Hi Guys, If I were to chose between book practise exam and Q-Bank which one you think is good in terms of giving good exposure to the course material. I got the books from CFA and I’m planning to finish all of them one month before the exam. Do you think one month is sufficient to work on these products? Help please… thanks.
hari, welcome to AF, your study schedule sounds great. A month to review should be adequate. However, I don’t think your decision between Q-Bank and practice exams should be mutually exclusive. You’ll need both an efficient tool for general review and a series of practice exams. Speaking from experience, the official CFAI volumes are cumbersome and don’t lend themselves well to quick, broad review. Unless you’re proficient at taking reading notes while you read the volumes (which, by the way, is very time-consuming on top of the reading the volumes, which themselves are very demanding to get through on-schedule), you may find it helpful to rely on a third-party solution. I found the Schweser flash-cards to be very helpful; there’s a card for each LOS w/ a brief explanation. I haven’t used Q-Bank, but this may be another effective tool for general practice/retention. Second, you’ve got to take practice exams, even if they’re not the Schweser tests. CFAI offers practice exams which I intend to use going forward in addition to my Schweser Book 6 practice tests. Q-Bank may be good (again, not speaking from experience), but frankly only practice tests can simulate the actual rigor and structure of the test-taking experience. My first attempt at LI was completely FUBAR: I read the CFAI volumes over 5 months, took 300 pages of reading notes, had two weeks to review, took no practice exams, what a waste. If I’d been an active AF participant at that point, I would have known better. So but I crushed it on the second attempt using Schweser notes and a lot more practice. Please don’t repeat my mistakes. Good luck this December.
Actually, I’ll elaborate on my opinion of the Schweser flashcards, not to divert this thread, but rather to further qualify my comments above. Bottom line: I found them more helpful at Level I than Level II. I’ll use the cards again as I retake LII, but not w/o far more review of the actual CFAI volumes and Schweser notes. Level I: I think this exam has more breadth than depth and so it’s more realistic to summarize the heart of a LI LOS on something the size of an index card (e.g. an index card), and given the breadth, you really do need some sort of efficient tool for reviewing the entire LI CBOK. I was very satisfied. Level II: This exam is more focused than LI and goes into considerably more depth. Realistically summarizing the heart of a LOS on an index card is a stretch in many cases. I had to manually correct several mistakes, pen-in more thorough explanations for terms, symbols and abbreviations used liberally throughout the cards w/o much clarification. For example, I know that Durbin-Watson is used to test for serial correlation in multiple regression analysis, but on the exam I bungled the test & conclusion when given dl and du in the ANOVA table b/c the flashcard didn’t go much beyond simply defining D-W and mentioning that adjusted standard errors are used to correct for autocorrelation. I made the mistake of not reviewing my actual texts more thoroughly. On an exam with 120 questions, there just isn’t room for this type of sh- In any case, I’ll use the cards again for general review, but beyond the LI exam, they certainly aren’t a one-stop-shop for mastering a LOS. I’m curious to see what you guys have to say about Q-Bank, maybe I’ll have to incorporate it into my study plan. I’ll search-function this a bit too.
Thanks hiredguns1. That is excellent I feel lot more focused now, I’m going to definetly apply your winning strategies. It is amazing that you are such a good assest to the formum and especially to the newies like me. Good luck with your exam too…