Handwriting notes for L2

CFA Level II
#1

I failed L2 in June 2015. Now I am L2 2016 Candidate. What I consider to change in my study process is to create my own handwriting notes. Are they useful enough? Please share your experience.

#2

I have not yet sat for level II so my comment should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Taking notes is always a winning study strategy. Taking notes force you to adopt an active stance instead of a passive one.

Also, when you take notes you identify subjects that you may find personnaly difficult to master and you may want to revisit them later on.

Best regards

#3

Waste of time - highlight key points in Schweser and jot little notes in the margins. Do all EOCs and BBs until you fully understand after going through Schweser 3x.

#4

I disagree.

I wrote notecards for all three levels: wrote them, threw them away, wrote them again, threw them away, wrote them again.

I suspect that it was useful; I passed each exam the first time I took it.

#5

I took OP’s comment as full fledged note taking. If they are using Schwerser it would be a bit overkill no? If you’ve reviewed each section multiple times, you should have good highlights and small comments when necessary. Taking notes on Schwerser, which is essentially notes seems redundant.

With you 100% on notecards.

#6

Got it.

I agree.

#7

I think its a waste of time , I realised that I focus more on preparing them than actually understand the concepts !!

#8

I do it selectively for drier/more boring (my mind tends to wander a little…) or harder to understand topics (i find writing down organizes my thoughts)

#9

Thanks for all comments. I understand how time consuming it is. Honestly saying I prefer just to read, memorize some formulas and answer questions. At the same time I need to focus more deeply on concepts. I realize, I could unintentionally skip something, what will be imorptant on the exam. Handwriting helps to be more detailed. I suppose now, I will write my notes only for difficult topics: FRA, FI, Derivatives.

#10

I found making my own notes for derivatives to be helpful so I could get the processes (example currency swaps) into my own words and I found it really helped.

#11

Thank you, BobbyBraveheart. Derivatives is the first topic to handwrite. :slight_smile:

#12

I hand write an answer to each LOS after reading the relevant section. Keeps me engaged. I did this for L1 and plan on again for L2.

#13

I retain information better when I write something down so I usually write down key points and couple examples if I’m having trouble with the concept.

I’ve done it with all 3 levels.

#14

I find flash cards to be a must, and re-writing them several times as mentioned above can help retention. Full written notes is probably too much of a time sink though. However, I found writing out study pages on certain areas that step through the process of a calculation can be very helpful, like the steps in valuing swaps for example.

#15

Writing stuff always helps you retain better what you have read. I created a handwritten formula sheet, wrote down any formula I saw while going through schweser and then after having read through schweser once I would write notes after working through a problem. This involved going to the CFAI text or back to schweser and writing down things that were relevant to the problem at hand, sometimes word for word from the textbook. I usually did this for problems I got wrong or really complex ones that I would want to go back and look at the process. I probably went through 2 complete notepads and a spiral for each level.

Another thing I did was I created flash cards while reading, but these were in Excel. Essentially, I had four columns: #, topic, sub-topic, and notes. I then wrote a bit of VBA code that would pull a userform with various text and combo boxes and it would pull a random flash card. It’s a great way to study while working, just make sure you write it so that you can have the flash card show up on the active Excel workbook (presumably something related to work) and you only need to have the flash card workbook opened but minimized. I also built out a function to look at flash cards by topic and to be able to mark flash cards that I did not want to have in the set anymore.