I majored in economics, graduated with a 2.5 GPA, no finance or accounting background, passed L1 with 4 months of study. Ironically, I failed the econ section.
In short, it doesn’t really mean anything.
I think you are overestimating L1. L2 & L3 I would agree, and even add graduate level to the discussion.
Recollection of historical experiences is always more colorfully painted with the certainties and confidence of the present.
Huh?
In other words, people that walk around saying how easy a test was that they took in the past oftentimes forget the stress and difficulty that they actually experienced in the moment.
Never heard that one before.
Gold.
Or as CFAI would put it - Hindsight Bias.
That would make sense if I declared all 3 exams were easy.
It makes sense either way.
I read Derivatives by Thomas Miller as a prep for L2. I think it was helpful as background knowledge and actually learned a lot reading a textbook presented in a different manner than CFAI.
For me, I read Schweser CFA prep 99.5% of the time, then the CFA issued books 0.5% (rounded up) of the time. One year it was 100% Schweser - the CFA books remained in the sealed box and are still there blocking a mouse hole.
Any other finance / economics / statistic book, I either burnt or frieghted to a storage locker in Saudi Arabia so that I couldn’t waste any time reading them.
At one stage I thought about going to a CFA exam prep class held by some guru. Then I realised, the only thing of any value he could tell me was the stuff in the CFA books…and I had the books…so I cancelled the prep class and went to my room to read the CFA books.
It turns out the CFA Institute is a boring bunch of the people - they said they would only test me on stuff in the CFA books and they didn’t lie. Very boring. For L3, I even included information I read from a Damordaran book (during my MBA) - it turns out they took marks OFF because I wasted their time with uncessary reading.