21 Years to become a CFA Charterholder

Props to this guy for the dedication. Gotta feel for his wife though.

Poor bloke probably got stuck on Level 2 for 15 years.

http://celebrate.cfainstitute.org/exam-tales/chris_daniel.html

Funny that you don’t get a mention for completing in less 21 months

Yo, this guy starts talking about leaving the exam after seeing the first couple of questions in “one instance of sitting for the exam.” Really? Does CFA Institute want to showcase Lennies like this to demonstrate their “tenacity” or the “rigor” of the CFA program? I would want to hide this guy as far away from the public eye as humanly possible. In my judgment, puff pieces like this on the website dilute the value of the charter.

This guy probably should have opted to sit for the Claritas exam, enter the exam room, nap, wake up, then receive the “credential.”

^ Completely agree!

Was he trying to create a record of sorts for the heck of it?

This is disappointing. I am sad he’s a fellow charterholder.

This is like the time when I went to a Citi career recruiting event, one of the presenters was this girl who was an analyst, and she said “my biggest advice is you can’t check something enough times! I once checked my work 7 times and it still was wrong!”

Well guess what, if that is indeed true, then your attention to detail is pathethic and you shouldn’t be working in finance at all.

They’re now compiling “Believe it or not tales”… Somebody please send them the sink story!

How long does it take this guy to clean out his garage?

He’s wearing an America’s Team hat. Seems like a pretty cool guy to me!

At least he didn’t commandeer an ambulance to get home from the exam. I wonder how many people died so that Asif Khan, CFA and his lazy-ass buddies could save their tender little feet.

i agree. worst CFA tale ever told.

this is even worse when you consider how different the exams would have been back then. The volume of work would have been so much less demanding than what it is these days.

I appreciate them highlighting the rigor of the exams, but showcasing a guy that took 21 years to complete them is probably not the best way to do it.

Yes and no. I took L1 in 1999 and while there were some current topics that didn’t even exist back then, there was also no such thing as CFAI texts. When I registered, I had to purchase a bunch of college-style textbooks and the curriculum just directed you to different chapters in each book. Schweser notes may have been around, but there was certainly no Q-Bank, live mock exams, downloading old exams, etc. The exams themselves were also much less structured than they are now and the multiple choice had 4 answers instead of 3.

at least we can all agree the pass rates were far higher 20 years ago

Pass rates were higher, but the candidate pool was also much smaller and the average candidate likely had a more extensive background in finance. There weren’t many back office IT guys taking the exams 20 years ago.

He is the dream candidate for CFAI think about how much money they made from him, LOL. Don’t know if he took exams every year or took some years off still if you fails more than several times then maybe it’s time to give up.

Still thumbs up for being persistent smiley isn’t it what is called the regret or loss aversion bias LOL

Can someone explain this?

http://celebrate.cfainstitute.org/exam-tales/bangladesh-India.html

All these stories about war and destruction to get to the test site. Hey, I had to drive through West L.A. traffic on a Friday afternoon to get to the hotel in Anaheim the night before the exam. Talk about a battle.

Seriously. I had to lose 15 minutes of my AM exam every year to go take a sh!t because the lines for the bathrooms are so damn long before you have to be seated!