Getting ready for Level I December 2017 and level II June 2018

Hi everyone,

In February I have registered for CFA level I exam that is scheduled for December 2017. The goal is to try to pass it and be ready for level II in June 2018 - this might be a very ambitious goal. On the other hand, I have solid background with undergraduate degree in finance/accounting and work as an analyst at a bank in Europe for about four years. To gain some advantage for level II, I have already begun reading Schwester Notes level II (prior to reading level I) and the plan is to read 4 books twice (almost done) before I get into reading level I.

I know this is kind of a weird plan but I figured that as soon as level I is over, until level II there will be six months to go, which might not be sufficient in case of unexpected occurrences such as spending more time at work or going out more, etc. Just recently I realized that Schwester II although useful, does not capture entire curriculum meaning some totally new questions will be thrown at me at the exam.

Now I am wondering should I switch to curriculum books for level I and II because I want to learn as much as possible and pass the exam in the first try. It is uncertain at this point how much new stuff I would learn and given the size of these books, is there sufficient time to get it all properly covered?

Thanks for your input.

p.s. I started very early in order not to feel to much pressure

I don’t think it’s too terrible of an idea if you have enough of a finance background. I learned most of L1 & L2 material in my BS and MS programs. If anything, it might just not be too efficient as you guys said.

If you have a good background, I think you’ll have minimal issues. As others said, though, I’d probably stick to L1 first (I just don’t think it’ll kill you if you preview L2).

I’m going to try for the same, level 1 Dec with level 2 June 2018. Not so worried about level 1 but the shorter time frame for level 2 has me a little concerned. For anyone thats taken 1 & 2, how much “new” material is on 2 compared to 1?

Simple, go out less.

But seriously, if you have L1 fresh in January, L2 shouldn’t be a huge problem. Unless you work 90 hrs a week that is…

Also, taking into account you want to “learn as much as possible”, the Curriculum is the way to go. But, if you want to just pass, Schweser should be enough (disclaimer: never studied with schweser, it’s always curriculum for me, but then again, i have not done the June-Dec b2b version)

Most of it is new

+1 on using the curriculum to actually learn (except for stats, they’re pretty pathetic in some key areas). Like I said, I had an ample background in many of these topics, so I could weigh in on the quality of explanations given in different books. For L1 I had bought Sch weser and tried reading a bit from it-- decided never to touch it again. Compared with what I had learned in school and from textbooks, Ka plan did a horrible job and was laughable in the few sections I looked at before switching to the curriculum. For L2, I only used the curriculum with the Wiley 11th Hour guide as a review after the curriculum books.

I did December and June back to back using the curriculum, and it worked well for me, so this might help fill in the gap where Shark101 used the curriculum but didn’t do the December-June turn around. It worked when I did it so I don’t think it’s reasonable for someone else to do.

Thanks for the info, everyone. I do not even remotely work 90 hours a week so it should be manageable. Six months are 26 weeks, meaning to reach the 300 hours criteria I would need to get about 12 hours a week to have solid chance at passing. The plan is to study Mon-Thur for 90 minutes, get Friday off and get about 4 hours of studying on Saturday and Sunday, each day.

Would it be smart to cover problems as I cover chapters or simply get over each chapter twice and do the galore of problems thereafter?

Again, from my perspective: There is not much sense in going over a reading and then doing the EOCs immediately after. This will upward-bias your results. Give it a couple of days until you do the problem sets. Then when you finish reading. Go back and do all the practice sets where you do not feel absolutely sure. Then do Topic Qs from CFAI website, and mix with more practice questions. Then last month straight mocks each weekend and during the week review whatever comes up in the mocks.