I’d love some advice here. Keep in mind I’m coming from a Marketing (Commerce) Degree, ie. I don’t know Finance all that well (I took a few courses on theory of finance so I have an idea) so my background is not strong.
My current plan is to get through the curriculum by October 6th, which means just studying through the CFA texts and answering EOC questions as I go. I’m realizing now that if I continue on this path, that without working through a ton of questions, I’m not going to remember detailed things (like the forumula for hypothesis testing when variances assumed the same etc.) on a first read through. The thing is, it’s taking me a lot of time to get through a first read-through, but I do want to know the material as well as I can and be thorough.
Anyway, when you finish a section, is it best to keep refreshing that section every week or two as you move through the 1st read?? I’m worried if I wait until Oct 6th to start review and questions and all that I’ll have forgotten most of the early material. Any advice?
nah don’t your goal is to just go through the material with a rough understanding of all the topics then go into question bank and mock exams. At first you won’t be able to immediately connect with the questions but after a few rounds everything you read so far will come back and gel together for you.
so if that’s the case, is my plan to finish 1st read by Oct 6th, about 2 months before the exam, enough time to give myself to master the topics with questions/review in those 2 months? Or should I be aiming to finish 1st read well before that? Assuming that not much retention is taking place in a 1st read, I’d basically have 2 months to start retaining the information. Just really don’t want to leave it too late; but also need to keep in mind the length of time it takes to go through the material thoroughly on 1st read.
I think one month is more than enough time to practice unless you just don’t have enough time because of work then maybe two, but practicing is the most important part of the review right before the exam.
As I go through a chapter, I make notes in a notebook, then at the end I go through the notes and make flashcards in Anki (free software) for word definitions and formulas etc.
I just finished a Fixed-Income chapter so my flashcards look something like this:
FRONT: full price
BACK: full price = flat price + accrued interest
aka “dirty price”
FRONT: yield curves (4)
BACK:
spot curve
yield curve for coupon bonds
par curve
forward curve
There are sets of flashcards online but I find it much better to make my own to suit my style and my weak points
Then when I’ve moved onto another chapter, I can periodically review the old flashcards, on the bus, in the gym etc.
The attractive part is it uses spaced-repetitions: if you get it wrong, it will ask you again soon, if you get it right with no problem, it will wait longer to re-ask you the same flashcard… you don’t waste time and effort going through stuff you know, great for efficient retention. And also the cards easily sync between compuer, phones, tablets etc.
It helped my no end learning Chinese, so it I tried if for CFA and I love it.
Before doing any mocks, I would do the entire Kaplan Q-bank, the question in whatever guide you use, and the questions in the CFAI books. Then, make a spreadsheet and tabulate every question you got right, wrong, what you didn’t know or forgot to do and what section of the material it came from, much like this:
Then go over each and every incorrect question until you know them, and understand what you got wrong and why.
EDIT: I can’t get the picture to post in the body so here is a link to a spreadsheet I did: http://imgur.com/irnFU1z
I read (making sure I take notes on the side and understand everything) the Schweser notes, book by book. I do all the exercices in them everytime I finish a chapter. After I am done with the book (FRA took me two weeks, Econ should take me one now), I re-do all the questions a few more times. When I start with the following book, before I actually get started on it in the evening, I re-read/skim through/complete questions randomly of the previous book(s). It works pretty well. In other words, to put myself to work, I do at least 30min of re-reading material from previous books, randomly.
I passed Level 1 on the first attempt but the one section I did fail was economics, and I was surprised because that was something I seemed to understand quickly while studying. I also scored well on the Schweser questions. The problem was that economics was one of the first areas I studied and I failed to revisit it much as it got closer to exam date. If I had my time back I would have been constantly refreshing all topic areas - nothing big, but something like Schweser’s Secret Sauce might be good to keep you on track.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone to study with, or a significant other who doesn’t mind listening to you rant on about finance, see if you can teach a topic area to them. I’ve found that the only way someone truly understands a topic is if they can teach it.