Got the CFAI books in the post this morning and there seems to be less material to slog through in absolute terms, which is always welcome!
Was just wondering though out of curiosity, what the thoughts of those that have taken Level III were regarding difficulty & time required to prepare, vs Level II?
II for me was an absolute killer, not to beat about the bush, but I was slightly hamstrung by having only done Level I in Dec '12, so having to wait until Feb '13 to get the study material for II…the point being that I can start early now for Level III to avoid weeks of sleepless nights!
Taking Level 2 with only four months of prep is a killer. Good job on passing it.
All in all, I’d say Level 3 is still quite a bit harder than Level 2. You’ll realize this when you finish studying the curriculum. You’ll say, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.” Then you take a mock exam and realize you scored a 20 on it.
Level 3 looks easy on the surface. There are less formulas, and the material seems “softer”. (Like, “Does the client have any unique circumstances to consider in his IPS?”)
However, it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security. The morning session of the exam is extremely hard, simply because of the nature of essays vs. multiple choice. Plus, even the “unique circumstances” question above is incredibly difficult, because it’s just so vague. Multiply this times 1000, and you have the Level 3 morning exam.
Also, add to this the exam fatigue, and the lack of motivation. These will really wear on you as Memorial Day approaches.
The bright side–I thought that the Level 3 afternoon session was the easiest session of all three exams. Several others have echoed this. It may be their way of “thanking you” for slogging through the other five sessions.
TRUST ME, don’t underestimate the difficulty of L3, it may not be as big as L2, but it’s hard to pass esp for AM. Practice and practice and practice until you can finish AM mock exams in 2 hours with ease… time is a constraint for L3 whereas it wasn’t for L2, IMHO.
Some of the Level 2 things that seem hard are really just continuations of ideas at Level 1. That is, if you have an undergrad in finance, you should have seen most of this before.
For example, in your undergrad, you have seen correlation and regression, ANOVA tables, and possibly some time-series stuff. You’ve probably seen pension accounting and inventory adjustments. You’ve heard of monetary policy and balance of trade. This is largely a review of things you already know, or have at least been exposed to before. As such, this stuff will be relatively easy, even if the material is complex.
At Level 3, however, most of the information will probably be brand new to you. Even though it might not be as difficult as the Level 2 stuff, it will take you longer to learn, because you’ve never even heard of it before. (Like a butterfly spread or GIPS.)
This is another thing to take into consideration when studying for Level 3.
Cheers all for your input, suspect I will be starting sooner rather later!
Sadly I studied Medieval History at university, and hadn’t even studied Maths since the age of 16, so I could not have been worse prepared for the CFA program, so either way, less forumlae is a good thing!
I found the material in Level 3 to be more subtle. Level 2 had more rules, etc, whereas Level 3 deals in “shades of grey”. Not black and white. The other point worth mentioning is that your depth of knowledge has to be more greater than for level 2. (Because you need to write out and explain your answers in a way the graders will accept as opposed to simply picking a bubble to fill in.)
I didn’t use Schweser and focused exclusively on CFAI material. Blue boxes (or whatever color they are this year) and in chapter examples are critical for success.
Also, if you aren’t accustomed to writing, practice that as well. You need to be able to formulate your thoughts quickly and concisely; you’ll be writing a lot in bullet points. That, like most things, is a skill that takes some practice to master, especially when you know that you’re going to be under time pressure to execute it.
For me, L3 study time was dramatically less than that of L2. Many of the L3 topics were qualitative - that is, read 5 pages, but once you get the idea, you just get the idea. For L2, you have to study like 10 million accounting rules, which takes a lot of time and repetition. Furthermore, L3 ethics, for the most part, repeated L1 and L2 ethics.
However, I felt much less confident in the L3 exam compared to L1 and L2. Since there are no answer choices in the morning session, it is harder to convince yourself that you got the “correct answer”. Also, given that you can potentially write unlimited lines, it’s hard to know when your answer is “enough” and to stop writing. Furthermore, the exam format was non-standard, with the answer boxes and whatnot. This was disorienting under exam conditions.
I recommend that you spend your time savings preparing test taking technique for L3. In L3, the testing methodology, not the syllabus, fails people. I did not like this about the L3 exam, but that’s what it is.
I had quite the opposite problem. Being a CPA, the accounting was easy. But at Level 3, almost all of it was brand new (because I’ve never worked in portfolio management), and I found it to be very difficult. Also, a lot of L3 is very subjective, and as a CPA, I’m used to having a “right” answer. Just goes to show you that it all depends on your skills and experience.
But Ohai is certainly right on this–prepare for the L3 morning session. It’s just as important to know the test methodology as it is to know the material.
Level 3 is more Qualitative, so you have to take it slowly but steadily. So that everything just sinks in properly…Otherwise it should not be problem, if you are putting decent effort.