This blog would help you understand why at end of Sept, we were expecting *CFA® Dec exam to get canceled* and it did get canceled eventually.

Most importantly this blog would help you understand *why we expect the CFA® Feb exam to most likely happen.*

1. Number of Students at one place CFA® Dec exam was a paper-based exam happening on a single day at a single location in Mumbai / Pune with approx 12,000 students in Mumbai (from all 3 levels) gathering at one place.

When we compare this to the CFA® Feb exam — it has only CFA® L1 candidates and not L2 and L3. So, the number of students would be lesser. (approx 9,000)

Secondly, it is happening at 2 locations in Mumbai over 15 days and each location has 2 slots (Morning and Afternoon).

So, total number of slots are 2 X 2 X 15 = 60 slots.

The total number of students at one slot would be approx 9,000 / 60 = 150

So, 12,000 for CFA® Dec Exam v/s 150 for CFA® Feb Exam

2. Computer-based format With CFA ® exam’s paper-based format, it’s challenging to adhere to that social distancing requirement. With the computer-based format of the CFA® Exam, we believe it’s quite possible to do that.

3. Logistics requirements With the paper-based format of the CFA® Exam, there were a lot of logistics requirements related to arranging question papers, candidates’ pledges, etc. from the USA.

With the digital format of the CFA® Exam, we believe that such logistics requirements are down to almost NIL.

4. Foreigners coming for moderation It was seen in all past CFA® exams that — generally around the team of 5-10 members fly from the USA to India to monitor CFA® Exam happening here. Considering the fact that cases in America were rising rapidly, it was challenging to get this permission.

Corona’s situation in America is still not under control but the requirement of monitoring would be a little lesser as Feb CFA® Exam would be an online exam that could be monitored online.

5. Exam conductor Dec CFA® Paper-based exam was supposed to be conducted in colleges (Thakur), exhibition Centres (Nesco), and 5 stars hotels. Sadly, none were working smoothly due to Covid.

Colleges were asked to remain shut. Exhibition centers were converted to Covid Treatment facilities. 5-star hotels are working but conference halls are restricted to have only 50 guests.

This led to tremendous challenges in conducting the paper-based exams.

The computer-based exam is being conducted by reputed institutes like — *Prometric*.

Prometric, in India, is already conducting other international exams like GRE.

This leads to a kind of clear expectation that, if other international exams are successfully being conducted digitally by Prometric, the CFA® exam would be most likely expected to happen in Feb.