Hi All,
I have not passed this year L3. I was wondering what is the study strategy for people who are in the same boat? I mean when would you start, which material you plan to use and what else you plan to do differently for next year?
Thank you,
assuming a 6/1/2019 exam:
no need to start before 1/1/2019 i truly believe that. gonna read all the material from either schweser or CFAI and finish it by 4/1/2019. if i choose CFAI ill have to be faster about it because theres more. either way, L3 is so much less volume than L2 (one of the reasons IMO ppl say its easier) so reading and understanding the material in full in 90 days i think is realistic.
from 4/1/2019 to 5/1/2019: all the CFAI TTs + all the schweser AMs.
5/1/2019 to 6/1/2019: all the CFAI prior AMs + all the schweser PMs + both CFAI official mocks
I struggle to envision me failing a second time…that said…i thought i would band 10 and i like band 4’ed this year. dead arse. so who knows.
getting a retab because i was mocking consitently in the 40+/60s in schweser and i thought if anything i barely failed. to show up where i did was shocking and unbelievable.
forgot to mention that i plan on hitting QBank questions while im reading through the material from 1/1/2019 to 4/1/2019. there were only like 4200 of them
Qbank is a waste of time; I averaged 88% on them and failed; only good thing that came from them was activated the pass gaurantee so i get the same package from kaplan for free.
personally planning on starting in October and getting all the readings done by end of year so i can then focus on videos and weekly classes, eoc, blue boxes, and practice practice practice both mocks and past AMs
i can’t fail this thing again … not an option been too long and too draining
Q bank may be OK for the early stages of learning for first timers. Being a retaker I don’t think it’s necessary. Refresh your memory then brush up on whatever was below 50.
Thinking of getting the mark meldrum package and doing more AM questions. Hopefully having someone assess my AM response will bump me up to like a 55 this time. That and a 70 on PM and I think I am good to go.
An obscene amount of AM mocks is the way to go, under timed conditions…i.e., like 10+. As retakers already know, exam day nerves are very real at L3 AM session!
don’t aim for 70
I went in with 70s average for both am and pm mocks and practices but came out with a fail. Don’t underestimate the exam stress conditions… aim for 80%+ I wanna be doing times mock full exams ans getting 80%+ by the time June 15, 2019 comes around.
Retake strategy is to exactly what is on my mind.
Its interesting that so many say read the cfai books as I’m struggling to see what benefit it will bring.
at the moment I’m thinking learn and practice all the key calculations and formulas by the end of the year and my notes. Then read scheser and videos until April. And then all the cfa mocks I can get my hands on as people suggest. And do some ethics almost every day April to the exam as somehow I scored poorly on that.
What do you think ? Any my other suggestions would be appreciated.
don’t forget BB and EOC questions from cfa books.
The benefit of reading the CFAI text is that the answers to questions come directly from the CFAI material (except for Ethics… not sure where those answers can be found). Not to mention, the CFAI readings are (mostly) extremely well done. You might actually learn something useful while also passing the exam.
I failed L3 on first attempt reading CFAI books cover-to-cover, watching MM videos, and doing EOC’s, 6 Kaplan and one CFAI mocks.
Not enough. I realize I should have done more AM practice, just didn’t have time.
Thinking of a prepping with Level Up or Wiley this time, seem to have more emphasis on AM. MM just parrots the curriculum, so if you’re reading CFAI, seems redundant.
Bearded, I couldn’t agree more. I passed with CFAI text only. ALL the answers come from CFAI. practice, practice, practice CFAI topic tests, online exams, and 10 years of past CFAI AM exams. Several questions come directly from BB examples too. One time through the topic tests is not enough IMHO. Rinse, wash, repeat!
Frankly I’m flabbergasted to see people saying they have failed L3 and are considering going through the whole thing again - but they still can’t see the benefit in consulting the actual source material on which the entire exam is based?!
Likewise with Q-bank - as preparation for the exam it’s about as useful as regularly attending the trivia night at your local pub.
GUYS - GET SERIOUS! Read the CFAI books, do the CFAI practice questions and do at least 20 mock AM exams, focussing on the actual CFAI past papers more than the ones from Schweser or elsewhere. You need to keep doing AM past papers until you can consistently score >75% in under three hours!
Thanks for all of the input. I’m getting the message on reading the cfai books. Think I will start early and try and finish the cfai books by March or earlier then hit exams and questions march to June.
BlackMamba know’s what he’s on about 
If you ain’t doing minimum 11 mocks, better luck in 2020.
i guess different people benefit from different things. I found the Schweser am mocks significantly more helpful than the CFAI ones because Schweser gave me an indication of how the questions would be graded and how partial credit would be awarded. If I only had the CFAI ones, I would have had no clue about that and probably would have written too much on many questions. Given the time pressure of the am exam and how stringent the grading is, that is critical for most candidates.
I also found the qbank very helpful in preparing for the pm portion of the exam. I think what CFAI provides has improved but i’m not sure because when I looked at it for levels 1 and 2 it was nowhere near as helpful as Qbank so i didn’t even bother with their questions for level 3.
For retakers - my strategy for each level was making notecards. For L3, I genuinely had 1000+ 4x6 notecards and most of them were fully written on. I would recommend to anyone the following:
- Read and make hand written notes. Do EOC questions at the end of each chapter (I used Schweser and only did those EOC questions at this time, but do CFAI if you study from that).
- When you’ve gotten through the material, pick up your handwritten notes and translate them all into notecards. That includes problems from the text, definitions, strategies, advantages/disadvantages, etc. Even if you get used to the numbers, you need to know where they all fit in the equations and it will help you with learning the math.
- At the end of each chapter of making notecards, do the CFAI text EOC questions (again if you’ve already done them) and blue box questions on harder topics. It’s going to take you a couple weeks to just do that portion but it’s great review.
- After finishing your notecards, and going through EOC questions, focus on reviewing your notecards, when you feel like you have covered a full study topic (e.g. asset allocation 1), go into CFAI qbank TTs and test yourself closed book.
- Once you’ve gotten through your notecards and qbank TTs, start hitting mocks. In addition to mocking, you should be also reviewing your notecards for retention.
This process allows yourself to continually be testing your knowledge and hitting notecards which, in my opinion, are significantly more helpful for learning than just looking at a page of notes. As retakers you should be through the text even earlier and you should even have additional questions to practice from 2018 material.
Mock till you drop and make flash cards! They helped me immensely! Putting in the hours with mocks its the best thing so you can see the possible questions from every angle. 10, full 6 hour mocks. Do it.
CFAI all the way. Apart from the obvious of doing BBox and EOC questions. Do the the white text examples, these are ones buried in the reading and usually lead up to a BBox. They often more compley than BBox but are often more enlightening once mastered. Im sure most of us have walked out of a L1 or L2 exam and gone “where did that get that one particular question from, I have never seen anything like that before”. Those are the questions based on white text info.
Read the last few pages of each reading. CFAI work on the psychology that candidates brush over these pages as they think they have the core aspect of the reading covered. There is often a nugget of info or a relationship that make excellent options for PM item sets.
Ethics, ethics, ethics. Dont think for one minute that L3 ethics is going to be easy becuase you have covered it at previous levels. They test all the grey areas and make you second guess yourself. Find every ethics Q you can get your hand on and work them mutliple times. Behavioural finance is harder than it looks, there are many over laps between biases so know each ones defintion, ID and solution backwards. Starting now, set aside 30 min a day to go over a section of Ethics and BF, you will make your life a lot easier when you have to start tackling meaty reading in Dec/Jan. Keep refreshing your memory on these sections every week going forward and you wont have to worry about them come exam day, you will also save loads of time on these Q’s that can be used for tougher sections.
For those that struggle with Fixed income(me), dont become despondent and just skim through it. FI makes up such a large weight that it can really set you back on the exam if you dont know it. Perseverance will definitely be rewarded come exam day on this section. The readings had many changes to them for 2018 and I believe the questions are only going to get harder next year.
Find every previous exam question on IPS for both Institutional and individual and work them multiple times. Know how to calculate every component that goes into the return calc and dont assume they will just ask for the req rate of return. The CFAI material is a bit thin on how to work IPS questions so old exams are your best resource for them. Look at the memos in detail and find a way to condense the info in them for the calculation.
CFAI online topic tests are gold. Dont worry about what percentile you are in, just focus on working through your mistakes and understanding there solutions, even if they seem long winded. Work these questions multiple times and it will make your life much easier in the PM.
Some advise for the morning section: YOU DONT HAVE TO START AT QUESTION 1 !!!. If you know you are proficient in a certain section that will be in the morning then go to that question and wax it, then work through the questions from easiest to hardest based on your skill set. Bank marks early before you get thrown by a tough Q. When you work through past papers you will see that the first and last question the morning is often harder or they take a lot of time to solve. This is the CFAI using exam psychology and its one of the oldest tricks in the book for creating an exam that is perceived to be harder than it actually is.
Lastly for those re-taking, don’t feel despondent, I was in your shoes last year largely due to the mistakes mentioned above. Hard work and determination as well as fresh approach to tackling L3 will pay off come exam day.
Best of luck.