Reasoning Models Ace the CFA Exams

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08270v1
• Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2025 05:57:19 GMT
• Title: Reasoning Models Ace the CFA Exams
• Authors: Jaisal Patel, Yunzhe Chen, Kaiwen He, Keyi Wang, David Li, Kairong Xiao, Xiao-Yang Liu,
• Abstract summary: We evaluate state-of-the-art reasoning models on a set of mock CFA exams consisting of 980 questions across three levels.<n>The models that pass, ordered by overall performance, are Gemini 3.0 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Pro, GPT-5, Grok 4, Claude Opus 4.1, and DeepSeek-V3.1.
• Score: 6.899142543217881
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Previous research has reported that large language models (LLMs) demonstrate poor performance on the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exams. However, recent reasoning models have achieved strong results on graduate-level academic and professional examinations across various disciplines. In this paper, we evaluate state-of-the-art reasoning models on a set of mock CFA exams consisting of 980 questions across three Level I exams, two Level II exams, and three Level III exams. Using the same pass/fail criteria from prior studies, we find that most models clear all three levels. The models that pass, ordered by overall performance, are Gemini 3.0 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Pro, GPT-5, Grok 4, Claude Opus 4.1, and DeepSeek-V3.1. Specifically, Gemini 3.0 Pro achieves a record score of 97.6% on Level I. Performance is also strong on Level II, led by GPT-5 at 94.3%. On Level III, Gemini 2.5 Pro attains the highest score with 86.4% on multiple-choice questions while Gemini 3.0 Pro achieves 92.0% on constructed-response questions.

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