CFA Suggested Hours Question

When they mean 300 hours of recommended studying… Does that mean 300 hours solely on just reading, or does that include time for practice problems/sets as well? or not?

For everything.

Also take that with a grain of salt, since the average says that it spent 300 hours to study, but the average doesn’t pass the exam. So it can be less or more, depending on every person.

Yes. What snfuenza said. 300 is just what they estimate. Many people spend a lot more time, many people less. Even the study programs all say to follow what you feel is best, but 300 is the average, so if you don’t know your own study habits at least aim for 300 hours of prep.

Welcome to CFA program. I think you should adjust your studying expectation for your CFA journey. 300 hour study is what you make it. Like other member said, there are people who spend 200 hour and easily pass LI, yet there are people spend 500+ hour and still fail. Depends on your background.

I usually spend 1,000 hours studying. 700 of those are spent watching youtube videos, napping, and grabbing coffee though.

It seems as if ive seena lot of people say it is more important to focus on completing tons of practice questions like around 5000+ than focusing too much on the reading because they go too far in detail. Thoughts?

It depends on your background. If it is mostly review of things you learned in a bygone era, do mostly questions. if it’s all new, you better read. They give tips in the readings as well. Like which formulas to memorize. Also, experienced professionals have a better grasp of the concepts. So, in depth reading may no be necessary.

I’m reading the Kaplan books. I’m noticing a lot of bits I’ve forgotten over time. I use the CFAI books and meldrum/IFT videos for better understanding. I drill on questions as I go along. Rather than re-reading, I drill qbank questions.

gwoods so true. I’ve done a lot of this before in my undergrad and MBA and then forgotten, but reading it here reminds me about it again.

The questions I find are a lot better. They have explanations and sometimes it’ll be simpler to understand than the 5 paragraphs from the reading because in the questions it’ll be like 3 lines. Short and succinct.