I started in September with Study Session 3; I’m now on Study Session 5. I’ll be glad to be finished with the first pass though Book 2 soon.
Started yesterday with Behavioral Finance. It is so strange reading completely new material after being stuck on L2 for a few years. I have no idea how to start or what I should be taking notes on right now. I built up a killer note card deck over the years for L2. My plan is to do 10hrs per week and we have 33 weeks left. I will easily surpass the 10 hr per week mark in the last month and a half so I should end up at well over 350 by the time the exam arrives.
My plan is to just read CFAI books until Schweser arrives, then I want to power through all the Schweser books and do all their questions by the end of the year. Then I will do a second pass more slowly and incorporate CFAI readings, blue box work and their EOC questions as I go through the second reading. Last month will be for reviewing, practice exams, etc…
I just wish I had a way to gameplan the order of reading the books. I want to read the more “exciting” stuff early, and the boring stuff maybe a little later on. “Exciting” for me in L1 and L2 was equity and accounting, I don’t know what the equivalents are for L3.
If someone has a gameplan for the order of how they are studying I would love to hear it.
You’ve seen Ethics before. Save it for May.
GIPS sucks. Save it for May, and study it sparingly. (Too much “hard-drive” space in the brain for too few points.)
Behavioral Finance isn’t difficult, but it’s best not to study it immediately. It’s easy to get bogged down in it.
My plan (if I were taking it again, which I’m not) -
- Study Session 4 through 8
- Study Session 3
- Study Session 16 and 17
- Study Session 9 through 15
- Repeat 1-4.
- Ethics and GIPS.
Behavioural Finance is probably what i would start as well, because ethics is completely the same and you took L2 a few times so the material is probably permanently imprinted in your brain.
BF sets the right tone for the following sessions and you can spend more time on IPS with the CFA curriculum because trust me, it’s a big portion of the exam and a lot of people do not do as well as they expect. So i would definitely use the curriculum for that and memorize the exact language used and look at as many examples as possible!
Best of luck
NANA
Its my first day to plan for the CFA L3 exam. I had passed both levels in first attempt and for L3 this is my first intake. L2 was cleared in June 2012. so wait one year with doing MBA. Now, as i go through the discussion on page 1 n 2. I think to start with BF is quite good bc its easy going. I have limited time available. With my schedules i can only spend 210 hrs probably for this level. What u ppl suggest how to proceed??
Hey greenplan, I am thinking to some of your game plan. Would u kindly suggest me the reasons to follow this
Are you using the curriculum or study guides?
I don’t know if you can go through all the books in 210 hours (i know i can’t), perhaps you’re a fast reader? i think it’s important to practice AM, coz it’s very different from L1 and L2, that’s all i can say if you have limited time to prepare for the exam, everything else is similar to L2 in terms of studying techniques.