Has anyone else been following the Schweser Study Calendar? I have been sticking to it pretty religiously and just finished the last of the readings a few days early. However it looks like from now until the exam the calendar only wants me to take 6 practice exams. My scores on the EOC quizzes and overall in the Q Bank are almost exactly 70% up until this point with my weakest topics being quant and FRA. Does anyone have a recommendations on what I should do from here or what I should be doing to supplement the practice exams? I feel like my scores are too low with only a month to go. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I personally finished the readings last month… the calander crams too much at the end. I’ve taken all the qbank questions twice now.
Now moving onto CFAI’s online study material with tests and mock exams, which surpirsingly is more impressive than Schweser. You should check it out.
Rick - this is a good time to do your first Kaplan practice exam. You can get an idea of where you stand in each topic.
Take the results seriously. After your first practice exam, figure out where you are weak, but pay more attention to the larger weighted topics first. Say, for example you only got a 50% in the FRA section. You should spend most of your time practicing FRA until your second practice exam.
My process was to make flashcards using the Kaplan books for the specific section, for each LOS you needed to know. Once I made flashcards, I’d do a combination of review, Qbank quizzes and CFAI topic tests (as well as review the FRA section of exam 1 - try not to make the same mistakes on the next practice test.) I would usually do this for two topics in between each exam, which would take about 3-5 days.
After 3-5 days of the above process, you should go for practice exam 2 and see how much you’ve improved your score in the topics you reviewed. If you see that now you’re weaker in other topics, repeat the process for these new topics but make sure you spend a small amount of time going over the topics that originally gave you trouble on exam 1.
^ I should add, don’t get overwhelmed or worried if you get around 60% on the first couple practice exams (I didn’t get to 70% until a week before the exam.) This just means you need to refine your topic knowledge a little. I was getting around 70% average on the Kaplan quizzes and I finished the readings around the same time as you. You have plenty of time, but make the most out of each week by hammering out practice and review on the topics you are weakest in.
Ben - Thank you so much for the advice. I was starting to worry that I was too far behind and beyond hope. The process you laid out sounds like a great way to get the most out of the practice exams (find my largest weaknesses and review / drill those until the next practice exam) Thanks again!