CFAI curriculum vs. Prep providers: what to choose

CFA Level I
#1

Hi there,

I have finally decided to go for the CFA next year. I am aware of the required effort to get well prepared and i am ready to put in the hours. However it’ll have to be a real planning exercise as I do quite long hours at the office (I work for a Big 4) and have two kids.

I am pretty sure I can put in 1 to 2 hours every evening and up to 6/7 hours over the weekend. I plan to start in September (towards June '19) and I’m trying to define a study plan that makes sense. I have two options in mind:

1/ Rely mostly on the CFAI books (read them in full and do all EoC exercises) and complete by Mock exams + some synthethic material in the last few weeks (Wiley’s 11th hour book has good reputation it seems)

2/ Only rely on a 3rd-party provider. Might be more efficient as I see many people commenting that they can’t get through the CFAI books because they’re pretty dense. I would likely go for Bloomberg Prep in that case which is relatively inexpensive while has a huge Q-bank and provides many mocks. Also the study planning tool and the whole set-up seem quite sweet. Knowing that my goal is to enhance my knowledge rather than just demonstrate I am able to pass an exam, I tend to think that Option 1 is the most appropriate in my case. Nevertheless I would like to avoid being in a position where I’m overwhelmed with readings and can’t see the end of it. Also the workload I get from my job is difficult to predict a few weeks in advance, so perhaps it’s safer to go with option 2 which will likely walk me through the material faster.

Any views?

Thanks,

#2

Go with option 1 - reading the curriculum is a necessity at Level III so best to get used to it early.

#3

That’s an advice I have already run into here. Compelling argument indeed.

Happens that Option 1 is also the cheapest, which is good. And I’d be happy to skip the base material of 3rd parties since the feedback I see online is pretty scary sometimes.

#4

Use mark meldrum videos + EOC + 3 mocks. This was my secret.

#5

I am thinking of buying mark meldrum courses. However, I want to know how much he cover each topic in depth. And how much time it takes to complete one topic.

#6

I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re short on time with kids and work. The L1 official curriculum is massive, and all of the big prep providers (e.g., Wiley, Kaplan, IFT, etc.) do such a wonderful job with their more focused L1 materials.

I actually studied almost exclusively with the Wiley videos at L1, supplemented with the CFAI blue-box-problems found within the reading, the end-of-chapter questions. For what it’s worth, it worked for me: passed >70% in all topics.

#7

Thanks for the tip. One of the reasons I am getting into the CFA is that I actually want to dive into those fat books. But I will probably retain a prep provider in the back burner and switch to it if I don’t make enough progress due to limited time.

I will likely go for a mix of CFAI and videos (IFT OR Mark Meldrum’s) to learn the material and then cram some practice problems and mocks. Think I am getting to a structured plan thanks to the good advices here.

Cheers everyone