Six months ago when I was deciding if to take the CFA 1 exam or not, I did some research on this exact topic. I do not have background in Finance/Economics, neither in science, engineering, maths or other numerical subjects. I have a degree in political science so naturally I was a bit concerned if I would be able to handle. I found numerous posts online which were rather encouraging (though most of them have a scientific background) so i decided to take the plunge.
I have to say I spent probably 500 hours preparing for the exam. Though with political sicence degree, I do always a strong affinity to numbers and passed my A-level in phy/chem/maths. I do want to leave a note of caution to anybody with similar background to take into account the amount of time and energy that you have to commit to preparing for the exam. Almost all subjects are new to me and I learnt from scratch. Now I passed the exam but I still have vivid memory of the days and nights of reading schweser notes and doing hundreds of exercises. At times, I almost regreted the decision to challenge myself.
All I want to say is it’s possible but it won’t be easy so be mentally prepared. The course materials and schweser materials are written for even the beginners in finance. Basic concepts are always clearly explained. Overall I found cfa provides a really good basic for those who wants to enter the financial job market or those who just want to have a comprehensive grasp of important financial concepts/tools/methodologies
I have a MBA on the way too. I think having some good understanding of finance is useful in working for any business segments. It adds an additional dimention when you look at problems. I don’t think I am going into pure finance or investment banks.
I majored in literature, so I was in the same boat. For me, passing level 1 was probably the hardest part of the whole program for exactly the reasons you mention: it’s all new to you!
People with math/econ backgrounds always love to brag about how easy level 1 was, but its no joke if this hasn’t always been your thing.
Youre gonna feel pretty pleased with your progress and levels 2 and 3 (while harder tests) will be much easier for you to study for, as you will be in familiar territory instead of the wilderness.
I also thought L1 was very hard, because most of it was new. For people with finance or accounting backgrounds, it was substantially easier.
if you don’t have a finance background, the CFA is a great way to get a pretty broad overview and in some (albeit not enormous) depth.
whether that effort will translate into a finance job is a different question, if you have a decent professional network of finance folk, it should help. If not, get to developing that network.
Righteous H, good to hear we are in the same boat and even better to know that you managed to pass level 2 and 3! I hesitate if I should go for level 2 or not. The initial idea is to get some additional training in finance on top of my mba. Compared to cfa, the mba finance course is a piece of cake! I remember I was telling myself just before the level 1 exam that it is going to be the end of it.
Now certainly encouraged by the pass of level 1, I am tempted to continue with the level 2 but aware of the hard(er) work it will entail. And what other said in this forum is right too, work experiences count more than CFAs. And I am afraid I’d narrow my chance of employment to investment banks. I guess I have a few months to wait and see!
Greenman’s Jedi Wisdom - if you can pass Level 1, then you have all of the basic tools that you need.
Level 1 is basically the “entrance exam”. It is the application for admission. It is a re-hash of all the stuff that you learn when you get your BBA in Finance.
I don’t think you need to have a finance related background to take the CFA exams.
In fact, some of the most employable candidates have a very diverse background and they excel in something other than business which makes them stand out from the crowd. I have been told that some management consulting companies like hiring Olympic athletes or metalists (who just happen to have a MBA as well) because of their “title” and their unique background.
Anyway, my point is, the CFA exam IS a program, and you just learn it by yourself instead of going to lectures, but otherwise you spend just as much time on it as a degree.
It’s totally dependent on your interest and passion. Having a related degree doesn’t mean one is smarter or can do a better job than another. The most successful entrepreneurs often don’t have any professional designations, even degrees - they may have helped create some of the well-known professional designations.
Yet don’t underestimate yourself either. Yes, it may have taken you a hard year to finish L1 and another 3 years to complete L2 and L3, and worst case another 4 years of investment-related work experience to get the charter that you know you really want; but compared to someone with an fin/econ/acct major, it also takes them at least 8 years ( 4 years undergrad and 4 years of work) to get there. So after obtaining the charter everyone is back on the same battlefield. However, for people who have switched to this field and hopefully will obtain the charter in the end, you know you really want it and have made the effort to achieve the goal. Now you are a happier person than before and you know this is your passion after all these years and the necessary sacrifice… Say you made the switch at 30, when you are 45, you will have 15 years of experience in the industry. And I dont’ think there’s any difference between “15” and “20” years of experience.
Science (physics and chemistry in particular) tends to be depth first - the classes deal with very few topics, and beat them to death. There’s also a context; everything means something. Science is interesting even when you don’t quite know what’s going on, because there’s some hint of what you’re supposed to be doing. Math is breadth first - it covers a huge number of different things, in a very shallow way. There’s no context, it’s just a bunch of rules. Because of this ass-backwards method of teaching, it takes a looong time to get to a point where math makes as much sense as science does.
My 2 cents is that I agree it all depends on how bad you want the designation. It has been done thousands of times before where a candidate earned the charter, myself included, with absolutely no formal education in business, math or science. The difficulty of this program is the amount of information that is required for each test. You need to learn a lot of crap for a test that offered once a year. It is due or die essentially.
After substantial consideration, I finally decided to go for level 2. Aiming to be the “poet who can do math”… Level 1 was hard but the sense of satisfaction was enormous too when I passed. I do think it makes my cv interesting. As somebody said, once you pass the levels, you’d be on the same playing field as those who got a finance degree.
I do think there are many people out there who enjoy the pain and satisfaction from CFA program… they do it with or without the intention of working in finance.
One of the CFA instructors at the University of California, Irvine had no math/science/business background when he started studying for the Level I CFA exam; he wrote advertising jingles.
I am coming back to my post a year ago. Now I passed the Level2, I am absolutely thrilled! It was hard, much harder than lvl1. The volume of information that you need to take in is probably 3 times that of level1. For level1, you can still manage to memorize formula and concepts without fully understanding them and pass the exam; but for level2, there were a lot more concepts that you need to grasp and you can’t just plug in the formula and hoping for an answer matching on of the three choices…
I used Schweser only plus EOC questions (spent probably 500-600 hours!). Although I was shocked/destabilised to find a set of PM questions in the exam that i had never seen before, I managed to be among the 46% that passed the exam this June. I’d say it is still doable using schweser at this level but I might supplement it with the official materials.
Now I have decided to take a break from CFA, I need a break to have my life back.
Level 1 was hard but the sense of satisfaction was enormous too when I passed. I do think it makes my cv interesting. As somebody said, once you pass the levels, you’d be on the same playing field as those who got a finance degree.