Studying with CFAi Curriculum only - worried with all this talk about 3rd party prep providers

Hey guys - For both level 1 & 2 I’ve exclusively used the CFAi curriculum, pretty much in the same fashion for L1 & L2, and had no issues so far:

  1. Read entire curriculum, complete EOCqs along the way, take notes.

  2. do all EOCqs a second time

  3. do CFAi practice bank

  4. Do all CFAi mocks for that year twice - timed on a Saturday starting at 9AM and 2PM on the dot. So this year, with 3 full day exams provided, I would have 6 Saturdays before the exam date simulating exam day. The rest of the week I would review the exams, going over in detail anything I slipped up on, and review notes. From Sept to June I would put in 16 hours per week, no studying on Sunday, and 1 break weekend per month.

With this approach I just sneaked past the MPS this past June for L2 my first try.

I’m getting worried because I see so much discussion about Marc LeFebvre, MM, Schweser, Wiley… Is L3 that hard that I would need to supplement the curriculum with 3rd party material? Are other people exclusively using the CFAi curriculum and finding success? Thanks!

I did use CFAI exclusively and passed with the first attempt. However, it’s a hard swallow for me, I read the CFAI twice (6 x 2 = 12 books), which took a lot of time. However, I had a very systemic understanding about the L3 structure, especially portfolio mgmt. My systematic understanding helped me with the morning section (scoring above 80%).

I used third party video lectures to help me focus on the key points in the CFAI texts. You don’t necessarily need them if you have the time to peruse the source material. It does help though to get some help on writing the AM section because it’s nothing like you’ve seen so far in the program.

If you aim to pass with least effort possible, I wouldn’t suggest using CFAI only; I used Mark Meldrum and watched all of his videos and probably mastered 90% of the contents; then followed his mock exam walk-through to understand how to answer AM questions; I only used CFAI for concepts I don’t understand and questions. Passed on three months part-time study around 300 hours tops, 90th percentile.