L2 tuition

abu · December 10, 2007, 1:58pm

What training provider will people be using for L2? Last year I went with FTC but despite passing L1 I’m reluctant to go with them again. They were just too focussed on rushing through their slides on time rather than on teaching and trying to help us understand the concepts. It just felt as though they were too focussed on trying to guess what might be on the exam rather than building the tools to be able to tackle what might appear on the exam. And that guesswork turned out to be wrong: the actual exam was very different to the picture painted by FTC. For this year, I looked into the other main training providers: 7city, BPP and Quartic. I wasn’t keen on the 7city course because they used Stalla material instead of Schweser. I have friends who used 7city last year and whilst they though the tuition was good, I don’t believe the material is as good as Schweser. (Incidentally, it looks like 7city are offering a choice of Stalla or Schweser this year, so this may suit all those people who wanted 7city+Schweser). I didn’t actually attend a BPP talk, but I have friends who have used them before, and they still have some way to go in getting their tuition up to the standards of the other providers. In the end, I decided to go with Quartic. They are a relatively new company that focus entirely on CFA tuition. I went to their open evening and was very impressed with their ethos of trying to teach the tools rather than the exam game. I had a look at their slides from last year’s L1 and could clearly see the effort made to get the salient points across. This is exactly the kind of this I was looking for, especially for L2. One other thing that sealed it for me was the attitude of the trainers. FTC advertised being available for help via email whenever needed, but their response times were absolute shocking. Of course, this is untested at Quartic, but I raised this in the open evening and was again impressed by their plans for this (not operational yet, but they may be creating a forum like AP that will be answered by their trainers). I was just really impressed with the overall Quartic package…