3rd party prep provider and exam relevance

L3 retaker, the exam left me feeling extremely defeated. AM section seemed much harder than all previous years AM exams, and the PM exam was no better. I am sad to have spent all that time studying and sacrificing only to be hoodwinked on exam day. To be tested on what seems like only 60% of the entire curriculum is wholly unfair.

I used Kaplan Schweser study material and videos and felt like it definitely wasn’t detailed enough to get me through the exam - there were topics that came up in the exam that Schweser didn’t even cover FFS!

Can anyone recommend a different provider?

I did a few schweser mocks and quite honestly, they are sh!t. They have amateur errors in them, wording is from freshman English 101 and they don’t go deep into the subject. In short, Schweser mocks are lvl1 type of “plug-in-the-numbers” type of questions which do not test at all how well you have actually understood the concept.

In the opposite, I think Mark Meldrum mocks were fantastic. They really helped me with the preparation. The wording was almost exactly the same as in the real exam and the concepts and questions were really well thought out.

I agree about the Schweser mocks which is why I did not use them, I only used the CFA past exam questions and mocks but this year’s exam seemed a lot more difficult than past exams. how do I sign up for Mark Meldrum’s content?

In order of difficulty, I’d go:

CFAI mock > 2019 AM > schweser mocks > 2010-1018 AM exams

I would highly recommend Mark Meldrum! Used IFT last year and MM this year, he really prepares you for the exam, he has amazing reviews on all readings, where he provides a summary of the reading and goes through most/all the EOC chapter questions. I found studying with him really got me well prepared for the AM exam. It’s a pity I discovered his work late into my study progress, I do believe it was enough to get me over the line, or maybe I’m exhibiting overconfidence bias :slight_smile:

Does MM have written material (apart from the mocks), or just the video lectures?

Also: how do you use the videos? Because to read the curriculum and to listen to the videos is a bit of a duplication (timewise), but to listen only to the videos, I don’t think that’s sufficient.

It has, i bought on 2018. But for 2019 i only bought the mock exam. Not using video at all for 2019.