SME Consultant Primary Exam, One Mark Away. A Summer of Crowding Out.
August 2nd, 3:00 PM. The exam is over.
The third year of the SME Consultant primary exam. Three subjects remaining: Economics, Finance, and SME Policy.
For the first and second years, I studied on my own using correspondence materials. Seeing my scores actually decline in the second year, I decided to change my entire approach this year. I enrolled in TAC. Twice a week on weekday evenings, I sat in a classroom in Yaesu from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. During the day, I am buried in meetings and desk work as a sales manager. From there, twice a week, I avoided business dinners and gave up my entire evening. This was the third year where I decided to commit both my time and my priorities to this.
The results were: Economics 48, Finance 56, SME Policy 72. A total of 176 points. Four points short of the 180-point passing line. Just one mark away.
...If I write only the conclusion first, that is not a lie. However, I want to keep a record of where those four points disappeared.
A month ago, I wrote this in an article about the mock exam: 'If you can find where you are going to collapse first, that is actually a harvest.' I decided to rebuild the shock of the 40 points in Finance from that time over the remaining month. In fact, I brought Finance back up to 56 points in the actual exam. +16 points from the mock exam. I certainly recovered from the collapse.
Even so, I was 4 points short of 60.
In the first place, I should have been good at qualification exams.
In my late 40s, I passed IPA exams one after another. IT Passport, Information Technology Passport, Applied Information Technology Engineer, and Registered Information Security Specialist. All passed on the first try. Incidentally, I also passed the G-Certification, which was harder than it is now, without any trouble on the first attempt.
Honestly, during those few years, I became convinced that I was 'a person who is good at qualification exams.' Read the textbook, go through past questions, and grasp the trends. It is a game that you will definitely pass if you follow the procedure.
With that misunderstanding, I tried my hand at the SME Consultant exam at 49. And then, I got stuck in the swamp.
After three years, I finally understood that the way of thinking required for IT qualifications and the SME Consultant exam is completely different. IPA qualifications have knowledge piled up on a single trunk called information technology. What you learned in the basic information exam helps with the applied information exam, and the understanding of the applied information exam works for the specialist exam. What is asked is the ability to build logic from the given context. That was exactly what I was good at.
In contrast, the primary exam for the SME Consultant consists of Economics, Accounting, Business Administration, Production Management, Law, Information Engineering, and Administrative Policy. Seven disciplines are placed side by side, and they hardly help each other. Knowledge of business law does not flow a single drop into economics. What is asked is not logic, but the precise memory of discrete facts and the speed at which they can be retrieved within the time limit.
I thought it was a stacking game. In reality, it was a spreading game.
Economics — 'You will improve by 12 points from the mock exam'
The mock exam for Economics was 48 points. The first completion practice was 48 points, and the second completion practice was 48 points. Three times in a row, exactly 48 points as if stamped.
After the mock exam, there were these words in the final lecture by Mr. Arai at TAC: 'You will improve by 12 points from here from the mock exam.'
I honestly believed those words. 48+12=60. It reaches exactly. For the remaining month, I increased my study in Economics. Following the teacher's model that 'those who master graphs master the actual exam,' I repeated it until I could draw AD-AS on a blank sheet of paper, and I reduced the multipliers and elasticity to the point where I could process them by memorization rather than formula transformation. I also went through the past questions that I hadn't touched, one year at a time every week from R3 to R7.
R5 was 84 points, and R7 was 60 points. I am solving R7, which was 40 points in last year's actual exam, with 60 points this year. Finance also went from 36 points to 68 points. In terms of numbers, it was certainly growing. Just before the exam, I think I was definitely finished to a level that would exceed 60 points in a normal year. 12 points was by no means a pipe dream number.
And in the actual exam, Economics became more difficult.
It's just like crowding out.
I ran out of time. I couldn't finish to the end, and in the end, I got 48 points. It was the fourth time I'd scored 48.
This year's economics exam consisted of 25 large questions with no sub-questions. You couldn't earn points on multiple questions from a single topic, and the design required you to process each of the 25 questions from scratch. The volume of processing was clearly higher than in previous years. On top of that, there were unfamiliar topics mixed in for which I had no set approach. Two and a half minutes per question was a tight figure from the start.
It's clear where I fell apart. It was questions 11 and 12.
I got stuck on these two questions. I felt like I was close to solving them. In fact, if I had only had the time, I might have been able to. When I realized it, there were 10 minutes left and 8 questions untouched. From that point on, my hasty work led to mounting point losses.
I should have known that triage was necessary. If a pattern didn't come to mind within 30 seconds of reading, mark it as a triangle; if I couldn't reach a conclusion in 2 minutes, mark it as a triangle. I had decided that for myself. I failed to stick to that in the first hour of the first subject on the first day.
The scoring ability I had built up was pushed back by the high load of the difficult exam. It's like the crowding out I learned about in macroeconomics. Just as fiscal stimulus leads to higher interest rates and crowds out private investment, my efforts were crowded out by the high load on the day of the exam. Ironically, the subject that explains that phenomenon became the victim of that very phenomenon itself.
However, there is another point to crowding out. The interest rate pushed up by fiscal stimulus does not go down. Only the GDP returns to its original state.
My 48 points are probably the same. In my third year, my score didn't move from 48 points. But the level of ability required to get those 48 points is different from last year. Only the score returned, but the level I reached remains. The capital I accumulated this year will be carried over to the beginning of next year as is.
SMEs ── The year I built a map for the vast ocean
The subject that changed the most this year compared to last year: SME Management and Policy.
53 points in the first year, 55 points in the second year. The second year, in particular, was said to be an extremely easy year. In a year where people said, 'If you don't get it this year, when will you?', I missed it by a few marks.
I had always been bad at it. The scope is wide, flat, and there are no clues anywhere. No matter how much I memorized the figures in the White Paper or the names of policies, they kept coming one after another. It felt like being thrown into a vast ocean, and as a self-taught student, I couldn't see at all what I should discard and what I should take. The biggest reason I decided to attend TAC this year was actually this subject.
Mr. Koguchi's lectures drew a shipping route through that ocean. 'The White Paper is 60% based on three things: the Economic Census, the Basic Survey on Service Industries, and the Employment Insurance Business Annual Report.' I learned for the first time that there is a way to grasp it, not by rote memorization of numbers, but by looking at whether they went up or down and whether they are consistent.
That's why I put the things I was curious about from the casual talk during the lectures into my final paper. The offhand remarks the teacher would make, like 'This will be on the test soon' or 'Everyone gets this wrong every year,' paid off later. In fact, topics that got more attention during the casual talk, such as the labor share and the Act on Supporting Small Business Enterprises, appeared on the actual exam.
Admittedly, 'scale-up,' which was said to be the biggest potential topic this year, did not appear. Instead, the New Business Entry and the Manufacturing, Commerce, and Service Subsidy, which were said to be unlikely to appear, showed up. On X after the exam, requests for the questions to be invalidated were trending.
Even so, I got 72 points. Following the 75 points on the mock exam, it was over 70%. A subject pass. This year, it was the only subject that went according to my design. I think I was able to pick up the rest without panicking even when the predicted topics were wrong because I entered the venue with a map.
And now, I'm thinking about next year. Since I passed the subject, I can be exempted next year. But if I continue to attend TAC, I'm thinking of taking this subject again. If this year's 72 points weren't a fluke, I should be able to get about the same next year, and that will be a cushion to boost my total score. A weak subject has turned into a source of points. This change is too precious to let go.
What I learned
After the exam was over and I reflected quietly, I realized something. It wasn't my knowledge that collapsed this year.
If it's a problem in a form I've seen before, I can solve it. The moment a form I've never seen appears, my hands stop. In a practical work setting, I could take my time and think about it. In an exam, you have to make a decision on the spot in a few minutes.
What was required was not the breadth of knowledge as a consultant, but the speed of decision-making in an emergency. When you encounter a problem you don't understand, do you stick with it or give up on it? Whether or not I had that judgment as a pattern. The SME subject, for which I had it, remained, and I was pushed back in Economics, for which I didn't.
By the way, the suspicion crossed my mind that my brain might be rapidly deteriorating around the age of 50. I wondered if I was different now from when I was racing through the IPA exams. But when I looked into it, it seems there is almost no physiological basis for that kind of sudden drop. What declines with age is the speed of processing new information quickly, and even that is extremely gradual until the early 50s. Rather, the ability to bundle and use experience continues to grow even after 50. If so, what was lacking was not intelligence, but the single technique of deciding within a few minutes to give up on an unfamiliar problem. That's actually convenient. I found out it's the kind of weakness that can be fixed if I train it.
There was another trick to the way of taking the exam itself. The more you narrow down the subjects you take using the subject pass exemption, the more you end up bearing the full brunt of the increased difficulty of the remaining subjects. People who take all 7 subjects can offset a bomb in one subject with the others. I, who narrowed it down to 3 subjects, had already given up that insurance. The fact that it's easy to concentrate around 176 points, which stops at 'one more mark,' is not a coincidence, but a structure created by the design of this exam.
Next year, Management and Operations will return
The Corporate Management Theory and Operations Management subjects I passed in the first year have an expiration date of this year. Next year, I will have to retake these two subjects.
At first glance, it looks like the burden is increasing. But based on what I learned this time, this is actually a task of regaining insurance. If I bring the subjects I'm good at back into the exam cycle, it will be closer to a design where if one subject becomes more difficult, I can offset it with others. I can diversify the risk I was carrying with 3 subjects this year next year. The reason I'm intentionally planning to retake the SME subject is based on the same logic.
The foundation has already been built this year. All that remains is the technique to give it my all within the constrained time. That is all.
Starting next week, I will attend the pre-secondary exam lectures and exercises.
Starting next week, I will go to take the pre-secondary exam lectures and exercises. Naturally, I cannot take the secondary exam this October. After all, I haven't passed the primary exam.
I am going anyway because it will be effective for next year's primary exam. The case studies handled in the secondary exam use knowledge of corporate management theory and operations management directly. Since those two subjects will return next year, relearning them in the secondary exam classroom is the most logical way to review.
And, for the sake of finance. This year, I stopped at 56 points. Four more points. I feel that as long as I keep chasing it from the perspective of the primary exam's mark sheet, these four points will not be filled. Case IV of the secondary exam treats the same finance as management decision-making. When viewed from a higher perspective, how will the primary exam questions appear? I am going to verify that.
Confidence is not about knowing a lot.
It is about believing that even if you don't know the answer, if you think it through and take action, you will manage. ── Lisa Su (AMD CEO)
During the final period this year, I placed these words on the first page of my final paper. What I built was the first half. What I lacked was the latter half.
Next year's primary exam will likely be on August 7th and 8th on the calendar. The distance is closing. Now, it is just a matter of how to go and get that final mark.
Fourth time's the charm.