Starting my studies the beggining of January, using the curriculum books and a q-bank, either uppermark or kaplan.
Background: Fin/Acct BBA, full-time analyst, passed CFA L1 June 2014
Would you say the curriculum and qbank is enough? Which qbank would you recommend? I’m familiar with kaplan but seems like a lot of people have used uppermark. Planning to spend at least 150 hrs. Any suggestions??
I passed level 1 just using the curriculum and qbank. However you may want to try and start a bit earlier as the curricuium takes longer to get through than the Schweser notes. I used the Uppermark testbank for both levels 1 & 2 and I felt it prepared me pretty well. Uppermark has the advantage of being specialised just for CAIA. I can’t comment on the Schweser Qbank.
I am sure if you follow what worked for you in passing CFA level 1 then you should have no problems with CAIA level 1.
One little question: how can you combine CAIA in March and CFA in June? I would postpone CAIA to September.
For lvl 1 I used Kaplan: notes, qbank and videos. It was enough however there were questions which were not covered by them. And exam itself was not so easy as many described.
I’m postponing the L2 until 2016. Need to get alts exp asap, (got a lot of mngmt boost for it and the material seems interesting). Trying to get the whole CAIA program next year. I know doing L2 and CAIA would be insane.
Whta do you think about the curriculum books and qbank combination? Are the curriculum books any good?
Thanks everyone for your input, I really appreciate it!
Doesn’t really matter what materials you use - official books or Kaplan/UMark. As long as you go through the material diligently and do lots of practice questions - you should be fine.
Material covers wide range of topics and some exam questions drill deep into the LOs.