Back when I took my 7 in 1996, I was shocked at how easy it was to pass. Lately though, I'm getting a lot of personal reports from reasonably intelligent guys who tried and failed their recent attempts at passing their series 7 exam. My question: Have they made the series 7 significantly more difficult at some time over the past decade? From anecdotal evidence, it really seems that way.
I know someone that couldn't read cfa level 1 questions or understand the material and he said that the Series 7 was a joke
I took the 7 in 96 as well. To address your second paragraph. I recently took the S87 (research analyst compliance portion) I have the 86 already so need that to have the Analyst designation. Anyway...I bought the STC books which I have used since 1996 to study with. They are always very good and accurate. Read the book...took the 8 practice tests..got 90`s on all of them. Test day comes...I got a 66%. I was livid. I had always passed my NASD exams when using STC material. So I call and mail the company. The president calls and we had a discussion about the exam. In a nutshell he said that the NASD (Finra) is cracking down hard....thought all the pass rates were too high..and have adjusted accordingly. And that is very hard to keep the material up to par when they change the difficulty level so suddenly.
guys.. I passed it on the first try which means its not that hard lol .... look .. its not rocket science , the content that is.... its actually easy info to comprehend... but KAPLAN claims its the trickiest test of most major exams... double negatives.. mtiple choice with similar amswers.. etc.. the way kapLAN had me study was take a million practice exams and write test questions down on index cards... when I took the 7.. there wasn't a questoon I had not previously seen..