Taking this exam in the United States of America. Strong areas: EQ/FI, Corporate Finance Medium areas: FSA, Derivatives, Quant Weak areas: Econ. Ethics Sounds like you guys are flying through the materials pretty fast. Schweser notes reading through it and doing all mcq’s at EOC. Doing all EOC in CFAI books, 2 Elan mocks with 11th hour follow up. Mocks: 3 schweser mocks - october 8th, 16th, 23rd 2 Elan mocks - november 13th, 27th 1 CFAI mocks - december 2nd buy schweser books/Elan guides for level 2 CFA and assume I passed level 1.
Hey All, I’m writing the Dec 2010 Exam as well. I’ve got a Finance degree so have some knowledge of these areas already, although I surely need to refresh my memory. My brother is a Charterholder and he says NOT to start with Ethics, so I’ll be studying that last. I started studying at the beginning of May and my plan is to have all the Schweser material finished by the end of September. October will be a review of all the material again while doing Qbank questions and EOC questions. November I’ll be writing a lot of practice exams. I’ve finished Econ already and the material is pretty straightforward. I am halfway through Quant already and again the material is straightforward - I remember studying most, if not all, of this stuff during my Undergrad. FRA will be a bit challenging as I only took two accounting classes in University. Derivatives will be tough as well. Corporate Finance and Portfolio Management should be pretty straightforward as well for me. The schweser material is pretty decent, does a great job of condensing the material. And as my brother puts it, Schweser is all you need, but you have to know it inside out. The Concept Checker questions are VERY easy, the EOC are better and more challenging. Anyways, look forward to reading the posts up until December and wish everyone the best in their studies.
I am glad to join the bandwagon and I think advice here is worth considering. I had gone a quarter into ethics and realised this was somehing I should do last.
I am excited to be a part of the team here. I will sit for L1 in Dec. (first attempt). Working on a tight schedule to get to L3 in 2012 
Letz c.
Hi all, I am gonna be sitting for level 1 in dec as well. From what I have been told by friends who have passed it, it doesn’t take great thinking skills to do the exam questions and there is more than enough time on exam day, this is entirely a test of memorization skills. I’ve started making my own study notes (based on the cfai and schweser books), like I did for all my college courses, but it is seriously time consuming! What are you guys doing?
ai434, Although the exam isn’t very computational from what I hear, I wouldn’t underestimate the sheer amount of information you need to know. Notes are a good idea, but like you said, very time consuming. I make notes int he margins of the books and spend more of my time working through examples, end of reading questions, supplementary videos and qbank. I always finish a study session with schweser & allan resources. So far so good!!!
dbscholes, thanks for the advice, i guess repetition and reinforcement are the way to go.
Hello, I am also taking the Dec 2010 Level 1 exam. I’ve got the Schweser Notes along with the second volume of mock exams. My plan is read through the Notes carefully, making notes and doing EOC/Concept stuff, marking anything that I want to go over later. Then, after my initial read-through of Schweser, I’ll go back and review the Notes, possibly look at CFAI if I have any trouble, and do EOC on CFAI. Then I’ll start hitting up the mock exams. I’m thinking of buying the Elan Guides mock exams, as I have heard that they are more representative of the real exam. Is it worth getting the Eleventh Hour and mock exams from Elan when I have 6 mock exams from Schweser already along with CFAI mocks? Thanks all, and good luck!
Hi all, Iam also the one who is gonna sail in the same boat. I have started just b4 a week, i have started with Corp finance, gone halfway. so far so good. As i have studied this in my curriculum, this is just a review for me. Eco is always tricky for me. i have given a glance, think its still the same. Lets c. Iam using schweser notes. Its good. Which would be the best to strat after Corp fin. Thanks for the suggestions.
Hi All I will sit CFA LI exam at Dec '10(Singapore). I’ve just started studying only at June( precisely last week). As my last exam taking was in 2002- after 8 yrs- trying to study those big books, I admit that it’s very tough for me. But I came from Finance background, wishing that everything will fly back to me 
After reading through this thread, some friends are going so far 
… /me so sad. Anyway, I will try to study with steady pace ! No pain No gain …right ??
Hello everyone! I’ll be sitting for dec exams as well. I’m preparing from Elan guides and doing practice questions from Qbank after every reading. I have finished FI and derivatives and now i’m on to alternatives. Alt is a new subject to me and so its giving me a bit hard time. There is just too much information given to digest. I hope I finish book 5 by this week then I’ll move on to finishing book 4. @Sugi If you are from a finance background then you will find subjects like corporate, pm, derivatives quite easy to complete. I suggest you first get rid of the subjects you find easier and then go for the tricky ones. And it is best to leave ethics for the last.
I keep hearing to leave ethics to last, but I would rather continually review the questions over the period of 5 - 6 months. I have already completed ethics and I do a small 20 question qbank test every day to reinforce this material. Also it allows me to interface with others on the forum in questions regarding ethics. Ethics isn’t as tricky as people say, it just requires a thorough read of the CFAI material. I find continued repetition of this topic will help me retain more long term concepts, then ones drilled into my head at the end of the curriculum when my mind is mush. Just my thoughts.
dbscholes: Your approach seems good. It is better to go through the material atleast once and then revise steadily. I am going through Quants. After that I am planning to finish Book 4. Then Ethics, Econ, FRA, Book 5. I expect to go through Book 4 quickly to get more confident about % of material covered.
Are you guys doing the EOC in the CFAI books? I am using it as supplemental to schweser/elan. The EOC questions are a little longer than schweser and different format slightly. For example, look at reading 5 questions 1-10 are pretty straight forward but 11-20 are a little longer in length compared to schweser.
I am using Schweser notes for now. Have not looked at CFAI book yet. I will read the ethics from CFAI text and do the EOC in last 2 months for practice. So for sticking to Schweser EOC questions.
I’ve been using both CFAI & Schweser EOC and finishing up with Schweser videos.
Are you videos useful? Do you watch them before to gain understanding or after for revision? I watch one video for Quants. The guys was just reading the slides and looked in hurry to finish off. Almost no interaction with the viewers. I found it waste of time as I can the read the notes myself. I may have started with the wrong video but my experience was not good.
I find the videos good review material, but definitely not primer or the resource to help you learn the stuff. I’m not sure which year you are using, I am using Schweser 2009, Allan Guides and a series of YouTube videos I saved to my profile. My experience with ethics and so far with quant have been good, although sometime the prof dribble on a bit to much. Usually there is tons of hidden gems, like which questions will typically arise from this concept, and which parts seem but are actually relatively unimportant for the exam.
I have 2008 videos. I will try YouTube and see if I can find useful material.
Your friends have told you lies, sir. If you plan to memorize material and expect to regurgitate it on exam day, prepare for a poor result. The only way to get this material down is to read it from the CFAI books, do the assigned problems and then constantly review the material as you cover new material. Once this is done sufficient number of times you will begin to realize that your internalizing the material, not memorizing. At this point do practice exams, identify your weaker areas and then go through those readings again with a fine tooth comb, hammer out any kinks, re-do the problems and re-test your self. Continue doing this until you can increase your scores to a level where you feel you can be sucessful. Nobody I’ve ever spoke to about the CFA exam said “it doesn’t take great thinking skills to do the exam questions”.