There’s been a lot of great information and advice here- really appreciate it! Serious post here so thanks in advance!
I’m studying for Level 2 and have finished reading through the Schweser Material, but was light on the concept checkers and feeling pretty weak on the content retention. I have 9 weeks left to do review problems and mock exams- anyone have advice or best practice to really know the content solid from here on out?
Here’s my plan of attack:
April:
-All CFAI Blue Box practice questions
-CFAI EOC problems and Topic tests
-Question: Is it better use of my time to skip the CFAI blue box/problems etc and just stick with Schweser material (blue boxes/Concept checkers)? Is Schweser thorough and hard enough?
May
One Schweser Practice exam per weekend (4 in total)
-Use advance-difficulty QBank questions during the week
Question: Is four practice exams enough- or should I opt out of QBank and just get more practice exams down?
Are Schweser exams difficult enough to emulate the real test?
Overall: Is my final 2 month review plan missing anything big that should be included for my best chance of passing?
Hi, the plan looks great. Never ever skip those blue boxes/problems. Those are the official presentation of the CFA exam and most of them are from the past exams, it gives you the feeling on CFA’s way of setting questions.
During the last couple weeks, try to rely more on the condensed material such as Kaplan Schweser secret sauce or Wiley’s 11th hour guide or your owm summary notes. It is not very efficient to flip through the hundred of pages of study guides, and you should understand those major concepts like the back of your hands.
I’ve never understood how CFA candidates could possibly think that Schweser material is any way “better” or “more representative” of what you’ll see on Exam Day than the CFAI blue boxes/EOCs.
Sometimes I really think that the topic test are a waste of time.
Just did a Equity topic test “Green Snacks”, question number 3 asks: “According to the valuation approach that Tanner decides to use and data from Exhibit 1, the expected rate of return for GNSK is closest to:”
I was wondering what the hell they mean with the expected rate of return, when the only thing we do have in the valuation with the DDM is the required rate of return…
At least is shorter and for us who speak English as drunken Chinese is quite more understable than Dostoyevsky like endless novellas from official curriculum. The best mix - read Schweser, practice official CFAI material.
I think the EOC questions are probably better structured and the difficulty is more comparable to the actual exam. Even though the format of the question is not the same, but it’s good test for your understanding of the concepts.
For mock exams, i would start doing them as soon as possible, because i end up writing the same mock exam twice! (i know most people think they will remember all the answers and make the 2nd try useless, but i disagree, it’s good to re-do the questions you got wrong a week later just to refresh your memory)
Schweser exams difficulty is similar to actual exam, probably the best indicator other than actual past exams.
QBank i have used it before but i don’t find the questions very good, there are just a lot of them but they are not very well written, i would skip this if you don’t have time, in my opinion.
Thank you so much for these awesome pieces of advice. And to clarify- are you referring to the EOC for CFAI or EOC Schweser (that’s better structured/comparable difficulty)?
Hi all, CFAI ECOs mean the end of chapter questions in the CFAI text book or the questions available on the CFA website candidate resources? And schweser ECOs mean the end of chapter question (the concept checkers and challenge questions) right?? THanks.
I have a question. I have done all the case studies available on CFA website, including the 2 mock papers provided. I’ve recently done 2 schweser mock papers and they are way harder than CFAI one. Does anyone feel the same?
not only FRA topic tests