Preparing for cfa level 2- 2014 Started off with FRA and finished entire syllabus yesterday (solving schweser eocs, cfa blue box, cfa eoc’s, and also writing important formulas along the way)… Now when I again started revision of FRA today… am not able to recall most of the things! 
So depressed right now… and feel like i did something really wrong in my approach. Request to all kind souls… please Advise on how may i effectively manage my remaining time… i tried solving the questions again but i need to keep referring the formulas and refer back to the study notes… sigh…
Why don’t you try an open book practice exam?
pray to the sun god Ra
This is totally normal, and a lot of people don,t realize this is an issue until they get to where you are right now. The issue is that there is so much more info at L2 compared to L1. You need to pick up the pace though as you should soon be doing mocks, and it sounds like you arn’t ready for that yet. My advice is review hard and fast.skim back through the readings again, do the CFAI EOCs again, do qbank, really pound note cards. Nk you will be able to move faster doing this than hitting mocks right now. I had to do a seconass for L2 and have done a third pass now for L3. You haven’t done anything wrong with your study approach, I just feel like you really need to hump the review hard until you are able to handle te CFAI EOCs and remember most of the formulas.
Nothing to panick about until a few weeks out.
Noted Jayman.
This is real good advice. Thank you very much.
Just applied for exact one month’s leave from work. Hope that suffices.
By when should I ideally target to complete the second pass to have enough time for mocks?
This is nothing to worry about and I would use your remaining time to review the CFA EOCs a second time if not a third. There are also item set questions apart from the CFA mocks on the CFA website, which are also worth doing.
This is my approach and will continue with this until May, the 5th or 6th at which point I will will start my first mock exam.
Well this seems like it won’t do much good…
Two pieces of advice:
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Stop referring to the formulas during practice questions. Answer as best as you can THEN when reviewing your answers refer to the formulas…write them down again on paper, this will help sink it in.
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Do the Qbank like crazy. A lot of the same formulas will show up and you will start to remember. Again, if you don’t recall the formula during a question DO NOT REFER TO IT, just guess and try to answer as best possible and then review the formula once you’re done with your session.
^ I agree. Do not refer to the formula while trying to answer a question. You will not remember formulas this way
make sure to use protection.
It’s tough to give a date for when to start mocks as everyone is different and right now for you I think mocks are not the most important thing on your list. With a full month off from the salt mine you should have time to handle all of this. Here are the things I consider important to do (If I were in your shoes getting myself ready for the test)
I would start by going through topic by topic (start with your strongest topics) skimming through the Schweser readings and looking at the Blue Boxes again, I would work Qbank hard (break each topic up into easy, medium, and hard, questions) work the easy ones only long enough until you feel like you’ve got it as these are too easy and end up being filler. Then move up and do all the medium and hard questions. Drill note cards for this topic, then go over the CFAI EOCs. Do the online stuff the CFAI gives you last as a way to test your understanding of that topic. Move on to the next topic… As you move through the topics increase your note card review by reviewing not only that topic’s note cards but also all the prior sections as well. Finish up with your weakest topics. Once done start mocks (do the Schweser mocks first then the CFAI mocks).
This would be my approach in a perfect world (this may not work as well for others depending on learning abilities and study habits), if you are getting pinched for time drop the Qbank first (it adds value but not as much as the other items). Also you can drop some/all of the Schweser mocks if you just don’t have time. Under no scenario can you skip the CFAI mocks or CFAI EOCs they are important. I left the CFAI mocks for the end and the CFAI EOCs for the end of each topic as these are important and shouldn’t be wasted on “learning” the info., rather they are there to test you on how much you really don’t know.
To focus back on your direct question I think if my goal was to do 8 mocks (6 from Schweser and 2 from CFAI) I would want about 2 weeks - probably a little less (full time break from work - I have not been in this position before so it’s hard to really answer). The reason being you need time to go back through to address weak areas and extra time to keep drilling down through your note card stack every few days (your stack shoudl be thick by now and take some time to work through - lots of formulas and processes in the readings). As I mention above I think the mock(s) from Schweser can get dropped and this “mocks” schedule compressed if you are running out of time as I believe the review portion of your remaining plan is more important than the mock portion (at least the Schweser part of the mock portion). The mocks do help you get used to the item set format and time management and Qbank really won’t help that much with this, but honestly I found that getting used to the item set format was not that big of a deal, and most candidates tend to do better with time on L2 than L1 (I actually had a harder time with time management on L2 but I seem to be in the minority).
Write all formulas on one page and take a day to memorize them.
Donot panic and revise the whole thing all over again once . Still there are few weeks left for the exam. . Try as many practise questions as you can .
Thanks a lot guys. You all are very kind. Thank you.
You should be fine, I felt the same way but cracked out my first open book mock yesterday and did alright. Will be doing more this weekend.
Studying is like advancing in a sports tourney. You have to pick up your game and intensity the closer you get to the championship round.