I just decided to do March exam. I received CFA charter about 10 years ago, and using Schweser only for each level worked well for me.
Unless these books are bigger than the CFA Schweser books, it appears there would be much less to cover (based on three Schweser books) - is this correct? Studying at this stage in my life will be more challenging than it was ten years ago - I work a lot more hours and have a family now. I figure for that reason doing Schweser instead of the Wiley textbook (which appears to be about 1000 pages) makes sense - not to mention it worked for CFA.
Maybe another way to put it is for those who have studied for CFA exams, about how much study time do you think this exam warrants in comparison. Is it 100%? 70%?
I targeted the 200 hours for each level, but realistically probably did 150-175. Granted, I am also studying the CFA curriculum as well and there is some overlap.
I would shoot for the 200 to be safe. Go through the curriculum once and then hammer on the practice problems; similar to the CFA. That is what worked for me.
CAIA is about half the amount of CFA books (page-wise). My partner has a CFA and FRM and whenever I bring up CAIA, he’s familiar with 99% of what I’m talking about. CAIA, according to him, would be about half to two-thirds the study time as CFA. I’ve heard that one strategy is to work backwards - Since you are registered and presumably going to use Schweser, look through the practice exam and the CAIA mock exam (on the website, available once you register). If the concepts are familiar and you put up a decent score, maybe you won’t need much study time. Take a practice exam and then focus on the weak areas. With Schweser exams, you can just take half of an exam (100 questions, but covering all topics). That should give you a sense of how much you need to study. Good luck!
while waiting for my L3 results, i undertook the CAIA L1 prep as a sadistic coping mechanism. mind you, CFA curriculum and study mindset were all still fresh during this time, so results could be slightly skewed. that noted, it only took me 50 hrs to get through Schweser materials. at that juncture, i went back and exhausted all Q-Bank questions then moved on to the 3 practice exams and then finally CAIA mock. all in all, i probably only put in 85-90 hrs in total and got “stronger” across the scoring matrix, outside of one “higher” scoring in a small area.
but, given that you haven’t been in grind mode lately, i’d allot at least 100 hrs for the full perusal and extra time for mocks. material is fairly interesting relative to CFA curriculum, so won’t seem like too much of a chore. i’m currently grinding out CAIA L2 materials as i type, so feel free to tap me or the rest of the AF community as a resource. good luck!
Hey. Assuming you did go with the Schweser material, how did you find it? Is it 2 or 3 books? I’m thinking about signing up for September and want to use Schweser, as I loved the platform for CFA level 1.
I would not base the amount of study on the amount of pages. Sure, the amount of pages is much lower, but every page is full of useful content. In CFA, I felt the ratio of useful content per page was much lower.
Be advised that CAIA is much less complicated than CFA in regard to calculations. However, some of the concepts are comparably challenging.
Last, I used official material, LevelUp and Schweser. Schweser ranked the worst for me in terms of material and Qbank. I found LevelUp Qbank pretry decent, although it has mistakes. My personal opinion: read from the official material, do all applications in the book, official end of chapter, and LevelUp Qbank.