markd10027 that was an awesome post, scares the $hit out of me, but probably that’s what I need to pass it.
Pick up the phone
I got a question
Paased using only the CFAI curriculum for preparation and EOC, blue box, CFAI online topic test and few schweser mocks. What helped the most is tracking my mock performance and trying to average higher. See the table: Conservative points in the AM.
Year AM PM PM Average 2006 64% Kaplan Exam 1 PM Session 70% 67% 2009 60% Kaplan Exam 2 PM Session 71% 66% 2010 66.70% Kaplan Exam 3 PM Session 60% 63% 2011 57.70% Kaplan Exam 1 PM Session 70% 64% 2012 61.10% Kaplan Exam 2 PM Session 73% 67% 2013 67% Kaplan Exam 3 PM Session 78% 72% 2014 70.00% 2013 Mock 80% 75% 2015 73.33% 2015 Mock 83% 78% Kaplan Exam 1 AM 66.70% 2016 Mock 75% 71% 2016 62.30% 2017 AM Mock 85% Errata 74% 2017 PM Mock 76%
I think there’s truth to what you say. But I also think it’s not totally fair to say that people are simply blaming Schweser because they didn’t put in the effort. I failed level 3 the first time, after using Schweser. I did great in PM, failed cuz of AM. I think part of what makes people lash out at Schweser is paradoxically that Schweser is amazing for levels 1 and 2. I passed both of those easily by only using Schweser. So, I went into level 3 with blinders on, thinking that Schweser notes would get me through again. Which they did…but only for the PM. I didn’t realize how much time and effort should be spent preparing for the AM (where I scored very poorly first time), and that simply learning Schweser notes will be insufficient for that part. It’s not necessarily Schweser’s responsibility to get that message across, but if I were in charge, I would be sure to let customers know that knowing th material through and through will not get you past level 3 AM the way it did for 1 and 2.
A legitimate criticism of Schweser at Level 3 is that their mock AM exams are terrible, imo. I caught them using a command word that’s not used by CFAI. The questions in their mocks felt different, and I felt that they were too broad and open-ended compared to CFAI, and did not focus on the same topics as CFAI. Schweser mock answers, however, are a great tool for learning how to construct your answer quickly and efficiently.
VERY appreciated. Cheers.
To say simply learning schweser is insufficient to pass AM is obviously false. Many people, myself included, studied solely via schweser and passed. The only CFAI material I used was the online practice questions and mock. I didn’t look at a CFAI book.
Sure if you have all the time in the world use CFAI, I had two children under 3 and working full time, there was no way I was getting through the CFAI material. Schweser worked for me. Passed the 3 exams first attempt using solely that material.
Hi All,
I used Arif Irfanullah video tutorials for all three levels and in my opinion its super useful (and probably the best series out there in the market) for covering all the essential concepts tested during the exam. I highly recommend everyone to purchase the same from IFT website as it will serve both the purpose of saving time and exhaustively covering the key takeaways needed for the exam. Its turned out to be exceptionally helpful to me! I passed all three levels at one go only due to his video series.