I passed L1 in Dec 2014 and failed L2 in June 2015 with band 5. It was quite a surprise for me to get to a band 5. I know I had only 4 month, but I was in a maternity leave, so I was not working and had a bit more time than usual. I prepared using Schweser notes, Irfanullah videos, done EOC CFAI, 4,5 Mocks including live Mock exam. Now I’m sure It was something wrong with my strategy. I had 20 hours/week, 17,7 weeks to study, so I spent 350 hours approximately.
This autumn I will return to work. It’s usual work in finance with overtimes. So I need to plan carefully how to combine work, family and CFA responsibilities. I suppose I can study 10-15 hours/week. I understand I need to start preparing in September. It means I have 40 weeks*10-15 hours/week = 400-600 hours. Here is my plan for now:
September-January:
-CFAI books, not Schweser, 20 pages per day on average
-Irfanullah videos
-EOC
February-March:
-reread CFAI books/blueboxes only/Schweser notes – not decided yet
-Questions on the website of the CFAI
-EOC again
-Schweser EOC maybe
-Qbank?
April-May:
-reread again
-Mocks as much as possible
Please criticize my plan.
Besides, It’s not clear for me how to do flashcards. I’ve never done it before. I understand it would be very helpful tool. Which form is better: electronic or on paper? How to organize my study with them?
I suppose to write a summary by hand. I feel I tend usually to write it too long, not only the most important. Maybe somebody can share their experiences or useful methods?
I read this forum for a long time and I’m very thankful to the people who share tips with other candidates.
I havn`t taken L2 before but your plan is pretty similar to mine i guess… It shouldnt take you as long to get through the material because theoretically you have gone through it already so this would leave you extra time to try out different methodologies… You can only read CFAI so many times aha… for L1 the Qbank was what made the difference for me, not sur if its the same for L2 though…
I agree, Qbank for L1 was very useful. Unfortunately I hadn’t enough time to use it for L2. Are you going to use flashcards? It needs time to create them. I don’t know if it’s worth doing.
I remember that at the beginning of studying for L1 I decided to try and make flash cards… i started out making flash cards for all the formulas and then i found it just too time consuming… i basically just ripped out the formulas page at the end of the schweisers books and stappled them together and just read over it like a book a few weeks before the exam… I found that the schwesier notes were already as condensed as they could be while still being useful so i didnt bother re-writing all of it onto flash cards… whenever I did a mock or practice questions i would just go back and read schweiser notes or cfai for the topics i was struggling with…
I feel like you would have over 1000 flashcards if you made them for the entire cirriculum… :p, i`d rather just read the books… they write better than me anyways…
Ha, ha! It was my way for L1. I prepared maybe 10 flash cards… and my enthusiasm trickled away. At this point I consider to write my own notes to remember better.
It was my way for L1. I prepared maybe 10 flash cards… and my enthusiasm trickled away.