Hi guys, I recently passed level 1, and here is my advice to those who are planning on taking it in December (or retaking it in December). I found that Schweser was NOT enough to cover the concepts. It is an excellent source of material, but should not be the only one in your arsenal. I would highly recommend everyone at least skim the CFAI materials to fill in the gaps, and ESPECIALLY go through every single EOC questions with a fine tooth comb.
Each reading in the cirriculum will have a main topic. This main topic should not be skimmed from Schweser, but should come from the source. The CFAI books are written incredibly well, and may elucidate concepts that a few sentences in Schweser might not. Furthermore, certain things will simply be left out of Schweser entirely (sources of borrowing for instance in corporate finance).
Finally, I highly recommend that all candidates get their main knowledge of fixed income from the new readings in the CFAI as opposed to Schweser. These new readings are worth the price of the books alone.
In short: at least skim the CFAI materials. Do ALL EOCs. Use schweser to reinforce concepts, but the big ideas should come from the source. Use the CFAI for all fixed income readings.
I used CFAI only, did all EOCs that were in the Level 1 Format (I think Quant/FI had some non-multiple-choice that I didn’t go through), and did all of the practice exams on CFAI website. Didn’t take any full mock exams though.
I read CFA level 1 (2013) from schweser books only (NO EoC, Blue Box, any videos, Qbanks etc…). I got 87% in my CFAI mock and >70% in all except ethics. Granted there were around 10 questions in the real exam asking about stuff that I had never even heard of, I believe schweser is more than enough to pass level 1.
GTFO of here with your strawmen and hyperboles. Schweser is of course not a scam. I used Schweser as well and if you read my post carefully, I said Qbank is very useful, as are the notes. However, Schweser should not be the only tool in your arsenal, for instance, would you try to build a house with just a hammer?
“Tens of thousands of candidates”, lol… I’ll humor you: if that’s the case, and you take luck out of the equation- how many thousands of them have degrees in finance/econ/accounting? How many worked in the industry for many years before the exams? How many had MBAs and graduate degrees? *yawn
You definitely need the CFA material for the odd reference but the problem is that the CFA text is information overload. You don’t know whats important and whats not and its easy to lose focus. Schweser lays it all out for you LOS by LOS and gives you the meat. If you don’t understand something you can read the CFA text for clarification. Me personally though, I found that I was able to score just as well on the CFA eoc questions as I did on the Schweser practice questions after reading only Schweser notes.
Know thyself and you should be fine. I did Schweser and used the CFAI material on an as needed basis and it worked out well.
Try to get good at “knowing what you don’t know” if that makes sense…so you can target the lengthier CFAI material in the most efficient/effective way.
IMHO Schweser is more than enough to pass Level 1. It’s more straight to the point as compared to the CFAI material which is too wordy and convoluted. Remember you just have to understand the core concepts and Schweser does a good job in presenting the LOS. 11th Hour is also a great material when revising during the last few weeks before the exam.
It’s another story for Level II. I tried the Schweser only approach last year and I failed band 5. I wasn’t able to grasp the topics inside out because the way Schweser presented the topics was too simple. I relied more on the CFAI material the second time around.
One thing I learned during the process is that one must be adaptable. The strategy used in one level may not work with another.
I only used Schweser to pass. It will work if you put the effort in to it.
I took notes along side the Schweser books, used the videos, made my own note cards, read secret sause (which i don’t reccomend wasting time on), did 8 mock exams (2cfa, 6kaplan).
Never looked at the cfa books, I firmly believe Schweser will work for Lv1.
