250 Hours

The CFA institute says that you should expect to spend a minimum of 250 hours in prep for level 3. Just curious as to what you experience is as for a reasonable amount of time to budget to be well prepared for L3. As a basis, I spent about 500 hours on L2 and feel pretty solid with my performance.

more the better my friend…250 IMHO is the minimum

Ask us after Aug. 18. I was definitely under 250 hrs and felt prepared but L3 is a different animal - you can know the material very well and still fail. It’s far less mechanical than L2.

I’ll let you know after the 18th. But I spent more than 250…

I spent 430 hours, scored between 80 and 90% to mock and sample exams…and will probably fail comes August 18th

i spent about 350, with 100 of that in the last 2 weeks.

Really Hmmm. Dude! you were making 80-90 on the mocks and you still believe you failed . I have talked with people in the past who barely scored 70 on the mocks ans still passed with room to spare. something is terribly wrong with this picture.

saavy32 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Really Hmmm. Dude! you were making 80-90 on > the mocks and you still believe you failed . I > have talked with people in the past who barely > scored 70 on the mocks ans still passed with room > to spare. something is terribly wrong with this > picture. Why? It’s the same for me I scored 80% in sample 2 and 90% in sample 3. (In the Mock: 75%) I am totally sure I’ll fail. I had a very bad morning a messed it up. I thought the afternoon was good, but I have found 15 mistakes so far and I have only checked about 40 questions… I was unlucky every time a made a guess. There is nothing wrong with this picture!!

Joanna: You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don’t you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair? Stan, Chotchkie’s Manager: Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself. Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don’t need 37 pieces of flair to do it. [flips off Stan]

I spent about 150. Could’ve used an extra 100. That’s all I could bear though. Am 50/50 going into August.

I would say 325-350 but could be more since I studied 80 hrs the last 2 weeks!

Bacaladitos Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > saavy32 Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Really Hmmm. Dude! you were making 80-90 on > > the mocks and you still believe you failed . I > > have talked with people in the past who barely > > scored 70 on the mocks ans still passed with > room > > to spare. something is terribly wrong with this > > picture. > > Why? It’s the same for me > > I scored 80% in sample 2 and 90% in sample 3. (In > the Mock: 75%) > I am totally sure I’ll fail. I had a very bad > morning a messed it up. I thought the afternoon > was good, but I have found 15 mistakes so far and > I have only checked about 40 questions… I was > unlucky every time a made a guess. > > There is nothing wrong with this picture!! I am sorry to hear that. Are you going by the p.m. answers that were the concensus answers on the post that was deleted or your own compilation of answers. Also unless you left several answers blank in the a.m. you still might have done better than you thought as can often be the case.

Well over 250… Think I was around the 350+ mark. Gonna be close, but I’m hoping things go my way! Could’ve easily spent another 50 to 100 hrs, because I definitely had weak spots (mainly surrounding the risk management material).

I easily cleared 250.

i probably did 350 if not 400… honestly, no exaggeration, i think i could have done as well with 150 hours and i’m not highly confident of passing. the test did not test depth at all. but i think i spent most of my time studying depth.

Spent well over 250. I’t put myself close to 450-500. However, the material is not the issue. It’s the test. I think you could get away with surface reading/studying on the full curriculum with an emphasis on the big issues and pass if you spent most of your time on the test format. That freaks me out though - definitely not my style as you leave it up to calculated luck.

I probably did close to 250. I agree with someone above who said that that should be the minimum. To accomplish all that is required (2-3 readings, mocks, samples, eoc q’s, qbank etc) to go into the exam confident you will need upwards of 250 hours of quality study time.

I won’t even tell. I spent in insane amount of time.

I put more into this than L2… ~150 vs ~120 for L2 Even with more time preparing…I felt better for L2

I easily studied more than 250 hours…I started in December and probably did 400, with 100 - 150 in the last two-three weeks including practice exams. Anybody passing these tests doing 100 - 150 hours is fortunate to either have a photographic memory or they luck out and get asked about a bunch of stuff they know well and are not asked about stuff they don’t know well