I failed L3 Band 7 last year on my first attempt. Ultimately I bombed the AM (thought I nailed it walking out). I read the entire CFAI curriculum and did all the EOC questions +last 3 yrs CFAI mocks + 4 Schweser mocks.
I was planning on doing the same thing again this year (+ more CFAI mocks) but I’m beginning to think reading the curriculum again may be a waste of time.
For those who passed L3. What do you think of doing all CFAI EOC questions + all BB + as many CFAI mocks as I can get my hands on + Schweser Mocks? Then rinse and repeat…
Plus of course go back to the curriculum for problem areas.
If you scored poorly in last year’s AM, then I suggest spending a lot more time doing practice AM exams from the past. Do 2007-2014 *multiple times*. Also be sure you can ace any Individual or Institutional IPS question.
Re-reading the entire curriculum again would not be the best use of your time. If you took good notes before, then review them and refine them even further. If not, then buy the notes from FinQuiz – trust me on that one. All CFAI EOCs would help – particularly in the biggest sections – but dedicate more focus/review time to the Blue Boxes.
Solve past AM papers 2005/2006-2014 more than once, focus on your weak points and double focus on your strength points because sometimes you feel overconfident and skip certain question however if CFAI twist the question a bit, you’ll get lost … I never used schweser mocks because i believe CFAI books/blue boxes/EOC/mocks/AM-papers are more than enough to pass.
When I took notes my first two attempts at L3, I noticed after failing, that most of what I wrote down as notes to solve problems was wrong (some in small ways, some in very large ways)… Save yourself the time, and energy and buy the Finquiz Summaries… Those were my saving grace… at least you will have the confidence in knowing that it was edited by someone other then just yourself…
As stated above, put that 500 hours in, and change some things that haven’t worked for you… For me, I didn’t track my time, but it was at least over that by a far margin… Persistence will get you through, whether its this year, or next year.
Thanks for the advice. I never heard of FinQuiz until now but I’ll definitely look into it. I agree, re-reading the entire curriculum is probably not the best use of my time. I am commited to putting in the time and I know there are no short cuts to passing this exam but I want to use my time more efficiently this time around.
I’m going to do as many AM and PM CFAI Mocks as I can get my hands on (gotta start searching for the older ones), plus all BB, and end of Chapter Qs. I will also make sure I nail all Individual and Institutional IPS Qs this time around. I think the key for me will be to get the opportunity to redo the Mocks, BBs and EOC questions multiple times. I spent so much time reading the curriculum for June 2014 that I had zero time to redo even one EOC question, let along the Blue Boxes.
I have used finquiz notes for level 2 and 3. They are quite good and condense the CFAI texts quite efficiently.
I used their mocks as well for practise before I jumped into the CFAI old papers on AM. And PM mocks I did from both shweser and Finquiz. So yes, finquiz is quite good for the price especially imho.
Make sure you are learning from your AM mocks. I have said this couple of times, we shouldnt be doing mocks to know where we stand in the crowd. We should do the mocks to only learn from them. Learning from past AM mocks is the key.
The general tendency when we do IPS questions is to just look at high level answer and then say “oh I know, I made this small mistake of not doing it the CFAI way” and then move on. The key is to note down your mistakes and learn from it - you will be surprised to know that I was actually tending to repeat these mistakes. And by practise you know not to fall into the same traps set by CFAI on the exam day.
Never ever read the answers before attempting completely yourself. This was one of the biggest mistake I did during my band 10 fail in 2013. Attempt and see whether we get the approach correct.
IPS questions like Ethics can be repeated multiple times till you are confident. Start with earliest CFAI old question papers available with you and then do it a couple of times before you get confident. (Since I had already read in 2013, last year I just started straight away with practise exams from finquiz). So three mocks from finquiz, I identified where I needed improvement and then worked on them for a week before moving to CFAI oldest mocks and then gradually moving to last three years.
For each 3 hour exam mock I took, I spent at the very least equal amount of time trying to understand why I got something wrong or why I got it correct. Sometimes my logic was wrong, though I got the final answer correct - happened a couple of times in IPS. I would note down such errors and one week before the exam I go through them a few times.
Schweser mocks to learn…CFAI mocks to practice. Schweser model answers are more in depth than they need to be but if you model your answers on those then you will almost certainly hit the few points CFAI looks for.
Thanks for the tips. One more q- how much time I should spend on study and how much time on pratice q - whether EOC or past exams- would you say 50-50?
start to do the questions. check to see how comfortable you are - and then allocate time as needed to more reading / understanding.
rinse and repeat the above process.
do not make allocations as 50-50 and then get stuck with it. Make it a dynamic solution as per the subject / topic being studied, and your level of comfort.
I think that reading the curriculum would be helpful for the following reasons.
1.) Totally new set of questions this year.
2.) Curriculum changes
3.) You didn’t know it well enough last year
4.) You’ll get through the material faster.
My suggestion would be to skip book 1(Ethics), read CFAI book 2 and see how long it takes to get through it, doing everything you suggested along the way. Self assess at that point. Don’t look for the short cuts. There are a number of guys on these forums who failed band 8, band 9, band 10 and then gave up. Don’t be one of those guys/gals.
Ramos…can you give some further details about your study plan. Was that about 200 hours total in prep, and passed the first time? 80 hours of reading is that the Schweser notes? which is about 1200 pages currently, or the CFAI which is about 2200 pages currently.
I don’t think I could read either of those in 80 hours. So can you help me understand if you only read certain sections, skipped parts, etc. This is my second go at it, so any details you can give may help me tailor my approach. I’m estimating about 150 hours to read the CFAI this year.
Yes, 200 hours total prep and passed first time…passed all levels first time, with CAIA inbetween also first time pass for each. 80 hours read was only schweser notes, every schweser book, skipped nothing and that includes time for concept checkers. I did not read CFAI, I just did EOC’s in CFAI and used the CFAI readings if I needed extra clarity on something, but that was minimal…schweser was sufficient. This was my strategy in all exams…clocked 259 hours total prep time for level 2. In my opinion you do not need to read CFAI and practice exams/questions is the most important thing for each level. I used a stopwatch to track my time so maybe it seems like you cant read schweser in 80 hours but I’d say you can.