I’ll raise my glass to that…
there were ZERO EOC for the brutal bullcrap PM section for those 3 BS questions in particular…
I used both. As a repeater, the discounts made it economical. Here’s what I thought: with work, coaching, and five little kids, I didn’t have time to hit all the videos from Elans because they’re lengthy. That’s where Schweser came in. Also, I did the Schweser online classes to keep on schedule. I believe the Elans videos are massively more in-depth than Schweser, but you have to have the time availability. So I appreciated the brevity of the Schweser guys.
The questions were great with both of them, and I felt like I had more than enough questions.
With both providers, however, they missed some of the sections that were tested, which is to be expected in any year. So if I have to repeat again, I’ll probably just use CFAI and buy Elans/Schweser/Finquiz questions to supplement.
In my opinion the full schsweser package(qbank+mocks+schweser books) covered (115/120).5 questions were very so idiotic that no provider in the world could have covered them.
Watched the free intesive economics review from Elan website, about 1:30 hs. It was great.
Bought the 11th hour guide, 300 pags. $80 (with hard copy). Totally worth it.
Bought Schweser Secret Sauce also, 200 pags. Good but too light.
My marks: some typos and bad editing (minor problem) and trouble logging in the website (would not recognize my account - happened a lot, I even created a new account and kept logged!).
Yup, I agree. I think they danced around the topic, but it wasn’t addressed or presented like it was on exam.
And to the point of this thread topic, Elan’s guides, I think they are mediocre. They covered everything pretty well, but their customer service need work. Never can get anyone on phone, and takes a day or two to get email responses. Also, sloppy product presentation…the volume/topic names on the binding of one or two of my books didn’t match what the cover said! They need some QC work.
Schweser was quite good. Made the concepts very clear and coincise. I’d have probably most definitely failed by studying solely from the CFAI curriculum because its massively littered with BS.
+1.
CFAI books are great if you want to swim into the sea of finance.
Schweser books are great if you want to study to the point and pass the exams.
Yeah, pension accounting sucked on schweser. The total periodic cost, I/S, and OCI breakdown was a page and a half. wtf?? Was really disappointed…luckily the videos helped a little bit
I mostly used Schweser for Level 2. For almost all of the topics, I felt that Schweser did a good job on covering almost 95% of the essential material. However, the more difficult topics in FRA (i.e., pension, financial assets, consolidation) and Fixed Income (MBS) were very poorly written in Schweser, IMO, so I had to reference the CFAI texts for those topics.
There were also one PM formula that didn’t appear in Schweser notes but was in Schweser mocks and Qbank. That specific topic proved very important as it actually appeared on the exam.
elan the best…??? After watching the free videos on quants and eco, I purchased the Intensive review videos and 11th hour guide from elan… and that guy was reading from 11th hour in most of the intensive review videos… and I was like WTH… I can pay $50 purchase the 11th hour and read it by myself… Except for FRA and Equity by Peter olinto, elan is a waste of time and money… I seriously regret for purchasing IRvideos for $350…