CFAdummy: I passed 3 for 3. Dic 06, Jun 07, Jun 08. Dont start too early, start 3 months before but use all your free time for CFA preparation during this period. 1. Go over all Schweser notes in order, doing all the exercises at the end of each section. 2. If you dont understand some subject by reading it from Schweser go to the CFA Books and learn that subject from there. Only when you understand that subject go back to Schweser. 3. Do Schweser Book 6 timing yourself and under test conditions. 4. Review your answers to Schweser Book 6 using CFA Books only, at this point you will no longer need Schweser notes. 5. Do all mock and samples available online from CFA. Solve all your doubts arising from this mocks using CFA Books. Hope this helps.
whether you start in Aug or Dec or Feb, make sure that you have enough time to practice… you should have read the CFA text book(or schweser/stalla) 2-3 times before April so that you can start taking exam and review the ones that you dont score well. take all the practice exams that you could access(CFA prior yr exams, schweser,stall, BSAS etc) Take the CFA mock,practice exam early enough(not too early) so that you have time to review the concepts that you dont score well… For level 3, it is very important to practice morning exam few times(in exam setting). I would suggest that you go in the reverse order for the AM exam. IPS questions take too much time and you may end up consuming too much time(I did ind IPS at the end).
Thanks for the posts. Isn’t reading the texts 3 times too much? I reread FSA and Equity analysis 2 times for level 2, but did not have time to reread the other sections. I’m not sure how long are the CFA texts, but my guess is that they are about 3,000 pages for level 3? Do you recommend watching the Schweser videos?
it would depend on how well you retain things. I was looking at the age of those who passed L3 and it looks like I am pretty old(wrong side of 30s) compared to most. If you want to do well in the AM session, you do need to understand the material really well since you wont have much time to think about your answers. If you have understood the concepts well and are good at retaining, reviewing twice may be enough. I just used CFA texts. You can be sure that some of the questions in the PM session will be from the text book verbatim…
Thank Nes…I will start on nov…but i am recording your advice.
Exam time management is crucial to success.
to be honest, i did dec 05, june 06, june 07 and passed all 3 levels on first attempt. My study technique would vary from everyones here i guess. if u can do it, just take 2 weeks off before each exam, lock yourself away and study like mad for 8-10 hours a day. this is what i did. i didnt pick up a book prior to the two weeks i was taking off. all i used was schwesser. it can be done. just need to focus. in the last 3 days, just concentrate on practice exams. i found that, despite thinking i knew the material, when i saw it in exam format i became confused. if u just do practice exams, you will learn as you go too.
study like theres no tomoroww
krishna1 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > it would depend on how well you retain things. I > was looking at the age of those who passed L3 and > it looks like I am pretty old(wrong side of 30s) > compared to most. If you want to do well in the AM > session, you do need to understand the material > really well since you wont have much time to think > about your answers. If you have understood the > concepts well and are good at retaining, reviewing > twice may be enough. > > I just used CFA texts. You can be sure that some > of the questions in the PM session will be from > the text book verbatim… Hi Krishna, How were you able to check the age of those who passed level 3? Thanks, Shads
Shads Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > > Hi Krishna, > > How were you able to check the age of those who > passed level 3? > > Thanks, > Shads http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?13,815272
From my perspective Level III is a tale of 2 exams- AM and PM are totally different and i studied this way. For AM- Review all IPS material go over as many examples as you can find and get used to writing IPS statements. There are so many variations- Before Tax, After tax, retire 5 years from now, fixed time horizons etc. If you learn to explain the IPS sections and set up the problem you will get at least between 50-70 even if you don’t nail it. Do ALL end of chapter CFA questions at least twice. Read the all material early (Pre Feb) then just thouroughly review a session per week and do end of chapters after review. For PM- Question Bank, Question Bank, Question Bank…do all 2,000 questions twice if you can. I did end of chapter and question bank samples each week after a session. Repeating after reading makes it stick. Review problems for a month and previous exams leading up to June- review ethics an hour here an hour there- don’t over analyze these and know which section each item comes from- this helps you eliminate answers. My AM was not great, but I scored enough on big questions. PM saved me and I had no problems with this after doing so many questions so many ways.
(1) Time pressure on the AM is tough. Recommendation: focus your studying on individual and institutional IPS, which make up the most time consuming part of the AM. (2) Essay format is tough. Recommendation: tons of practice exams. Make sure that in addition to knowing the content needed to answer, you have in mind a “format” for answering most types of questions. Some just call for calculations, some for a list of facts, some for some justification of an answer. Do practice AM exams! Do not fear bullet points. (3) You are likely to get too complacent at some point in the next several months. Recommendation: remember that in the early summer of 2010, you can be spending a full week in one of two places. You can either be in the dark corner of a library, pouring over the part of the CFA curriculum you hate the most, with the fear of God inside you that you will fail AGAIN, or you can be lounging with your woman on a sandy beach, coronas and lime in hand, saying “free at last”. Your choice. Half of the people who just found out they passed L2 will be in one place, the other half will be in the other.
ywu002 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > study like theres no tomoroww Exactly, and if you haven’t taken a prep course it may not hurt - no sense skimping now. The biggest help of the prep course I took was to provide guidance on how to answer the questions effectively and quickly. Time in the exam can be a big issue - this year was a six hour exam, it just wasn’t broken into two equal three hour parts. Knowing every formula isn’t going to help as much here as in previous levels. There’s very little plugging and chugging. If you’ve gotten to lvl 3 then you’re comfortable with the MCQ format, so try to plan and anticipate the requirements for the essays and adapt some of your studying to that. The test is a lot more subjective than the previous two; don’t get frustrated and stay with it.
Start early (6-8 months out). Study consistently every week for 8-12 hours. Leave yourself 4-6 weeks to take practice tests. Take all of the old CFAI tests. Take all of the Schweser tests. Take 1 (preferably 2) weeks off from work before the test and study 10 hours each day. Look at how the answers and get used to writing in the same format as the CFAI wants. Be able to answer questions in a succinct manner (this will help immensely on the written portion). If you do these things and are mildly intelligent you should have a very good chance of passing (although nothing is guaranteed - the test is tough).
I do not normally post, or even read this forum very often – just at exam and result time. I’m no expert – I failed LII once and LIII once. Both were underestimates of the work involved and leaving it too last minute. Here’s my ten hints which are fairly consistent with what other people have said. I hope they help someone. 1. The most efficient/important use of time is doing sample exams papers/questions. I’d suggest trying to do at least 6. I say “doing”. Flicking from questions to the answers isn’t doing! You miss the subtleties this way. You don’t need to do them all timed or in one go, but at least try a couple this way to get a feel of the pace & pressure. Also make sure you are learning the theory this way and not the question/answer pairs . Very similar questions often have different answers – do not try to answer a question by matching to what you have seen before. 2. Do not be fooled by peoples’ early start dates, impressive year round study routines or avowed expertise. I typically did 90% of the work in a very hard, full-time, two weeks before the exam. I did glance at books in April, but frankly without the urgency of the deadline, it was too easy for me to waste time by not being focussed enough. It’s not the number of hours or when you do them, but what you do in them. It may be better for you to start later and be more focussed, than getting weary and bored – you certainly don’t need to start many months ahead. However, I failed the LII when I tried to do it all in one week prior to the exam – this wasn’t enough for LII, although it had worked for LI. Having to go to Moscow for the Champions League final 10 days before the exam did not help my study this year, but I got there and it does show there may be benefit in the occasional distraction. 3. Do not over book. There is enough stuff in the CFA anyway, whatever format you use, without doubling/tripling it up with multiple sources, or trying to read it 6 times. I would suggest it’s better to pick a source and get comfortable with this. I did find by doing LIII both ways (Schweser and CFAI texts) that it does lend itself to the CFA texts more as it is often about the subtleties and nuances rather than straight formulas etc. The sucker is the texts are long and daunting (lots of lists, lots of readings that are appearing to go nowhere, lots of empirical histories that you are not sure whether you are meant to learn, repetition, too much to learn). I’d suggest that you read the behavioural finance, personal and inst. IPS thoroughly but quickly, and read the rest really fast and then get onto practice questions, going back to the readings where you need to. One thing I found valuable in this respect was the index in the CFAI texts –it is very, very good. I was very efficient by looking at a practice question, finding the subject in the index, reading the section, having a go at the question, checking off against the answer. Simple, I know, but it didn’t occur to me until late. With Schweser, I found that half my time was panicking trying to find where the material was covered by flicking through 6 books. 4. I did buy some flash cards toward the end of my study. I found these were a good way to focus on what is needed and give a fresh perspective, without adding too much to the load/confusion (there are quite a lot of cards though!). 5. Focus on the exam weights in the readings and practice exams. In level 3, you are not going to pass if you cannot nail the personal/institutional policy statements. This and behavioural finance are really deceptive because they appear kinda easier and more straightforward when you are studying them, especially in Schweser, where they are summarised. They are actually quite subtle, so spend time on these, especially being able to regurgitate the different lists without the prompts of multiple choice answers. Distinguishing the lists too is quite an important trick. You are more likely to pick up points by spending time on these, than the complex derivative formulas, but it’s counter intuitive to what seems natural. I also didn’t spend too much time on the ethics – I think you can get a reasonable score by a couple of read throughs. It seemed to me that ethics were more a thinking than knowledge exercise. 6. Do not over theorise about the exam itself. Particularly, don’t be fooled about pass rate analysis, easier/harder, “been there before experience” or even your own assessments of what you have got right, or what you read on here. It’s just too hard to call these – there is too much going on and they change. As examples, I failed LIII because I saw there was a higher pass rate and so underestimated it, especially as the pass rate went low that year. Certain questions where I thought I would have scored well, I did badly and vice versa. I work in alternative investments, but never score well on these. The essays will probably be easy and the multiple choice hard next year, right? Just study the material as you find it, in proportion to its exam weight and do your best on the day. 7. Do not over formulise /mathematic on Level 3. Level 3 is a lot less about the formulas and more about having a grasp of the concepts. In many ways it’s better to think big picture in thinking about how to answer the question, rather than trying to drive straight to some maths that you can stick down. As an example, the CMMI stuff on this years exam was off-piste – something that wasn’t in the text but if you had a feel for the concept, it was reasonable for you to be able to work it out. 8. Exam technique is everything. You know this? The first and last rule is write the time that you should move on at the top of your question before starting and then do so. You will see from the bulletin boards that we all got into a time mess. Don’t allow this to happen! Separately, I’d also suggest that you just work through the paper in sequence and do not have a sophisticated (ie “best first”) strategy. There isn’t enough time to really analyse what is easy and get a good overview of the paper – the guy next to me spent most of the exam flicking through pages. 9. Accept that the CFA is a binary exam. Questions are either impossible, unfair, too time consuming, beyond your own intelligence, “I’m never going to pass this”, not in the syllabus etc etc, or are actually rather easy and trivial. What I’ve learnt is that they are actually the same questions, it just depends whether you know it well enough or not. There are three traps here. First, you are never going to know it all, so accept it and don’t get yourself in a flap. Second, focus your time on understanding it better where you don’t know it, instead of railing against the system or thinking it impossible. Third, if it is easy and you have checked it, move on – don’t over elaborate or start second guessing yourself. 10. Understand you can pass getting a lot wrong. Of the 18 lines (relating to questions or answer sets) in my Level 3 results, I had 9 in the below 50% category and I passed! The trick is that I had good results in the sections weighted more heavily. This re-inforces many of everyone’s earlier comments, especially around focussing. That’s it. Good luck. Next May is going to be the best I’ve ever had after missing it for 5 years!
“5. In level 3, you are not going to pass if you cannot nail the personal/institutional policy statements.” I support this generally, but I failed both and still passed the exam this year. Not the recommended approach, however…
…oh. I forgot one. 11. Take it easy the evening before the exam. Being fresh on the day is a thousand times more important than knowing that last bit. This is really obvious writing it now, but on that night before you think you’ll do another hour, then find abit more you’re not sure about and then you’ve got formulas and worries flying round your head and you don’t sleep well. Both times I passed the last two, I downed tools at 7.30pm, went out with friends for a nice meal, including a fair amount of wine and as a result slept well. The other failure times, I kept studying late into the night!!!
Thanks for your perspective Charlie.
My advice would be to read the CFAI books cover to cover, well, maybe not everything on the behavioral finance section b/c that part was way too long. The point I’m trying to make is that the study guides try to narrow down the material and Kaplan / Stalla have their own view on what material will be on the exam. I believe you need to be familar with all of the material that the CFAI has in their books to get a full feel of the essay questions and the multiple choice format. Do every CFAI textbook question b/c they were exceptionally harder than what Schweser (I had the 2007 Kaplan books) had asked of you for each section. Don’t take level 3 lightly because there is so much material that the CFAI can use as test material and you can get screwed if you don’t have everything covered.
Is there any truth to this? There’s a real world answer, a text book answer and a CFAI answer to the questions. The CFAI wants the CFAI answers to the question and not your common sense or real world answer to the question? http://schweser.com/cfa/blog/index.php?item_id=366&cfa_blog=cfa3