How big is the jump from L1? Toughest/Easiest section?

CFA Level II
#1

Just squeaked by on L1. Wanted to hear from people who attemped L2 (both passes and failures) on

  1. How large was the jump from L1 to L2?

  2. What was the toughest part of L2? Easiest?

FWIW, I did better on equity/portfolio management and did poorly on FRA and Econ.

#2

  1. Big jump from Level I to Level II. Huge, even. The Level II material is the hardest of the three exams.

  2. That varies from individual to individual. Most hate FRA. Many hate derivatives (though they shouldn’t). Equity’s massive. Quant’s intense. So’s Fixed Income. Nothing’s easy; even the easy stuff isn’t easy.

#3

Big Big jump in terms of volume and difficulty.

Concepts when mixed up in an item set can get really difficult and time consuming.

“Even the easy stuff isn’t easy”…you are right Sir.

#4

Just a suggestion, start with derivatives - for some reason I find this a cakewalk, at least without having looked at CFAI or QBank questions. Do Corp Finance before FRA, you’ll get in the accounting mindset.

#5

The material is not as complicated as most people say. Personally, I believe FRA, FI, Quant and Economics are the toughest. The real driver of difficulty is the amount of material.

#6

FRA is quite a *****.

Most of the other stuff is not too hard to digest. And you can always practice the difficult parts.

The jump is not that huge, at least for me, coming from a non-financial background.

L2 is being criticized because most people don’t experience the novelty of L1, both were new to me, so it’s all relative. I don’t personally think one is much harder than the other with that in mind.