I am thinking about registering for one of the CFA prep courses at Rice for an extra boost–has anyone had any success with these? This particular course is around $1,000 and consists of 9 Thursdays and 3 Saturdays.
My main issue is motivation/focus during the week since I find it difficult to get into study mode after driving home from work. Any advice or tricks are welcome in this department as well (since surely I cannot be the only one working and preparing for the exam).
Thanks in advance!
I found it to be helpful as I like to ask questions on the fly, during break and even after the lecture is over. It also forces you to keep a pretty rigid schedule, I never liked to attend lectures without reviewing the material first.
I don’t think instructors would add much value, to be honest. The material, especially for Level 1, is pretty straightforward, except for accounting. Besides, you will have to go to these courses and come back home and study again anyway. It might help you understand materials faster, but you gotta consider whether total costs (fees + time spent in classroom) exceeds the benefit.
If you studied undergraduate finance in USA, then you should be good with Level 1. Believe me, there is too much material for you to understand and memorize. Adding extra class to the total workload is not recommended.
As for motivation, just start early (5-6 months ahead of exam) and don’t study intensely during the first 1-2 months. The earlier you start, you more relaxed you’ll be while studying. For study materials, I haven’t used Schweser Notes, just used the cirriculum. But I used Schweser QBank and those questions help you understand material thoroughly. So, just get the CFA cirriculum and purchase Schweser Qbank. After you finish each session, practice with Qbank. In the last month before the exam, purchase Schweser practice tests (3 full tests for 150$ and 6 tests for 300$). I think you would get more benefit using this tactic than enrolling for a prep course. I enrolled for a prep course at our university and the instructors was a CFA charterholder. Useless class and the professor admitted it.
The main thing I liked about taking a course was as you mentioned, it helped me stay on track and gave me a general idea of where I should be in my studying. However, if you miss a class or two for some reason you lose an entire study session worth of teaching usually which is no good. This was for level 1 though. The class I was at was too big to really ask questions and try to get feedback so I dont think I would take it again.
For level II I will be ordering videos instead and hope I can motivate myself and be able to make sure I can watch them all when I want to.
Personally, I liked live instruction. It kept me on a schedule and there is just something about interacting with a real person (even if it’s mostly them talking to you) that works better for me. However, I realize that plenty of people are fine with just books and/or videos, so ask yourself about your best learning style and go for whatever you think works best for you.
There isn’t that much back-and-forth in most CFA classes… there’s just too much material to get through in too little time, and the instructor doesn’t have time to re-explain things. They can occasinally give a clarification (I meant X and not Y when I said Z), but that’s about it. You can occasionally ask a question at a break or at the end of the class, though.
I personally liked the instructor lead classes:
You get into a study schedule and makes you study
You get to meet other candidates and you form a group together
Get your answers clarified over email or at breaks!
I mean if you are studious and like to study alone and are ok with videos available on net - then Instructor lead courses give you just the benefit of connecting to lot more people!
For me these courses, helped me connect with people and study together and help each other through the exam 
Thanks for the input everyone! I like the idea of mixing up solo study time with classroom (and meeting others for group study purposes would be nice). I need to know that others are with me missing football season as well!
It also helps that my company agreed to cover the cost of the course so with that added stress gone, it’s a no brainier.
Here’s to long nights and lots of coffee! Thanks again!
Thanks for the input everyone! I like the idea of mixing up solo study time with classroom (and meeting others for group study purposes would be nice). I need to know that others are with me missing football season as well!
It also helps that my company agreed to cover the cost of the course so with that added stress gone, it’s a no brainier.
Here’s to long nights and lots of coffee! Thanks again!
Ok, how does one delete a post? I feel like a moron that I can’t figure this out…lol, and people trust me with lots of money…sigh,
You can ask to have a post deleted and a moderator can do that for you if it seems justified. But the bias is against deleting stuff unless there is a very good reason to do so, because we’re not just deleting your post, we’re deleting other people’s contributions at the same time. There’s also a built-in check on people’s flaming if they know that posts are not likely to be deleted; it’s not perfect, but it’s there (if someone has overflamed or just misunderstood, an apology or retraction or reclarification goes over a lot better than a simple “delete everything”).
But honestly, this is not a dumb question. Lots of people wonder about whether having a live instructor really adds value or not, and it’s not obviously one or the other, so it’s perfectly reasonable to ask other people their opinion.
I didn’t intend to delete the original post (I think it’s great that I can go back and see such a time span of questions); I just accidentally double posted my appreciation (*post 7 and 8) and didn’t know if that was frowned upon.
Thank you though!
Double posts sometimes happen here. It’s no biggie. Occasionally a moderator will spot one and clean it up.
Make sure you have a quality teacher. I took an instructor led classroom years back for L2 and the teacher was brutal. She used examples from 10 years ago and didn’t even have an up to date version of the material. I believe I was the only one that passed (there were 11 students in all) from the class. I stopped attending mid way and ignored her exercises, which were out dated. I can’t believe she had people signing up for all 3 levels.