Wendy:
So you think 5 months is sufficient time to pass level 2 workinig full time with a family?
Woah, someone take note! bchadwick and I agree 
5 months is about 22 weeks.
300 hours / 22 weeks = 14 hours/week
That’s, say, an hour a day each weekday, plus 4 hours each Saturday, and 5 hours each Sunday.
I don’t think you’d see your kids much for those 5 months.
And for some folks without a finance background, 300 hours of study may not be enough to pass.
It may increase the pass rate but I think it is not enough time to absorb all the concepts and think on them from multiple dimensions. I believe it can impair the quality. Level II in December would have been a nice option though.
I really think that three months even at full time study will be hard to do. There is just not enough time to let things “simmer”.
For some it can be more than enough… Everyone’s differnt - there’s no standard. Some people would be 1 month, some would by 9+months like a baby baby.
Yea I’m with you. Let’s be honest, shoving like 6 books of material into your head every month?
So this is only a data point, but I have a friend who took level I in december and decided to take level II immediately in june. Things didn’t quite work out for him. This was a couple years ago. I think he’s on his 3rd time on level II. Just show how important not burning out and letting things “simmer” and “marinate”.
Upside could be finishing the program in less than 3 years. Downside, as observed here, could be continuous state of being in that burned - charred state.
That being said, there are very smart people that do this and complete the program in less than 3 years. Kudos and congrats to them.
can anybody suggest me how to increase the score…I have been getting the scores 70-73 %not beyond that.I have been trying hard to get above that level but everytime there r certain kind of mistakes.plz plz would u plz tell me some kind of tips
Kind of off the spirit of the discussion, but not possible to do 3 levels in 3 months because CFAI wouldn’t have them graded fast enough. At best, you would show up at the exam center the next month and find out which exam you were sitting for that day.
^ good call.
can’t believe no one thought about it before higgmond.
ALL of u are not understanding my point…I want to ask u that how to improve my score more than 75%…can u suggest some tips…
It’s of course true that one can’t currently complete the CFA program in 90 days, for a number of reasons.
But there’s no really-good reason that it takes CFAI 6 weeks to score these multiple choice exams: the providers of many other respected tests have figured out how to grade their exams without all the drawn-out hocus-pocus.
When a candidate writes the GMAT for example, the score is provided instantly – before the candidate even leaves the test center.
Speaking of GMAT… Something I plan on taking in the not so distant future… Wendy~ how is GMAT? It seems like high 600 or low 700 is essnetial… Any idea on how tough it is to get those scores relative to the cfa exams?
@ Wendy. The Graduate Management Admission Council doesn’t care if some questions on the GMAT are crap. Since the GMAT went electronic, people don’t even get the same questions as everyone else anymore. For all their faults, one thing the CFAI actually does well is ensure that people taking the test get a fair shot by throwing out questions that a large number of people got wrong and CFAI subsequently determines were not fair questions. There is no way they could do that quickly enough to accelerate the grading such that it could be completed in a few days, let alone instantly when you finish the test. CFAI also has to be held to a much higher standard than GMAC because they are eventually giving people a true credential that I like to think means something. GMAC is just giving you a score that is one of many factors that determine which business school will take your tuition dollars.
Disagree. The GMAT is probably the tightest exam that I’ve ever written in terms of question quality.
That’s one of the reasons that the GMAT is so effective: it adjusts to the test-taker’s ability in real time, rather than giving too-hard or too-easy questions.
Anyhow, if you write CFA1/CFA2/CFA3 in 2009/2010/2011, you won’t encounter a single question that a candidate that writes the exams in 2010/2011/2012 will encounter. Does this mean that the CFA exams are invalid and unfair?
GMAC tests their questions in advance using psychometric analysis, and knows exactly how difficult a question is Before they administer it to a paying candidate.
Geez, I seem to have touched a nerve. In any case, my main point was that taking the GMAT doesn’t earn you anything. It simply provides one metric b-schools use to decide if you get in or not. Comparing it to the CFA exams is not really relevant.
To be fair, I don’t think you can pass L2/3 with 3 full mos study time.
Or maybe I’m not as smart as you guys.
I know I can’t. Because I’d be tearing my hair out. I can work long hours at a intense job for 2 months in a row, but memorizing a whole ton of new stuff and formulas for the sake of a test doesn’t motivate me enough.