I took the exam this past weekend in Chicago…I was very unhappy about how Stalla prepared me for it. The test was MUCH different than I anticipated and planned for. I, personally, will never use Stalla for anything else. Thoughts anyone?
I used Stalla materials that a friend gave to me last year. I failed the Dec 06 exam. I should have studied more, but I didn’t think Stalla did a very good job of helping me to prepare either. I wouldn’t recommend their materials either.
Im personally pretty disappointed in Schweser. Making me do these 5 minute calculator punching exercises over and over…while on the exam, calc was barely needed, and even when it was needed, the process was 1-2 steps at most.
Yea… scheweser needs to re-look at their Bk 6 Qns. especially for the the FSA section… quite a few conceptual questions as well as nonconventional ways of deriving answers from limited information provided or ratios.
Definately agree, I would have spent my time better memorizing lists (tbond futures question comes to mind) then calculating the payoffs year to year on all the different swaps/forwards/options etc (and being able to do them in 1.5 mins)… Even that convexity question where they gave the convexity adjustment in percentage messed me up cause I kept squaring 150 beeps and multiplying it by -1.2 and couldn’t figure out where I was going wrong. Then I reread the question and just subtracted 1.2%!!! This exam tested way less detail then I had expected; the CFAI really sticks to the 1.5 mins per question guideline. I finished am and pm with 45 mins left to go back and change my right answers to wrong ones, no chance of doing that on a schweser practice exam… At least with schweser it teaches you do the calcs quicly and correctly while the books, I think, covered all of the tested material while being waaaay more concise than the CFA material…