CFA Books or Schweser Notes

1.I am MBA Finance,I have intentions to take CFA level I exam in June 2009, could somebody please tell me how much time I should give from October 2008 onwards till June 2009 for 100% success and whether I should start preparation through CFA Course or from Schwerser Note. I’m confused as CFA notes are in so much detail, which I may not be able to cover. If at all I cover CFA Course books even then I am not sure whether I would be able to retain all at the time of Exam, I also know that CFA course is the best source for exam and somebody told me that if you want 100% success use CFA Course. Please help me to resolve this problem as this is the first step towards CFA, if wrong then have no time to repent. 2.Additionally I have gone through many answers already posted on the same Question here on the forum which makes me more confuse as some one is recommending CFA books and some are in favor of Schweser notes. Right now I am using Schweser 2008 for this how to track the changes in 2009 exam material.

hey i think that u need to order the CFA books since thats what they are going to test u on !! Schweser notes are helpful for since they consolidate all the info ! its all upto u … i passed CFA level '08 … and i started serious studying in the last 4 months since ur MBA finance … CFA wouldnt be anything new to u Good luck with that !

I use the two together. 1 - Read the Schweser LOS answers for the reading 2 - Read the CFAI Text for that reading 3 - Read over the notes from Schweser again, only this time adding little notes for areas that I didn’t think were well covered within the Schweser notes 4 - Study the Schweser Notes 5 - Work the problems in the CFAI Text 6 - Re-read the text and notes as needed I started studying in January with just the CFAI Text books, while trying to create my own notes. After a few months, it became apparent to me that I was waisting too much time, and needed some assistance. I bought the Schweser notes and took the steps mentioned above. it worked well for me, but to each his own. If you have the time, the text is probably the best way to go. If you don’t, then the Schweser notes could be helpful (but I still wouldn’t ignore the texts if I were you). I’m going to take the same approach for L2 as I did for L1, only I’m buying the notes earlier. Good luck.

I have a biology degree and I used Schweser 100% except for ethics. Passed Level I with over 70% in 9 of 10 sections and I had a crap GPA in university. I’d say start early and go over it as many times as possible… the challenge in level I is not the difficulty of the concepts, but rather the sheer volume! Also highly recommend Stalla flash cards as a portable quicky study way to really hammer home the main ideas. I used 2007 flash cards and worked just fine, very few changes for main concepts.

By all means, use Schweser. CFA notes is not only too comprehensive, but in my humble opinion, not structured in an efficient way. Just my 0.02$

there’s never any 100% success rate, but if you want to get close, i recommend reading the CFAI books thoroughly the first time – remember to tackle the end-of-chapter problems (those are very helpful). Next go through some review course – the Schweser “Secret Sauce” (which is a pretty comprehensive summary of the Schweser books) is sufficient for me, but you can always refer back to the CFAI or Schweser books. Last important note to make is that you SHOULD do lots and lots of practice exam questions. I did both the Schweser Book 6 (i.e. Prac Exam Vol 1) and attempted one exam from Book 7 (Prac Exam Vol 2); also did some questions on the Qbank, roughly 300-500 (I forget). I didn’t use the Schweser’s Book 1 - 5.

i vote for stalla!! =P i’m serious. worked wonders for me but a tad on the expensive side. but shiet, whatever gets me to pass.