I'm sitting ST4 in Sep/Oct after CA1 in the last session. It's my first ST so I'd appreciate any tips on the differences in approach required (or confirmation if there isn't much of a difference). Thanks in advance
The good news it that many of the same skills are required in ST4, ie focusing on understanding key parts of core reading and then careful application to questions (using information in the question to tailor your answers etc.) Achieving sufficient breadth of thinking and not too much detail about any one point will again be important. You will though notice that there are fewer short core reading lists to learn in ST4 and very few acronyms compared to CA1! So your study will be focused on understanding the material and the application rather than learning lists.
Marking and instruction words I attended an online 'Exam Skills Session' yesterday and there was a lack of clarity around a couple of issues I had re differences between CA1 and ST4. Namely: in CA1 the list/state questions result in 0.5 marks per point whereas the tutor said that in ST4 such questions may sometimes generate 0.5 per point and other times 0.25 per point; is this true and if so how would you know the difference/know how many points to generate? is there a difference between CA1 and ST4 in the way that instruction words (describe, explain etc) should be interpreted? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
ST's = less learning, more about being able to understand concepts (which will be relatively more advanced). You'll need more "thinking" time in your study. You should find it a nice change, i hope
Hi jfitz Broad rule of thumb in ST4 is that each simple point scores 0.5. So I would expect to score 0.5 for each bullet in a list question. The only exception to this is if I were asked to write a very simple list eg list the financial and demographic assumptions used in a valuation, where I think in the past, the examiners may have awarded only 0.25 marks per point. However, we don't generally see such simple lists nowadays in ST4, so it is hard to know how the examiners would treat it now. So, in the exam, I would work on the basis of 0.5 marks per point, unless the question were a very simple bookwork list and it was obvious there were lots of things to say, in which case I might use 0.25 marks per point. In terms of instruction words, I don't teach CA1, however my understanding from many discussions with students is that they should be interpreted the same / similar way. Best wishes Gresham
