How to best prepare for L1 on my own without any tutorial help?

CFA Level I
#1

Hi,

I have enrolled for the December 2015 L1 exam, which means that I have about 140 days in hand. I have an 8-10 hour day job and can devote about 4-5 hours daily for prep (double that on the weekends). I am an accountant by profession with only the most basic knowledge about finance and investments.

My questions are:

  1. In what order should i tackle subjects? Are there any specific methods of preparation that I must bear in mind for each subject?

  2. Will the Institute curriculum books and Schweser notes be sufficient for a well-rounded preparation?

  3. My interactive study planner on the CFA website gives me 11 days for review. Is that enough time? Realistically, how much time should I set aside for review? At what stage should I begin attempting the mock tests?

  4. Lastly and most importantly, how do I ensure that my enthusiasm and self-motivation levels do not dip?

Any and all useful tips are most welcome. Hoping to glean from your experiences…

Thanks.

-Anjalee

#2

These are all just how I tackled level 1. Results pending so take them for what they are. I mainly used the CFAI material. ( I purchased some cheap videos for like $5 from fitch as well, used a bit and were meh)

  1. The key is to save ethics for last or you will forget it. It is all memorization. Some will say do FRA first, I am sure that is a solid plan. I did Quant/Econ (skipped about half when I gave up on this topic)/FRA/Corp/Eq/FI/PM/Deriv/Alt/Eth

  • There is a lot of overlap in the material for Corp/Equity/FI so I think its good to knock those out together

  • Econ is a relatively small portion of the exam (10%) and is an entire book. I suck at econ and gave up about 1/3 of the way through. By taking mocks and practice exams I was able to get around 50% in this area by looking up what I needed. My time was better used elsewhere to make up for the lost points.

  1. You can pass the exam with JUST the CFAI books. Plenty of people use JUST Schweser. From what I hear you will miss some material in Schweser due to it being condensed but generally it seems to prepare people well.

  2. The interactive study planner is stupid. You should have about a month before to prep where you are knocking out as many mocks as possible. I completed the corriculum in late April, spending the remainder of April and May doing CFAI online practice tests (which I HIGHLY recommend) and mock exams. Nothing will prepare you for the exam like EOC questions and mock exams.

  3. You WILL have burnout at points. When that happens, take a day or two off and relax. Let your brain refresh for a bit and set up a revised schedule. I timed mine so I was not cramming before the exam and was doing only a light review on the days up to the exam. The last thing you want is to be exhausted and burnt out on exam day.

Also coming on here and other communities and seeing other people going through the same things as you is definately confidence inspriring. Also going through and reading others questions and if possible responding definately helped me, while trying to understand the answers of others if I didnt know it was of great value as well. There are plenty of people willing to offer advice so feel free to ask.

#3

  1. Doesn’t matter. Whatever you finds fits you best. I started w/ Fixed Income for no reason and then went back to the order they’re presented in. There is no best order but the order their presented isn’t a bad idea.

  2. Yep, lots of people use only the curriculum, others use Schweser. You certainly shouldn’t need anymore than that for L1.

  3. I always started mocks a month in advance or so. 11 days is a pretty short review window so I’d scrap that if I were you. Also, forget anyone else’s planner and make your own. Survey the material and you should be able to gauge how to tackle it, how many times, and when to start reviewing. Everyone’s different.

  4. Don’t study too much, you’ll get burnt out. 4-5 hrs on weekdays and doubling that on weekend days is overkill. You don’t need to study nearly that much unless maybe you know nothing about finance.

#4

Read the CFAI curriculum and do all the CFA End of Chapter questions. Subbing the CFAI curriculum readings for Schweser readings is a good alternative if you are short on time, or a slow reader. Do not sub out CFAI End of Chapter questions, these are a 100% must.

Leave ethics for last, do the rest in order. Ethics is something that is best fresh in your memory.

Your goal should be to have all readings and end of chapter questions completed and understood about 1-2 weeks out from the exam. The balance you can use to do practice exams and touch up where you are weak.

Hope this helps!

#5

L1 is not difficult. the CFAI materials and practice q’s behind the chapters are good enough

#6

If you’re on a budget, the CFAI material is adequate although I highly recommend the Schweser question bank. I think there’s 2-3 thousand questions. I did all the question in the question bank 2-3 times by the time I sat down for the exam and was positive I passed when I walked out of the exam. If you can’t invest in the Schweser QB (either because you don’t have the time or money), plan on doing the EOC at least 2-3 times each + all of the blue boxes in the CFAI books.

I read Schweser’s study guide too but I found it confusing at times so I ended up reading a lot of the CFAI books as well, which hadn’t been my plan.

If you’re like most of us, likely you’ll forget much of what you’ve read during these next couple of months by the time November rolls around. For this reason, I highly recommend that you plan on spending at least 3 weeks revising - otherwise, you’ll be in panic mode. CFAI will post a mock exam on the web that you can use for practice. You might also consider buying 3 of the Schweser mock exams. A lot of candidates use the Schweser mocks and there will be quite a few questions regarding them posted on AF closer to the exam.

As for which subjects to cover in which order, I think it’s helpful to start w/ Quant, then any combination of the following: Econ/FI/Derivatives, FRA/Equity/Corp Fin/Alternative, Portfolio Management, Ethics.

Ethics gets a bad rap, by the way. It’s helpful to read it closer to the exam date, but it’s even more helpful to read through it twice - a little bit at a time each day/week when you have a few minutes to spare, and then straight through the week or two before the exam.

Good luck

#7

Schweser alone is good enough. Read materials and do questions and mocks until exam day. It’s not hard compared to L2.

#8

I enrolled for L1 sometime in Sept. Then did not appreciate the size and width of Material. started looking at it only end of Oct /start of Nov. Almost decided to abandon the exams and apear in June following year. Since I was going to lose out on fees decided to proceed and appear in Dec itself, even if it was going to be a futile one. As time was limited. I limited my studies to Elan 11th Hr guide and Schweser’s Qbank. I must has done atleast 4000 questions from the Qbank. Luckily i passed. :). So for L1… practice, practice and practice is the key.

#9

wikipedia everything lol

#10

You have to be joking me. If anyone still believes that you can pass using 3rd-party provider material, well, I have a tower in Pisa that’s for sale (serious enquiries only).

CFAI started publishing its own notes less than 10 years ago. Before that, it was up to candidates to find and buy all the books for which they would only need to study a few chapters from each.

Enter the 3rd-party providers with a much cheaper alternative and vastly condensed material.

With CFAI now publishing its own curriculum, why would anyone consider studying anything else. CFAI EOCs run about 1,300 questions. Add in the blue boxes and assume 1.5 minutes per question and you have around 35 hours’ worth of high-quality study questions. Do them all two or three times.

Adding to this, some of the chapters are written by industry legends. Fabrozzi has his hand in the fixed income section. Why bother reading anything else?

Myths (don’t fall for them)

(1) I only used 3rd-party materials and passed;

(2) I only started studying in October/November and passed;

(3) I only read the super-condensed 300-page guide and did 4000 badly-worded questions;

(4) CFAI is too long and wordy (still waiting for the L1 coloring book?)

The exam is a marathon, not a sprint. I can only speak for myself, but trying to study more than three hours a day is pointless. Nothing goes in. Burnout is real. Very real.

This website makes its money from advertising 3rd-party providers. Please assume that some of those posts saying they passed in 2 months using xxxx’s books, well, assume that it’s advertising.

Good luck. If you’re writing in December, start now. Today. Sept.1 may be too late. Don’t assume you can plow through chapters taking a day or two for each. The material gets tough.

I passed. Got my results last night. It was not my first attempt.

#11

everyone i know except 1 used schweser and passed for L1.

make sure you do all the black boxes in the cfai book and end of chapter questions.

otherwise cfai texts are pointless for L1

#12

  1. I went through the subjects in the same sequence they were provided to us on the CFA books. I found it to be easier that way because sometimes, a topic in a section referes back to, or will be built upon, something in a previous sections. This is not too common though, so don’t worry about the sequence.

  2. I read through the Schweser notes in their entiretly, did the Concept Checkers, a few QBank questions to begin with. During my review, I went through the chapter summaries from the CFA book, did the blue box and EOC questions on CFAI material. I used CFAI material as a reference throughout. If Schweser doesn’t explain a section well enough, or if you are left confused after reading the material twice or thrice, refer to the CFAI material. The topics are explained much better in them.

  3. I would at least set aside a month for the review. I had two days less a month and I still felt a bit underprepared when it came to doing mocks and practice problems. But that might just be me. I learn through practicing problems more than I do reading the material. Here’s a resource for planning that I used as well, very useful: http://www.300hours.com/blog/300-hours-rough-guide-to-a-solid-cfa-study-plan#.VbmH2CpViko

  4. I used a 20 - 5 method to study. For every 20 mins I studied without getting distracted, I gave myself a 5 min break. Every 4 cycles of this, I’d take a 15-20 min break. Also, if you find you mind drifting, close the books and do something you enjoy for a bit. And overall, just focus on why you are doing this, and what that pass would mean to you.

#13

You look like an organized person and I think this is a key to success. I would suggest that you take topics that you like the most at the begining. There are many tips and I can only repeat what people said here already, however the true challenge is how to incorporate all the study load you have to go through (books, practice problems, mock exams, etc) in your bussy schedule. I can imagine because I was in the same situation. I used TimePrep to organize my study and to calculate what I can really achieve. To be honest, I cut down the number of practice problems and increased my average week study hours after few weeks because otherwise I would never make it on time, finnaly I was successful.