Hey Guys,
I am going to sign up for the CFA level 1 in June of 2015 and I have a couple questions about what study material to purchase.
I know that from reading some of these posts, that people use a combination of study tactics. I am a senior finance major so I have a little background in the curriculum. I am wondering what you guys think about only using the CFA Institute’s study material. I know that some use the Kaplan material as well. Are there different study methods offered with Kaplan as opposed to the CFA Institute’s material? For example, does Kaplan offer EOC questions or higher quality mock exams that the CFA material won’t?
Also, if you do suggest I purchase the Kaplan material, what level should I purchase? For example, the premium, essential or basic level package.
Thanks Guys!
Hi P.burns034. I was a finance senior as well when I took the CFA Level 1 exam. Most of the topics in the curriculum were already discussed in class, so I found the CFAI texts very lengthy and boring. I used Schweser instead because it’s much shorter and straight to the point. I still did answer the EOCs in the CFAI texts though and found that a few (very few, actually) were not covered by Schweser. I was still able to answer some of those because they were taught in uni. So my advice is to just go with Schweser, answer EOCs, and answer a lot of mocks for practice. You’ll save a lot of timw and will be able to focus more on the important topics. Good luck!
I personally bought notes, qbank, and mocks. Called the self study package i think.
I am presently preparing for the December level 1 exam, and i bough the Schweser premium package. Schweser is straight to the point and helps you manage your time. However, like aertsommelier said, you still need to attempt the EOC’s and lots of Mock questions. I studied Economics and have a fair background in Finance, so i am not finding it hard to grab and understand.
Preparing for December L1 as well and what I’ve done so far was I read through the entire Schweser material once (as its about half the length of the CFAI material) and am now doing the End of Chapter questions from the CFAI books since I have read (but please take this claim with a pinch of salt- I’m just a guy who’s just signed up to these exams so quite inexperienced) that they’re a bit more representative of the exam questions than the Schweser EOC’s.
Once I’m done with those, I’ll go through the Schweser Q bank and as many mocks as I can.