Which CFA education provider should I use?

Hello everyone,

I recently began studying for the CFA Level I for June 2019 and I have realized that there is no way I’ll be able to understand, remember, and know everything without some help. I began looking at some providers and I’ve narrowed down on 3, but I’m not sure which to choose and would like some help.

  • Wiley CFA Gold Package
  • Exam Success Complete Study Program
  • Kaplan Schweser one of the PremiumPlus sets (not sure which one at this time)

Which one would you recommend?

To give a bit of context, I have studied ethics and quantitative methods so far. Ethics I’m pretty good. First time around and just in the practice questions I got 85%. If I study it a few more times I’ll probably be able to ace that no problem. Quantitative methods I got annuities and perpetuities and all, but the probability stuff all went over my head. Like I had to keep looking back at my notes when I was doing the questions and I still messed up.

I believe that of the rest of the books I’ll probably have problems in derivatives, portfolio management, and fixed income.

I want to register for a January session, so any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

I’m curious too. So far I plan to use the CFAI Books, the Kaplan Q Bank and practice exams, and the Wiley Test Bank if I start recognizing too many questions from the QBank. I start my studies in December.

Many candidates here use Kaplan Schweser materials. Use as many mock test you can, order additional test exams.

I strongly recommend also audio schweser material if you travel to work. They can surely help . Depends on your comprehension ability I recommend to start study earlier to better learn quantitative stuff. Based on the above - you look to me not as math wizzard but more knack in verbal skills

Actually my math skills are pretty strong. When I understand a problem, I can solve it mathematically. My issue is understanding when to use what and why it makes sense there. Like in the quant section, I got annuities and perpetuities just fine because they were straight forward. I could also calculate all the t-stats and z-stats and what not. My issue was understanding when to use a t versus a z and why. It was also remembering all those formulas.

But yeah I think I’ll just study them more. Keep copying them down again and again and I’ll take a look at Kaplan’s materials.

If you have a problem with t-stats and z score. If you are blind use T stat

T is used when you not have much data think or when your population has no available statistics

  • Has a sample size below 30,
  • Has an unknown population standard deviation.

Use Z-scores when sample size is big and you vae all major statistics are there

Hope this helps