Hi guys, Just one simple question: what is your studying style? - Active: while reading the books you are somehow challenging and verifying the information. As an active student, your objective with taking the CFA is probably to learn and understand a lot of new things and passing the exam is a logic consequence. - Passive: you are somehow glossing over some words and diagrams and accepting them at face value. As a passive student, your main objective is the pass the exam and learning is somehow a necessary side-product. Please comment. Marc
depends on the topic.
I think active study is required to apply various techniques/methods you learn through these materials in real senarios.
Those aren’t the only two options, nor are they accurate descriptions. Ultimately you can’t pass the exams with “passive” study (ie learning by rote), there is simply too much information. You have to be “active” in that you need to understand the concepts behind the material. Not much of the material in level 1 was new to me, but I still had to be “active” in refreshing the concepts, working out the examples, taking questions. I don’t presume to know more than the people who wrote the material - there may be some limited areas in which I do, and there may be areas that I think should be explained differently, and areas of clear US-bias (like the default position being US GAAP, rather than IFRS), but generally, I find it much more useful to try to understand what the material is saying than to challenge it’s validity. I’m just not that pompous.
^ I totally agree chris. One does not study at one of either two extremes. In fact, its a very gray area. While studying for Level 1 this past fall I found most of the topics pretty interesting and therefore it could be said that I took a more “active” style in studying. However, as far as passing the test being a “logic consequence” well, I don’t care how much I enjoyed the material because if I never pass, it doesn’t really matter how much I enjoyed learning it. To say that my objective was to learn and understand the material is silly because why pay $500 to take the test when I could have simply purchased the books by themselves? Ultimately, we will all be tested on the material at some time or another and passing is my objective.
Main Objective: Pass Exam; secondary objective, not fail the exam. Study Method: Any means necessary, preferably trusting the source that the test is based on (logical?). Challenging every point and graph seems like an incredible waste of time. Check the errata perhaps. Most of LI is covered in the first couple years of a B.Comm, you’ve probably already seen/understood/challenged it at some point… Now you just have to make sure every detail possible sticks come June and is immediately available, my method was actively beating my brain with repetition of problems (see a question answer a question w/o thinking), not checking sources of the material I was studying. Guess I’ll find out if it worked in a couple weeks.