CFA=one semester of university program?

For 3 levels of CFA exams you need 250+250+250=750 hours to study. If you study full time in a university you will have 4 month=88 weekdays=704 hours (assume you study 8 hours per day on weekdays) + 3 weekends>750 hours. You will still have 13-14 weekends left for relaxing. Conclusion: CFA=4 month of full time study.

I used to think each level was worth about 1/2 semester of college so for me passing was = 1 1/2 semesters worth of work.

I think that you’re crazy. You must have flunked the Quant section. You can pass college with a D grade or a C grade in some more competitive schools. However, the CFA is only pass/fail. 1. 95+% of people pass their MBA curriculum, but only ~25% of CFA candidates pass. Any CFA can pass (with flying colours) the MBA, but not every MBA can pass the CFA level I. 2. No student can sustain studying 8 hours a day. I have friends in medical school, and they study an average of 4-6 hours a day. And an MD curriculum is harder than a CFA curriculum. 3. The CFA contains 6 topics, and this is equal to 15 credit hours, IMHO. I’d say that this is a *year’s* worth of material! Moreover, you really need at least 500 hours to study. Not 250. AIMR is making a killing promoting their “250 hour rule of thumb” as this misleads and causes a higher failure rate. The CFA is a 3 year course - about the equivalent of an MS in Economics/Finance/Accounting.

I think that it was worth 1/2 semesters in college FOR ME working the way I worked to get A’s in one of the most competitive schools in the US. Edit: I also had a decent background for CFA - quant was no work, fixed income and derivatives total for program = 20 hrs maybe, FSA = ton of work, ethics = same as everyone else, etc…

wer did u go to school JD

JoeyDVivre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think that it was worth 1/2 semesters in college > FOR ME working the way I worked to get A’s in one > of the most competitive schools in the US. > > Middlebury = “One of the most competitive schools in the US”… ??? I agree a double major (heck, even a single major, if one of them is math) is no walk in the park, but Middlebury is no Chicago when it comes to ball-busting. Then again, what the heck do I know. I think I worked harder on getting my two full semesters worth of AP credits done by the time I graduated high school than I did on the rest of the three years of college I needed to finish.

I believe that JD (aka Brian Aldershof) has a phd from chapel hill.

to Plyon and wyantjs: Why do you want to piss JD off by revealing his personal background info.? I’m sure if he wanted to he would have done this on his own. He is a great resource for this forum. Why would you want to jeopardize that? -JackOliver

jd will be ok. this has happened before. however,with the kind of popularity he enjoys here, a great many of them, obama-esque man crushes, it probably is a good idea to try to keep things anonymous.

Your illusions of internet anonymity will soon all be abandoned. My comments were nothing more than a form of colleagueial ribbing.

Yep, Chicago is a more ball-busting school than Middlebury. On the other hand, when I was 19 I skied more than anybody at U of Chicago. In the greater scheme of things, Midd is a pretty tough school and I worked pretty hard there. My point was that passing all three levels of the CFA exam is pretty tough. 1 1/2 semesters of work for me in college represented lots of hours, hard work and expense and I didn’t have a job to do as well (except work as a film projectionist during which time I would load the movie onto a giant reel and do my homework in the film booth).

At first I took you to mean all 3 levels = 1/2 semester. I don’t know if I could even equate CFA work to anything like what I did in undergrad and it was so long ago it would be pointless anyway. Glad to hear you didn’t have to hand crank the projection machine!

I don’t think it’s worth comparing whose undergrad was more challenging. CFA is a good program that most of us will benefit from. For some it’s easy, for some it’s challenging. Good luck to everyone!

plyon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > At first I took you to mean all 3 levels = 1/2 > semester. I don’t know if I could even equate CFA > work to anything like what I did in undergrad and > it was so long ago it would be pointless anyway. > > Glad to hear you didn’t have to hand crank the > projection machine! No all the hand cranking in the projection booth had nothing to do with the projection machine. The films maybe…

Second time I laughed on AF tonight ('course the first time was at my own joke… http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?12,668419 )

JoeyDVivre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > (except work as a film projectionist during which > time I would load the movie onto a giant reel Reading this, I recalled the scene from Fight Club where Tyler Durden takes the liberty of splicing frames of pr0n into family films. JDV, any chance you’re the inspiration for Brad Pitt’s character in this movie? Any good stories of film sabotage? Have your friends ever referred to you as the guerrilla terrorist of the food service industry? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes

250 hours is the minimum and I would guess that someone that has a closer to 90% grasp on the material with just an average background to build on would study much more. I think it’s very important to differentiat between those who study to pass the certification and those who study to learn the material. Secondly, if you were to compare based on quantity of material using the texts as a comparison, then I’m pretty sure that LI-LIII with 18 text books would be closer to the equivalent of 2 years of MBA coursework. Similarly, my coworkers with MBA’s don’t impress me with their knowledge base whereas the CFA offers a much stronger understanding. However, none of my coworkers have full time MBA’s from top tier programs like UPenn, NYU, or Harvard and I am sure schools like that are a much different story so I’m not grouping those programs into my comparison.

jackoliver Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > to Plyon and wyantjs: > > Why do you want to piss JD off by revealing his > personal background info.? > I’m sure if he wanted to he would have done this > on his own. > He is a great resource for this forum. Why would > you want to jeopardize that? > > -JackOliver Clickiing on his username will give you his real name. I don’t consider his “personal background info” concealed.

There are many ways to calculate this: -this is a specific discipline, if you looked at most MBA finance curriculum, they only take 6 finance courses. -Undergrad finance degrees: I have typically seen 11 finance courses if you major in finance -1 course is : 13 weeks x 3 lecture hours = 39 hours, and 6 hours a week of studying (though very few people I know actually put in the time to do the 2:1 rule), so that makes a grand total of nearly 120 hours of coursework. Therfore, CFA = 6 courses, just like an MBA. -Or, you can take the opposite view, and look at it as 18 course textbooks, which would mean 18 classes. -Or, you can look at the amount of pages, 2000 pages per level, which is typically 4 university textbooks, so that makes CFA = 12 courses. -Or, you can forget about the lecture hours (I also know many people who skipped class and did fine), and just concentrate on a typical 4 hours a week per course to study, over 13 weeks that makes 52 hours per week, which would mean a CFA is like 15 courses. -And of course, I hear from succesful candidates that CFA should be looked at 300 hours of studying, and not 250. -And lets suppose one level of CFA was just only = 1 semester, what would be the harm, there are plenty of masters degrees that require only 1 year, or taking 6 classes + research, and theres plenty of 1-year MBA’s.