I know there are lot of questions in this forum on how to study for CFA L3. What to use, What not to do…etc. But guys, I seriously need some noble person to give me a bang on serious motivation on how to study it while balancing your work. I am working 5 days a week from 8am - 6pm. I am seriously struggling to start preparing properly. I wasn’t working during other levels so it was chill. This time I want to discipline myself and I also have a job now! Stakes are high…work issues are there…lot of work plus manage my CFA preps…
Please give me your strategies and if required please scare me so I can make my mind to start preparing…I know its hard…I know the issue is the AM…but I want to know how do you guys manage time to work and study alltogether…how?
I studied for Level III whilst working as a mortgage security analyst for PIMCO.
If you think that your work hours are tough, well, you ain’t seen nothin’.
In addition to the 8AM - 6PM regular work week, I was also responsible for the “night cycle”: the after-hours analytics on all of PIMCO’s holdings. I would get phone calls at 2:00 in the morning because something had happened and the computers had stopped; and I had to figure out the problem and get them restarted remotely, so that by 6:00AM when the traders arrived, everything was completed.
I found that I studied best from about 7:00PM to 10:00PM every weekday night, and about four hours each Saturday and Sunday. I had a deal with my wife: from January through May, I wasn’t home. Period.
You can do it, but it takes commitment from you and your loved ones. I was fortunate: I passed every exam the first time I took it. If you have similar dedication, there’s no reason you cannot do the same.
Best of luck. If you need any help (i.e., tutoring), send me a PM.
Hey S2000Magician…you are truly a magician…thanks for your motivation. I am more than inspired…buddy what was your overall strategy…3m studies then revision or something else…how did it span out
Anybody else want some motivation…read the above post…or if you want to share your views go ahead guys…
I’m married with two kids in the high single digit ages, and work 9 to 7 on average through the week (I don’t work weekends anymore). Last year when battling with my second shot at Level 2, I realized that I was better and more focused if I study in the mornings before work and on weekends. Once you force yourself up at 3:30am every day for about two weeks, you get used to it. It’s quiet, I’m more focused, and I’m not watching the clock counting the minutes until I can go to bed. Plus, it doesn’t interfere with spending time with the family on weekends, except for the final month where I study all day over the last four weekends.
Granted, I’m a zombie by about 8pm every night, but it works better for me.
The key is to start early and don’t let up. I’m almost finished with my first read through the CFA curriculum including all the end of reading practice questions. The next stage will be creating formula cards, consolidating notes, creating “must know” bullet point sheets, and reading through study provider notes on topics I need to get stronger on and watching some video lessons. Then it’s on to mocks and online topic tests for the final two or three months and grind out the AM section practice. I expect to do 10 full practice exams (possibly more) from past exams and study provider mocks, which is around 150 hours with review right there.
Your primary motivation needs to be not wanting to do this again next year. It gets my butt out of bed into into my home office better than any alarm clock. Good luck and get moving!
My main study strategy was writing notecards. I would read the text, write the notecards, then throw them away. Reread the text, rewrite the cards, then throw them away.
After writing the material 3 or 4 times, I knew it cold. Take my word for it, writing (Not typing on a computer! Writing, longhand.) locks the information into your brain much better than simply reading.
For each level I also attended a 2- or 3-day Schweser review course in mid-May. The Level I course was taught by Carl Schweser himself. The Level II and Level III courses were taught by Andy Temte (Carl’s successor, and the man in charge of Schweser (and other stuff) at Kaplan now). At that time there weren’t any mock exams available, only practice questions from Schweser and Stalla.
Gram, you will just need to find an approach that works for you. I would not be able to do what Magician and JayWill describe. I relied more on PTO (Paid Time Off) from work. For L2, I took a full week off in March, and four or five days off in both April and May. I generally did not study on work days (Monday thru Friday) until May arrived and I had ground to make up. As a result, May was a very unpleasant month.
If you really want to pass, you can figure out a schedule that you can live with. Good luck
I had similar work hours while preparing for L3 last year (probably ca. 1 hour more per day on average) and didn’t take time off. Works well, just do at least 1 hour each evening and most of at least one weekend day. It helps if you do 2-3 short breaks during the day to recall the topic that you studied last night. If possible, take 15-30 mins over lunchtime for a short study break.
I am an engineer so my strategy different because I have to battle those simple concept which may obvious for experience candidate. I try to finish all the reading apart from Ethics by beginning of March so I will have 3 months to study Ethics and drilling exams (mainly morning questions) type exercise. So the strategy will come up with around 70-100 pages per week reading. I try to wake up 4am (need to practice) and read till 7am read around 10 page with fresh head ( most valuable time to put information into the brain is most morning and I prefer spend that time for my benefit and not for the company) and on the weekend 20-30 pages (double then weekday).I will put more weight for GIPS and Ethics (it was always very very bad performance).
I try to be carefully not burn out before the exam so try to increasy as exponencially as possible.
I print out all the exam type question (AM / PM) 1800 pages and I will highlight on the paper red flag section items (mark significantly practises:red=total dark,yellow = just good guess , green=no issue) and put paper marker at the side of the paper so before the exam I try to increase the efficiency.
Also I spend time (hope not run out of time) make a index card which represent and overal from of the CFA Level 3 curriculum which I hope will give me confident to able to see clearly what is the curriculum.
On Saturday I am going to continue studying after almost two months pause while I was preparing another exam which I write this week. I am excited to continue with CFA and felt difficult to stop in beginning of December. However I was waiting for 6 years for this another exam. Sorry for OT.
Print out all available CFAI multiple-choice questions immediately, then try to do them all (without marking up the question print-outs). After a 14-day delay, do them all again, then continually repeat the process until you achieve a >90% success rate. Make a note of the questions you get wrong repeatedly, and focus on those - perhaps reviewing them once a month. Refer to both the CFAI solutions and the CFAI curriculum to understand and learn the correct answers.
Once you’ve crushed all the available CFAI MCQs, do the same with Schweser , Wiley etc. MCQs.
By early March, add into your schedule all relevant past CFAI a.m. exam questions, Schweser mock a.m. exams and any other a.m. mocks that are well regarded on this forum. And do the same for all Grey-Box examples contained within the CFAI curriculum.
The key is to gain continual strong traction on the Level III material between now and the end of May and, I think, answering questions using a pen and paper is crucial when working through both the a.m. and MCQ questions.
I would also recommend using the Pomodoro Technique to maintain focus and momentum during your study sessions - take a look at this five-minute video for a quick description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH-z5kmVhzU
Just some ideas that worked for me - good luck with your studying!
Where can we find past years AM tests? There are only suspicions Chinese web links for download it. On CFAI the earliest year is 2012. They removed The older.
I just checked and there’s not much left on the web, unfortunately. Looks like most of the material that was there about 18 months ago has been taken down.
But try Googling: _ useful cfa aspirants _ - some of the links are still working and look useful. (But you may want to check that your antivirus software is up-to-date, just in case.)
Many of the Items Sets from older CFAI mocks had been copied over to on-line portal Item Sets in 2016, and I vaguely remember these being available to candidates around this time in 2016. The issue I had with the online questions was that it was time-consuming to format the questions/answers in order to print out the hard copies I preferred to work with.
The relevancy of old CFAI questions (actual a.m. past CFAI exam questions and old CFAI mock items sets) was covered very well in two 2016 statements by Arif Irfanullah, which are likely to be almost 100% relevant for the 2017 exam, given that only one reading has changed. See:
As far as MCQ practice is concerned, I think that the top priority should be to work through CFAI Portal Topic Tests and all available CFAI mock Item Sets. The End of Reading CFAI item sets are also useful but probably of lower priority.
