I am waiting for my L1 result, feeling pretty confident.
I plan to start L2 in advance. Any suggestions on what i should start with in L2 which wont be too much of a waste of time in case i fail?
I suggest to relax till the results release date - in case you pass you will have a clear mind, in case you fail you you will have a good mood to start over you prep.
You could start with the quant methods.
I think it is good to know regardless if you pass L1 or not.
Elan used to offer their quant and equity (I believe) materials for free. If you absolutely feel the need to study, you could probably look into reading those.
i’m in the same boat, and from what I’ve heard from various people, level 2 seems to be quite a step up from level 1 (in terms of difficulty). i don’t know how true this is, but I would think trying to prepare for this exam in 4 months (Feb-June) and feeling adequately prepared would be quite difficult. optimally I’d like to use all of January to get a head-start. personally, I was getting around 80% in my mocks for level 1, and felt better about the actual exam than the mocks, so I feel confident I’ll pass (knock on wood). so quant would be a good starting place?
what are people finding the most difficult subject material? maybe it would pay dividends to briefly attack those areas, so when you back to them in the 4 month grind they won’t be as tough to tackle?
Equity was pretty easy at L2… the three big topics in FRA tend to give people a lot of trouble. Derivatives is quite involved at L2.
If you can get a pretty good grip on FRA before you’re allowed to register, you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of those who decided to wait.
thanks for the advice. i think this is more in line with what I may try; unstructured studying of some of the core/challenging L2 concepts in january. try to understand them. then I’ll start hammering a more structured approach if I pass starting in Feb, and these topics will be much easier to take in a 2nd time around when I go through the first read/take notes etc.
Im an ACCA so i dont really find FRA to be difficult. After reading everyone’s comments i guess quant should be a good place to start from.
Thnks all for the suggestions.
I wouldn’t use the ACCA as a reason to feel comfortable and brush off pension accounting, intercorporate investments or consolidation of foreign subsidiaries. But, that’s just me…
Don’t wait for your results in January, that’s what I did last year and the extra time you have between now and the end of january is crucial. I would start with equity first because I think its the easiest to understand and its a huge weighting on the exam so you can’t go wrong with it. Then review it again every couple weeks to keep it fresh in your mind.
@ ‘would you look’:
Noted. Will kepp that in mind.
How to study for L2? Schweser notes are enough? Should I rely more on the CFAI books? I’m planning to grind like a mad man and finish the whole curriculum + personal notes by the end of february, to let me plenty of time for practice questions.
Intercorporate investments is too hard. I read it and skipped it. I’ll have to go back to it later.
FRA and Quant suck on L2, I’d start there. FRA is not that bad once you ‘get it’. But I had to read it about 10 times before I ‘got it’. Quant is pretty intense but not heavily weighted. Equity is easy, it’s the gift of L2. Ethics sucks and is unfair but that goes without saying.
^ +1. FRA - the sooner you get the ‘hang’ of it, the better.
I’m lucky in the fact that I have my CPA so FRA has been a cake walk :D.
But I plan on studying for Equity, Fixed Income, and Corporate Finance. I was able to get the lvl 2 books from a friend who took the exam and I’m utilizing the schweser free q-bank until i figure out if i passed or not. But i figure equity and Fixed Income will help solidify lvl 1 concepts just in case I have to take it again.