“压力大是正常的，哪怕是美国本土的学生。”
The Longest Wait: Analyst Test-Takers Have Summer Of Fear

By LYNN COWAN

July 12, 2004 4:27 p.m. Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -- For months, they alternately ache for it and dread it. They shake.
They lose sleep.

Methamphetamine addicts? Hardly. It is the thousands of people who take the Chartered Financial Analyst exams, a multi-year series of financial industry tests that require nearly a whole summer of waiting after each exam for the results, creating a nerve-wracking period of limbo right now after a grueling year of studying.

"I didn't pick up a fiction book for three years," recalls Beth Hamilton-Keen, an investment counselor at CIBC Private Wealth Management in Calgary, Canada, of her time cramming for the three required CFA exams in the late 1990s. "When you work a twelve-hour day, then you have to fit it into your nights and weekends. Taking long plane rides helps a lot. You can't do anything else on a plane."

Ask any academic, analyst or portfolio manager awaiting the CFA results, and they will tell you: The wait for results is almost as bad as the test itself, which quizzes participants on everything from accounting to ethics.

The tests, administered by the non-profit CFA Institute in the U.S., are given worldwide in 89 countries on the same day in early June. Results come out in late July for people who took the first-year test level, and later in August for the following two test levels. CFA candidates are currently in the thick of the waiting period, mulling over the questions they think they flubbed.

There has even been a liquor commercial made about it: In a reality spot that was aired in South Africa last year, Bells Scotch Whiskey's cameras followed equity analyst Johan de Bruijn as he logged on to a computer to find out if he had passed the final level of the exam. The 28-year-old Cape Town resident, who hadn't slept the night before, jumped out of his chair and screamed when he found out he had passed.

"I've made it!" he bellowed as the logo for Bell's whiskey appeared. "Ah, I'm shivering!"

Bruijn recalls that day, nearly a year later. "I was shivering because I was so relieved. It was more like shaking," he said. Immediately after the commercial was filmed, he went to his office and told everyone there he had completed the third level.

"There is huge pressure on the candidate to pass, especially from colleagues, some of whom have already received their charter," he said.