I BARELY passed CFA L2

hey - i just hope to give some people who had failed L2 some insight here.

i BARELY passed L2, on first attempt. my score is below.

i dont consider myself smart by any means - i graduated my undergrad about 2 years ago with a 3.5/4.0 GPA from a top 20 university.

i work in finance in arduous hours - think: 9AM - 9PM + some weekends, regularly. to keep things short, my family does not have a lot of money, and the only money i have is the money that i make less the kickbacks to my immediate family - i simply could not afford to fail L2, and i personally place a lot of value on the CFA designation to where i want to take my career/post-undergrad.

what i did:

  • i starting studying August 1st, 2016. i did take 1 month off, i think it was february, because work was getting too much - i only studied the CFA curriculum - i took textbook notes on the ENTIRE curriculum, and memorized that shit back to front - i did ALL CFA EOC’s - i leveraged Schweser only if i thought a passage was too long and too boring to read in the CFA curriculum - i only did (and my only regret through this entire process) 1 mock exam, which i avg’d 48% on. this is the mock that the CFAI gave. if i had to write this stupid shit again, i would do at least 5 mocks … from 5 different sources.

the PM section of CFA L2 was incredibly difficult, and i remember leaving my exam centre with the singular thought of “what the fuck”

combined total, definitely studied way more than 400 hours, which imo is a huge sacrifice given the little amount of leisure time i had because i had to work a lot.

but i learned so much, and i have no regrets about the amount of hours i put into the curriculum. the vocabulary i use at work and in my daily life has been transformed/augmented for the better.

i hope this can give hope to some!

my score:

Q#

Topic

Max Pts

<=50%

51%-70%

>70%

Alternative Investments

18

*

Corporate Finance

36

*

Derivatives

36

*

Economics

18

*

Equity Investments

54

*

Ethical & Professional Standards

36

*

Financial Reporting & Analysis

72

*

Fixed Income Investments

36

*

Portfolio Management

18

*

Quantitative Methods

36

*

there’s the key, over 70 fra and equity. congrats on passing, good luck on level 3!

thank you. exactly - i spent especially a lot of time on those areas of study. i felt corpfi was surprisingly easy, and FRA i felt like i bombed after the exam. results came out otherwise