Dude, I mean you kind’ve started it with the comment on Chinese making the passing rate higher…
Look, being an American born and bred Taiwanese Chinese, I have probably more distractions than you. On top of sports, trips out of the country, American holidays with my American friends, and many more weddings than you (yes, Asians do get married young), I also have a career that I put major emphasis on. Social life comes second.
That said, the reason you see more Chinese and Indians passing is because they are willing to give up all of the above extraneous activities to succeed. Downside is they probably don’t enjoy life as much as you do, but sure, they are passing the CFA exam. Yes, USA is a great country and we are lucky to be able to enjoy life as freely as possible.
Furthermore, you know your weaknesses, you completely skipped Econ?? Believe me, as an Asian, if I were you going into the test, I would have addressed those issues the first second I realized it.
So come on man, you want to succeed, put in the effort. Feel free to rant and rage, but if you aren’t willing to give up sports, a few trips, some friends and family time for 3 years or however long it takes you, then you shouldn’t rant about people who were willing to make the sacrifices.
it’s kinda why i also don’t use “flashcards” like many people love to use.
Information out of context is not very useful (at least for me anyway). if you understand individual terms and concepts, that’s great, but they are rarely going to ask you a straight forward question in the exam. They want you to know when to apply which concept.
So memorizing all those terms randomly will help on some level but probably not sufficient to pass teh exam.
I carry that Schweser’s quicksheet to read through to calm down in between lunches and add 1 to 2 page of formulas…
This guy i know had like 500 flashcards and I asked him, " How the hell are you going to flipi through that in 1 hour and not be burned out before part 2?"
His answer was “I ALREADY MADE THEM. MIGHT AS WELL USE THEM.”
^ Disagree. I made my own flashcards for Level II and Level III and I believe it is what got me through the exam. So many small ratios/multiples and little formulas that can trip you up.
I think I made about 150 of them as I was going through the material. Reviewed them constantly to the point where I had 5 that I couldn’t get. Reviewed those 5 at lunch the DAY OF the exam and I saw one of them on a question in the PM. Nailed it.
I do agree that 500 flashcards is kind of absurd.
Also I stick to formulas for flash cards. Don’t try to write novels on each card, that becomes impossible to remember.
What a dumb comment. Typical American being selfcentered and eco centric. The world doesn’t revolve around you and non Americans also have distractions. LOL you don’t think other people have holidays or thanks giving, you don’t think there’s NBA or NHL or cricket?
That’s encouraging actually - I just failed with a band 8 and have been going back and forth whether to continue the process and take it again in December. I’m trying not to be discouraged and your comments helped! I think you made some changes that I will implement if I decide to retake the exam.
That’s encouraging actually - I just failed with a band 8 and have been going back and forth whether to continue the process and take it again in December. I’m trying not to be discouraged and your comments helped! I think you made some changes that I will implement if I decide to retake the exam.
I understand what you’rre sayin … I also don’t use flashcards as I see them not so usefull … it’s just random information, lI feel ike words are given and thrown at me without any order, without a significant reason …
As I plan on using this timeprep app, I came across their post on the failure … so, here it is if someone finds it useful … http://bit.ly/Failed-CFA-Exam-What-Now
I made flashcards and then recopied them over and over onto looseleaf (which I would just throw away afterward). This drilled important formulas into my head so that I could pull them out quickly during the exam and use them versus try to remember them, and helped me begin to realize that a huge number of the formulas and concepts are interrelated, even between topic areas. And it’s easy to study with flashcards for an hour or two at a coffee shop, versus taking all your books down to the library for five hours… this helped late at night when I felt I needed to study a bit more that day.