Differences between L2 and L3

Blamey hit it on the head, pretty much that is the strategy. Start early (but enjoy your summer). You will likely find the L3 more enjoyable to read, but focus on the CFA answer and not what you may know from your real life experiences. Schweser was pretty good in their notes and the review classes and practice exams. The qbank was definitely basic material (you should probably go through that 2-3 months before the exam to solidify your base)…you won’t get a lot if you use Qbank as the final review.

Blamey and Jasonms, thanks for the helpful advise. The material is much more relaxing to read - I read it over coffee after a lazy sunday brunch and bring it with me to bed for some bed-time reading every night. The bulk of my effort will go into practicing answering questions, no doubt.

Maybe just wait for 18 August…dont under-estimate CFA Institute. Remember a guy who thought he bombed it, and he was bombed.

here’s what I did - not sure I would recommend it tho’… at around this time last year I got all excited about L3. Couldn’t register for L3 and get the CFA books till after the result was out so I bought the core text book - which is: Maginn, Tuttle, Pinto & McLeavy (2007 ed). All the core readings in L3 are directly out of this book - word for word - the LOS’s are built nice and neatly around the topics in the chapters - it even has the EOC questions and answers and chapter summaries in a booklet that comes with it. The Derivatives readings in L3 are mainly just chapters out of the Don Chance book, and the FI readings are just chapters out of Fabozzi’s book. I already had Chance and Fabozzi from L1&2. Plus of course the Ethics and Gips stuff is not there. But the Maginn, Tuttle, Pinto & McLeavy is the backbone of level 3 - the other readings in each topic are just meat on the bones. There’s another good reason for buying the book - it is much more accessible than digging around in a bunch of soft cover course books later on when I need to find stuff - and it lasts longer and looks better on a bookshelf! I basically learned this book over July-Sep. Then took a break for a few months. Then I started to do the proper CFA readings in late Feb/ early March this year - but found that I’d completely forgotten all the stuff I thought I had learnt back in July-Sep. All I remembered were the names of some of the rules, etc - but no detail at all. Then in May - ditch the books and just do practice/past exams. It’s all about exam technique. So - my advice for now is: take a break, relax, read completely different stuff for a while. Then really hit it from Feb/March next year. 3-4 months is plenty of time if you can do say 20 hours per week. good luck with it… cheers

null, may i know how many hours you did for the exams. best,

from early March I got stuck into it - about 20-25 hours per week - so that’s about 350 hours. But don’t take that as any sort of guide. I don’t know I’ve passed L3 yet!

I am sure you did great NN. I enjoyed your posts during L3 prep.

Thanks NN for the helpful advice!