Here is what I think. Rather than pick one practice exam from book 6 and then another from book 7, I am planning on doing Book 6 in its entirety (already done 2 exams) and then the CFAI. The logic behind doing book 6 completely is that that way i know all the major topics would have been covered by all 3 of these exams in the same book. If i dont do Book 6 completely, and pick one or two from book 7, then I stand the chance that I might be tested twice on some areas and some areas might be left out. Ideally you want to do as many as you can, but time being so short, i dont plan touching both unless I am done with Book 6 completely. And then you have to do the CFAI exams. I think those are a must. Sounds reasonable?
Most people here seem to think that book 7 is not very helpful, so I plan on doing all of Book 6 and then all of the CFAI exams. I wouldn’t touch book 7 unless you really have a lot of time left. I will be using book 7 for the 2006 questions but not much else.
Last year I did some of book7 questions for lvl1. They were too difficult and I didn’t learn anything. This year (actually this week) i’ll do the hole book6, then I’ll review a bit and then CFAI exams. I’ve made a hole exam today 2*60 questions! That was tough!!
yodhava, i think you’re wise to do it this way. book 6 does a nice job of a vignette or 2 on all of the major stuff in tests 1 and 2 and at least I thought test 3 was a bit more of the random stuff (but still very testable stuff). especially with only 60 questions to a side, it’s not a big surprise that here we’re seeing a lot more variability in scores test to test vs in L1 where it was double the # of questions. we all just hope on test day we hit on some of the areas we’re better at.
book 7 is a bad indicator of where you stand. so if you get a 60 on a book 7 exam, you shouldn’t necessarily freak out. but some of the questions are good for practice. like ethics. i’m going to at least do all of book 7 ethics vignettes.
Ethics scares me. Thats one area where we have no control. There is always a couple of choices that look correct for each question. Its a 50/50 at best.