Qbanks - which one?

Retaker here. Hopefully third time’s a charm.

Any experience with q banks from particular providers? Which ones helped solidify your knowledge/help prep you for the exams?

Trying to decide between Wiley, Fitch and Kaplan.

All comments appreciated thanks.

CFAI Qbank is the way to go. And it comes at no extra cost :slight_smile:

I would also do every single EOC from the CFAI books. I didn’t for this last exam, but wish I had based on going back through the books to check on various topics I was 50/50 on. If I could do it over again (and I might have to), my recommended approach would be:

  1. Read Schweser (or another third-party provider) - this is to help get through the readings quicker so you can get the foundational knowledge, but move to practice questions faster (which is where the real learning takes place)
  2. Do Schweser EOCs / topic tests after completing a topic
  3. Do CFAI EOCs for each reading after finishing a topic
  4. After completing all readings, do Schweser mocks (or another third-party provider)
  5. Redo all CFAI EOCs - and I mean all of them again
  6. Do CFAI topic tests (CFAI’s online q-bank)
  7. Do targeted CFAI EOCs on areas of weakness
  8. Do CFAI mocks

Note, this is my feedback after having just taken the exam, so no clue how I actually did. But I can tell you those CFAI EOCs are gold and don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

I did Schweser and IFT Qbank, the only good they do for you is emphasizing the main concepts, I wouldn’t recommend a Q bank to prepare for the exam

I only managed to do about half of the CFAI EOCs before the exam, but they are indeed gold.

All I’ve done is listed below,

Schweser’s entire Qbank, about 3000 questions CFAI topic tests Schweser EOC questions

For mocks (I did these in the following order),

6 Schweser practice exams 3 IFT mocks 2 CFAI mocks 3 Konvexity mocks 1 Schweser mock

Thanks, does this also include blue box examples?

What was your preparation like then?

I started studying for the exam in February. I typically study between 4-6 hours per day depending on how long I’m in the office that day. I took the week before the exam off and I put in about 12 hours per day.

I didn’t use CFAI books, I relied on Schweser only. I went through all the blue box examples in the books and also watched all of the on demand videos (the Econ videos were extremely bad).

Starting early June, it was all about retaining what I’ve learned and in my opinion, the most difficult part.