How do people study normally: 1. Schweser/Stalla/Other (NON CFAI) only 2. Schweser/Stalla and CFAI text questions 3. CFAI as primary source with supplemental stuff? Secondly, how do people consider the CFAI texts?
I hope you are not taking the exam in 2 weeks.
Actually I am, but have been at it for a while now. It was just an thought I wanted to investigate.
Last year, i went Stalla mainly, with some CFAI. Failed. This year, my notes + CFAI EOC. Good luck.
Schweser Notes, Qbank + CFAI EoC Questions. Schweser Notes first, EoC Questions during review process (in conjunction with QBank). I scale up my study hours from 10-15 per week during the Schweser sessions to 20-25 for two weeks and ultimately 40 hours my final week. Basically the 20-25 hour weeks are devoted to Qbank and EoC Questions. The final 40 hour push is Schweser mocks, CFAI mock and tying up loose ends from chapter questions and secret sauce cramming.
CFAI Text, EOC, and Mock Exam. Schweser Notes, Practice Exams, and Seceret Sauce for quick reference.
so basically what they are saying is … know everything in every piece of material
I dont really believe in the CFAI text. I go Schweser, my flashcards, Qbank, Schweser practice tests, Mock exam.
Skipping the CFAI text (questions) is risky. I used almost exclusively Schweser for Level 1, which worked out fine, but I found the exam format quite a bit different between Schweser mocks and the actual exam (Namely, the actual exam was less wordy and calculation intensive but more fundamental than the Schweser mock). Regardless, I still did some chapter questions from the texts. Also, I remember some actual exam questions modelled after EoC questions. The wording was a little different, but the tested material was pretty much identical. It would probably serve you well to go over the vignettes the CFAI offers. There are definitely some questions that don’t get asked by Schweser (and I imagine Stalla, although I have no experience). Of course, to each his/her own. Some people are successful studying for 3 weeks, others take 6 months. You could do read through the curriculum 3 times, do 2000 Qbank questions, all the mocks and still fail. There is an element of luck. However, If you have the time to prepare, the official material is really good review. One last thing - I found the text material itself to be extremely long-winded and have not read so much as a reading from the official texts. I might consider doing CFAI ethics next week though.
I used choice 1 last year and am back here again. Take that for what it’s worth.
goin in with 2nd…
Keep em coming.
at this stage whatever strat u got going milk it for what its worth in the last 2 weeks …addd some sample/mocks and give it all you got