will be another great 24 hours of anxiety and speculation!” said one candidate.
Toward the end of Monday, some test takers even resorted to counting the number of people who acknowledged receiving the message and dividing it by those who didn’t to see if the percentage would fall in line with past pass/fail results. Several hours and hundreds of messages later, the official results were emailed at 9 a.m. EST. Those who received the congratulatory message did in fact pass, but that didn’t mean that candidates who saw nothing failed.
“Messages of congratulations did appear accurately, albeit prematurely, in a small number of candidate accounts on Monday before they were removed,” the CFA Institute told eFinancialCareers in a statement. “Exam results notifications were issued on Tuesday to all candidates as planned.”
Needless to say, Monday may not have been the most productive day for some investment professionals. A screenshot of the now-deleted congratulations message is below.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: btuttle@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t).
Related articles:
These are the CFA’s funky new questions. Could you answer them?The CFA Institute gave us a sneak peek into the 2019 curriculum. Here are some of the new questions that you'll need to be able to answer.
These are the jobs and the companies a CFA qualification will open the door toYou've got a CFA qualification, but which firm is most likely to hire you? And into which business area? A few surprises await.
Have Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley become a breeding ground for Google?Top investment banks do a great job of training young tech talent. The only problem is they are often preparing employees for a career elsewhere.
““