Dear All, My personal feeling about the exam is as follows: if you put into the preparation less than 200 hours, you have less then 20% probability to pass. 200 hours is enough to read all the cfai readings one time and go through eoc questions one time only. Perhaps you’ll have some time for a half of mock exam. If you have from 200 to 600 hours your chance to pass (to my experience) grow like a y=x^0.5 function: steady, but still not linearly. Your chances to pass grow from 20% to 75%, since now you have more time to review and practice. One can speak seriously about being ready to pass and see all the traps of the exam, perhaps, if gave 600+, maybe 700. And the question is, for those who did 600+ - how did you do it? Are you employed? How many hours d’you work for a week? My most stupid calculation is 600 hours for 9 month is about 20 hours a week… Can you focus on the study material after 10 hours at work? Can you study 3-4 hours a day, every day, no days off and still stay focused on your work task during the day?
600 is insane. I think I clocked in around 300 working 35hrs per week after starting studying in early December. About 99% confident I passed.
Come on. The 5 schwesser books are around 1500 pages. How long do you need to read those? I was doing around 25 pages per hour on average so I spent around 60 hours on the materials and did 4 mocks . So total around 100 hours and felt well prepared. I was studying 4-5 hours per week during week ends during 16 weeks. And spent 8 hours / day during the last week before the exam. I did the same for level 1 and went well. Hopefully the outcome will be same for level 2.
I think you really need to invest in Elan or Schweser if you’re working full time. People with free time will leverage their time; people with full time jobs should leverage their money in order to compete.
I will probably not be too far from the 600hrs, but after retaking it next year and assuming that I didn’t make it this year. Too much time is spent reading the stuff. I am putting some efforts into practicing a higher reading speed. And I am not talking about speed reading techniques, since you really need to understand the stuff. I am simply way too far from 25 pages per hour. Am probably much closer to 10-15/hr. Not sure you should be averaging 25 when you first read content and actually need to understand it as well. But 10-15 is definitely too slow. I feel like a lot of it is retention of an extreme amount of content. I didn’t struggle with any concept; no concept as such was extremely complicated (with the exception of PM on the exam). But it is just the pure mass of it. And that you need to hammer in, review, practice, review, practice, review some more…so I do believe that a lot of it is just pure dedication, measurable in terms of hours spent. And for me personally – I put in 300+ hrs and most of it in the last weeks leading up to the exam – and I feel like it was simply not enough. With another 100hrs and maybe another week off from work closer to the exam I think I would be as confident as rahul roy!
I have only put in 350 hours.
I find it hard to believe that you could put 600 hours and see a difference, after 500 hours you must know everything inside out.
The marginal increment in knowledge is probably minimal once you are in excess of 500hrs. But if what you are saying would be right, everyone putting in 500 plus hrs. would pass the exam. I would doubt that.
But it is almost the same … if you won’t pass at 500 hours, I doubt you would pass at 600 or even 800 hours. You should just give up.
IF i donot pass at 350 hours…i will give up…
i did 556 hours in 4.5 months. my job is only 40 hrs/week though so that helps.
i would have felt very unprepared with only 300 hrs
I think it really depends on you background and experience prior to taking any CFA exams to gauge how many study hours you need to pass.
600 is a really high number unless that pool consists of people without a finance background (i.e. IT or marketing) looking to make a career switch. In that case it’s understandable.
But most on here I assume are already working or have a background in finance to some degree whether it’s back office work or a cushy front office job.
I work 6 - 7 M-F and up until 2 on Saturdays most weeks. I was able to put in about 300 hours of studying, mostly from the last few weeks when I took some time off work to prepare as it got closer.
Unless you make 80k+ you earn less than a manufacturing job, hourly. Oh, and you have no free time because you’re doing CFA. Ouch.
Why are you mean to him ? Maybe he will get opportunities in the future ?
i lost track of my hours…but i cant count very high to begin with.
i think it is more about what goes into those hours of study, not just the number of hours. so i dont think you can just say that since i studied x number of hours i have a better chance of passing this exam than someone who did x-1 hours. it all boils down to what a person retains and how effective their routine is.
i will say though that if you did less than 300 hours, you either need to be a genius or extremely lucky to get past this beast.
A small price to pay for the value that the CFA will provide for my future. Also my salary is well beyond what you stated.
Oh I am curious now, how much more ? What do you do for a living ?
Really not trying to turn this into a bragging thread so I’ll put it in a range; 120-150k before bonuses. I work in oil & gas PE. I’ve also been actively trading naked options since my sophomore year of college to build up my ‘nest egg.’
That is great, glad it is working for you. How did you get in your current job and what kind of strategy do you use for your options ?
thats awesome man, any tips on getting a foot in the door?