I’d start 8 months out and aim for 500h of studying.
For FRA and Ethics, I’d simply memorize everything since those two subjects where there is basically no logic to it. Or, the logic is not have straight-forward as in other subjects.
For the rest of the subjects (with the main focus on EQ and FI), I’d try to minimize the time spend reading the theory and maximize the time spent on doing EOCs, BBs, and topic tests on CFAI website, several times if necessary. You learn so much more efficiently when you are actually forcing yourself to think and solve the questions/problems.
Lastly, I’d give myself about a month before the exam to just review and do mocks. On the first time around, I did two mocks and reviewed for 2 weeks. The following year I completed 8 and reviewed for 5 weeks. More isn’t always better but I think completing 5+ mocks is a good way to learn how to manage your time during the exam. Also, after completing each mock, you should go over each questions (correct or not) and review the answers.
same here. Probably 900 or so hours in two attempts. Doesn’t matter anymore, passed now and my wife didn’t leave me. I would highly suggest putting in as many hours as you can the first go around and do NOT go light on any sections. I focused too much on the higher weighted areas the first time and it showed. There are no shortcuts.
I don’t mean to be critical here, it’s your life and you’re welcome to spend as much time as you’d like studying. But at the end of the day it’s just a test and all you really need to do is beat the MPS. Reading the rest of this thread it would seem like most people are spending >500 hours studying for L2 alone, I just wanted to highlight that many people study far less and still do fine.
As far as studying to learn, that’s a romantic idea but you can probably just focus on the things that apply to your job. If you’re an ER analyst no one will be quizzing you on how to bootstrap the term structure by hand (especially considering the plethora of software solutions to do this kind of thing for you). L2 is truly like drinking out of a fire hose and I would venture to say that no one has 100% of the material down cold. Putting that pressure on yourself is a recipe for misery.
I would say 1000 is overkill. Passed L2 on first attempt, not much more than the 300 hours since I had a young family to balance my time with along with work.
I had worked in corporate finance, so accounting stuff I found easy. So might have needed an extra 50 hours if I didn’t have that experience.
I studied approximately 1000 hrs for Level I but that includes my time spent studying where I failed the first time.
300 hours is a joke though and anyone who passes with 300 hrs either has had a job where they understand and use the concepts daily or had a strong finance or accounting background from college. I have a non-finance background, so I never took a class on finance or intermediate financial accounting, etc. so studying was fairly brutal.