I don’t personally know anyone who has studied only from the CFA Instiute study material. Most people I know purchase 3rd party material, not because CFA Institute Study material is poor quality, but the fact is, the material is bulky, tedious and hence useless. Instead of making the material more releavant, useful and usable, the institute decided to force you to pay for the material and kill thousands of trees. Does anyone else agree that the instiute should not mandate purchase of the material. (They don’t make you purchase it, but increased the exam fee which includes material cost, hence they indirectly made you purchase it) One of the arguments they present is, many students confuse the 3rd party material as official curriculum and don’t know about the CFA Institute Official curriculum and material. That’s a ridiculous point to make. If they really care, why not make their material available for download or accessible online for registered members. My suggestion to CFA institute is, keep the purchase of material optional. That will reduce the fees by atleast $200 to $300. Save some trees. My study material is still fresh and unused. I bet nobody would pay more than $30 for all 5 books on ebay. It’s that bad. I studied from Schewser material, and it rocks. Learn something from them. Its called art of precis writing. ************************************************** Don’t worry, by making comments about CFA institute policies, you are not in any kind of ethical violations. I am pretty sure about that.
CFAI was useless, I’m going to purchase the Schweser notes in December I’m sure. They are so dry and boring, that it really is silly. I learned most of the stuff by taking practice tests leading up to the ()*)&&*^*& thing. It is a bit of a sham considering these books are marked up and give them a guaranteed profit. For Dec 09ers stick with Schweser notes. CFAI won’t help you much.
My CFAI books are in perfect condition and still in the box they came in. I may have flipped through the first book briefly (Ethics & Quant), but other than that, have not laid a finger on the rest. Be careful about Level II though, I heard Schweser is not as adequate.
Yeah, I learned solely from CFAI material. To be honest, I think that I’ve learnt a lot of things, understood a great deal of stuff that I haven’t known before. But I struggled with the exam, as CFAI are too lengthy and hard to remember. Although I spent lot of time studying, now I have no expectation pass or not 
Gonna retake the exam. Let’s wait and see :’(
I studied 80% from CFAI material and 20% schweser, CFAI is far better then schweser. Every Question in the exam was from CFAI books. Notes cannot give you the understanding that book gives, but you must have QBank to retain the stuff in your mind. I gained lots of understanding from CFAI books, esp for FRA/Equity. I dont think I will forget that stuff now. Books are a good source and very comprehensive. The only part I did not do from CFAI was quant, infact I did not do iquant at all apart from mocks and sample papers (got couple of degrees in math :|).
I think for some things the CFAI books give you a better understanding if you have the time to read them. Some things though, like quant, are much better through Schweser (they teach you more things on the calculator instead of the long way). The other benefit to the CFAI books are the practice questions at the end of the chapters. I like to do all the questions I can…especially CFAI questions since they’re more like the exam. I do agree though that they’re way too expensive, and maybe if they offered them in PDF instead for a discount, that would be a solution.
I think if you have the time CFAI is a far better alternative. For me I needed to get through the first pass of the curriculum quickly. Also I found CFAI sections on FRA & Ethics an absolute necessity. Without it I would have no idea what was going on in those sections. Sorry to say Schweser did a terrible job of FRA…just ridiculous. With that said the quant section of FRA is just garbage, so it’s a trade off.
CFAI actually isn’t that bad of a read. Its filled with additional items that you aren’t responsible for also 1/4 of each book is made up of questions and answers in the back so all in all id say its not as bad as you think it is. The books def look intimidating though at first.
Thanks everyone for giving their input. I am learning here from those that used CFAI notes that they are not garbage. 
Frankly speaking, you however confirmed my initial thought that while they may not be garbage, they are close to garbage considering they are so lengthy. Schewser has done a wonderful job. I only read from their notes and I think I did pretty well in the exam. I didnt see any surprises in Ethics. Now if someone wants to tell me, that any question in Ethics that I perceived as trick questions wouldn’t appear as trick questions had I referred to CFAI notes, then maybe I would agree CFAI notes are useful for Ethics atleast. Bottom line is time. Nobody has extra time to waste reading lengthy notes. However, as Math guy pointed out, he found the notes useful, so I guess it would be nice if math guy, you can suggest what would you have missed had you solely relied on Schewser which is lot more concise. I found the exam v. easy, I only relied on Scheweser. I am at a loss to believe how Schewser did a bad job.
I am not good at cramming, and my brain just refuses to accept anything that it cannot understand. I liked reading CFAI books, it gave an overall picture of the topic. But I found QBank very useful, the questions helped in retaining the stuff learned from CFAI books. And these readings were much simpler than the lengthy maths theorems which trust me, sometimes can require 10 cups of coffee(thats my max for one theorem). Since I did not rely on schweser notes for the exam, I do not know what I would have lost if I had only studied them. But I am pretty happy with my knowledge base of level one.
I primarily used third party prep material but found CFAI text to be a useful reference to clarify details. As you saw regarding that questions about HHI neither Stalla nor Schweser notes had enough detail to answer the question but CFAI text did… Also, you can get over $200 for your Level 1 text on amazon right now.
The CFAI began including the books with the fee because they did not want people just trying to pass the test but actually learning the material. Now if you actually read the material is another thing but at least they know you have it at your disposal. Don’t forget the the CFAI is a business, so why would they give you an option to not buy the book and lose additional revenue. With approximately 200,000 people taking the exam annually, it works out to quite a bit of extra revenue by knowing that each candidate has purchased there material instead of donating that revenue to Stalla or Schweser
Would suggest using Schweser QBank and mock exams, studying via practice questions is the way to go. I failed Dec 08, band 9 using CFAI only, confident i passed this time around using Schweser
It all depends. For some who actually have the time and really want a level of depth, CFAI is superior. For others who either have a finance background (and should know most of this stuff from undergrad) or want a focused refresher, the review courses are better. In general, though, the review courses seem to be a more efficient way. CFAI has been most useful to me in areas I have less background in (Code of Ethics, AI, Derivatives, PM) and as reference for when Schweser seems to fall short. At most I’ve read maybe 10 readings so far. But then again I have a finance background so I remember most of the concepts I read about in the review books. However, I would say the most helpful thing for my *by far* has been doing tons and tons of questions. Not the kind of review where you take them and get them right a 2nd or 3rd time by memorising the question, but where you do a quiz / re-review areas missed / and then take more that are brand new. At first I tried to just read a book and then do a huge exam; big mistake. When I broke it up into each reading and increased the frequency of quizzes, I started to improve. If I’m fortunate / prepared enough to, I think QBank will be reason I pass in Dec.
Personally, I think the CFAI material should remain mandated. It keeps everyone on a nominally level playing field. Even if it’s not used by some, other people who can’t afford a secondary course have the same shot everyone else does (not that even that is cheap or anything). Far superior to tests like the CPA in the US or the JEE / CBSE / etc in India, where you’re a goner without the additional expense of further tutoring. However, I think CFAI should give us the option of choosing *how* it’s disseminated. Personally I’d much rather have the choice between CDs / downloads and the hard-copies. A lot fewer trees killed and shelf-space taken up with the former. And if they’re in PDF or something, I could choose which sections to print / review if I absolutely had to. Even the issue of copying would be mute as one would have to pay for it anyway (and actually, the savings from printing costs etc would be even more profitable for CFAI even if they charged us less >> maybe they could even give us a discount for choosing the all-electronic option instead of bound books).
If you only have 2 months to study for the exam, I would stick with Schweser alone, except for Ethics. However if you have 4-5 months, its best to se 1-2 months on the CFAI materials. Every exam there are 8-10 questions whose answers are explicitly stated on the CFAI Material, but just glossed over or implied indirectly in the Schweser materials…
I am now thinking, CFAI material could be put to good use in L2. Although, my colleague here who is a CFA passed all 3 levels exclusively using Scheweser. During his day, CFAI did not force you to pay for their material. Overall, whether their material is good, great or garbage, they must not force you to buy it. If its that good, word will spread and people will buy. Also, someone said CFAI is a business. I didnt know that. I thought it was a non-profit. I am learning something new here everyday.
Ok, you’ve got me intrigued. What type of inefficiency are you referring to that you were able to locate? Arbitrage of some kind, I suppose… Put-Call parity perhaps, hehe?
What I would say echoes another persons thoughts in here in that all the questions to the test are in the book obviously, and you may not get some of them by just reading schweser. My complaint is the fact that CFA doesn’t offer more mock exams and sample tests and that they don’t vary the info from test to test much. For example the 3 sample exams from Dec 08 were essentially the same for 09 so I partially remembered answers from the tests from before which could have skewed my results thinking I knew more than I did when I was actually just remembering the right answer, not why or how to do it. I did like reading through the curriculum books but have heard schweser is a nice condensed version. It seems like they are written and taught slightly different ways so if you read through the curriculum then take schweser tests you may get confused by the way it is worded because it is different than end of reading problems in the CFA books. Ben