Looks like the Elan Guides / Wiley materials are out for June 2015 Level 1 and 2. Has anyone purchased these yet? Know if the study notes come in a print version? How’s the new materials under new ownership compared to anything else you’ved used in the past?
Thanks!
I was going to purchase the Wiley (formerly Elan) Materials for Level 1 June 2015 right away - until I realized that the Wiley package “Self Study Pack” has some key differneces to the formerly entitled Elan “Ultimate Prep Package.” While both are similarly priced, the new Wiley package omits two very key components: 1) 11th hour study guide, and 2) full length mock exams. The latter two of which won’t be available until Jan 2015 at the earliest - according to their customer service dept. In addition, printed materials won’t be available until then as well.
Now, one could argue that you won’t need the mock exams / 11th hour guide before Jan 2015 anyway, but the point is that Wiley appears to have left out some key components to Elan’s materials in their package - with the objetive of charging CFA candidates more via an a-la-carte mechanism for things that used to be included in the Elan packages.
This is unfortunate, because Elan used to be a considerably less expensive alternative to Schweser (while offering similar quality). That advantage appears to have disappeared.
Thanks for the extra tips on that. I was interested in the package with the notes plus videos and forgot about the 11th hour guide and mock exams that used to ship with it. It does sound like the guide and mock exams will be extra on top of the study package. Also are you under the impression that the print books will be extra, “a-la-carte” as well? If so that is not really the deal it used to be. Might have to just go with Schweser which seems to be the gold standard even if you just do notes+qbank (also comes with 6 mock exams) for the $650 package. I’m torn on this.
Hi Everyone, here’s the deal. The current content (which is all the Elan content minus any readings with changes for 2015) is what we have for sale today for 2015. In January we will have the full 2015 offering which is 4 bundles:
(Has everything in the old Elan Ultimate Plus and more like online mentoring from finance university faculty, an interactive exam planner which uses study plans from those that pass to calculate the ideal passing study cadence and pre-exam practice scores that correlate with passing, virtual classroom which is an online study group meetup etc.)
(Same as above but without the final review components)
(Same as Gold but without the mentoring and virtual classroom)
(Similar to current “Self-Study Pack” minus the lecture videos but plus mock exams, practice questions in a real online Test Bank tool with question set filter, score metrics etc. and the online exam planner.)
Other Notes:
+All of the above 4 bundles come with our “Partner Until You Pass” guarantee … you have access until you pass period. No repeat fees. No providing any documentation for a discount. You keep your full access and get the content updates free year after year until you pass. There is a small fee for shipping updated books (but you get the ebooks free). This is kinda a big deal in the market. No one else offers this. For those of you that bought the Elan Ultimate Plus … and fail … you get your continuing access as well to fulfill the free updates promise made to Ultimate Plus buyers.
There will be an upgrade package so if you buy the full Self-Study Pack now you can just upgrade for the price difference (with a bit of savings) to the full Platinum Review Course in Jan.
Print items will flow in the market as soon as Basit finishes the last updates for 2015 and our edit/production teams can turaround the files. Study Guides (updated names for Study Notes) will be pushed to glboal book etailers (Amazon etc.) and be stocked in global book warehouses and channels. Same with Eleventh Hour Guide.
+Eleventh Hour Guide will also turn into it’s own full online cram course (target is March 2015)
+The current study guides and practice questions ebooks will update with the new 2015 content during the next few months as we have it. Same for the videos. We’ll just add it as we have it.
+Printing: there has been some initial question around the number of pages that can be printed from the Vitalsource ebooks … we’re looking into that to increase the amount that can be printed at one time. \
+Content organization: to fit with our Bite-sized Lesson test prep method which chunks study into 30 min sessions (give or take) the current organization of the Study Guide and video etc. will change to the Bite Sized model when the print books are finished. We call these the “Lessonized” versions of the content.
Final Word: Please keep the questions coming. We do listen to what you all say and try our best to serve the market. We want to keep the spirit of Elan alive. Sometimes there are tradeoffs we just have to make. One of those was to drop the audio product (for now). But if you say you really, really want it that’s good to know.
We do have a 6-day a week support team based in Sedona Arizona and the new website has a chat link at the top for live chat with support. Phone and email also work. The editorial team at Wiley headquarters in Hoboken, NJ and the social media team in London work together to build on Basit’s great product and try to add some operational structure around distribution, support and partnering with local societies and universities.
OK - I appreciate the detailed explanation from Wiley (formerly Elan) but my summation of the new pricing structure is this: If I was sitting for the December 2014 exam and could still order directly from Elan - I would pay $800 for both print and hard copies of the study notes, lecture videos, 11th hour guide, 3 FULL length MOCK exams, practice questions and audio books (Frankly, I don’t care about the audio books). This is taken directly from Elan’s website. If Wiley wants to keep the spirit of Elan alive, don’t offer a stripped down base package and expect candidates to pay more further down the road to get the same amount of material.
Now with Wiley, it appears as though I will almost certainly be paying more - at a price that even Wiley can’t define specifically yet - for the 3 MOCK Exams, the 11th hour guide, and the print version of the study notes as soon as it become available…because the new rebranded CFA Self-Study pack (as it is now called on Wiley’s website) is already $645 according to Wiley’s website [note: not $545 as quoted above] and does not include any mock exams, 11th hour study guide or print version.
It is hard for me to imagine a scenario where I purchase the new Wiley base package for $645 and then order the print version, mock exams and 11th hour guide as add-ons once they are available,…and still come in at $800 as I would have been able to do with Elan in 2014. I was on live chat with Wiley yesterday on two separate occassions and could not get specific answers for the additional costs that I will need to incur if I want the study guides in print, obtain mock exams and the 11th hour study guide.
The bottom line is that customers used to get the mock exams and 11th hour study guides included for $650 in the base package from Elan - that is no longer the case with Wiley…unless they change their pricing structure. Excuse me for sounding cynical, but Wiley is asking Elan customers to pay considerably more under the new silver/gold/platinum pricing structures and they’ve erased their pricing advantage when compared to Schweser. CFA Candidates are generally bright people and the labeling of various higher end packages won’t eradicate the omissions in the new Wiley base package.
By contrast, Schweser’s base package is $649 and includes 6 full length mock exams and the print version of the study guides is only $20 more. I don’t mind paying an extra $90 for Schweser’s secret sauce now, since I’ll have to pay extra if I want Wiley’s 11th hour study guide under the new pricing structure.
As I said in my original post, I was ready to order from Elan this week. It is a shame that Wiley’s omission of key ingredients in the former Elan base package has made my decision so much more difficult.
@stochterman thanks that’s good feedback. We’ll look into “add-print-upgrade” to those that buy the current ebooks (although you will soon be able to print 20 pages at a time from the ebook … right now I think it’s 2 pages but we should have that updated soon). I’ll also discuss your other comments with the team.
In general the current offering up on the site right now is a bridge due the transition from Elan operations to Wiley … just the nature of these things and I completely understand from your POV it’s a change with some negative impact and thus frustrating.
In terms of the pricing … it is true the Elan had a product/price combination that was a bit lower in terms of up front cost. All the 4 Wiley packages do have free repeats. I know many will shop assuming a pass and not calculate the savings of not having to repurchase after a fail but that does lower the “total cost” over time. In terms of a la cart we’ll listen and learn from the market. Based on Elan customer purchases, the data is very clear that the big bundles are by far the most popular items. We know that some of the decisions we make will not always be popular and we hope others like the no repeat fees will be.
I can promise that we’re good listeners. And we want to make customers happy naturally. And while we won’t get everything right, we’re aiming to deliver value and innovate while not messing with what works … especially the content itself.
Kinda off topic but is Peter Olinto still with Elan/Wiley for the 2015 material? Thanks.
I believe that he is.
That’s a big plus.
Does anybody have the ELAN GUIDES study note 2014 ?
If the Elan ebooks on VitalSource only allow me to print 20 pages at a time, I’m not going to buy it. Last time I bought the print versions of your books, the content was so close to the center of the page that I simply could not use them.
If you’re going to make print material available, don’t push the content so close to the center. Design a good product that looks like the CFAI materials.
I can’t stress how bad the 2014 printed materials for Elan Guides were… horrible.
VitalSource is a terrible product. If you stuck with the PDF’s, that would have been much better. It’s hard to read that much text online; that’s why it would be helpful to print out more than 20 pages at a time. Especially if you’re going to be selling a poorly designed print curriculum.
What will the new 2015 printed materials look like?
How many pages will candidates be able to print from the eBook version on VitalSource at one time?
Will candidates be able to purchase the hard copy versions of the Wiley/ELAN books seperate from the eBooks?