In the past I’ve started with ethics and thus had the energy/willpower to read the entire CFAI materials on the topic. This time I save ethics for basically the end of the review and I am finding myself questioning the efficiency of spending that amount of time. Does anyone think an alternative strategy, like reading a good set of notes or review book, puts you at a big disadvantage from a comprehensive review?
Ethics is easy, no need to study. It is common sense… clearly this is the wrong way to approach the topic as we should all know.
The very best way I have found to study it is to just hammer questions in q-bank, the CFAI EOCs a few times, and of course the online vignettes and mocks. At the end of many study sessions, I find myself burned out but needing maybe 10 or 20 minutes more to hit my hours studied goal for the day. This is when I try to blast through maybe 20 or 30 Qbank questions. I also have done the CFAI EOCs and will do them again. In my opinion there in no excuse for performing poorly on this topic. It is just as important and calculation heavy derivatives or fixed income topics, all it takes is a small amount of time every few days and dedication. It really is one of the better topics to study for in my opinion, so don’t neglect it.
Common sense, I agree completely.
Easy, far away to be easy. Better to conclude that we have been forced to study same thing since level 1 so common sense is already being developed. Like training for special forces:)
I really think the key with Ethics is to plow through as many questions as possible on a consistent basis. I do feel the Q-Bank questions have been a bit lacking at this level and have too many simple questions like trading on Material, non public information, etc. It seems that the q-bank tests this topic 1 in every 10 questions… On the other hand, the CFAI questions both EOC and online vignettes are really good and tough. By the end I plan to do every question I have access too and the CFAI questions hopefully 2 times over.
I wouldn’t say it’s totally common sense, but it might seem as such by Level 3, haha. If you grab someone who had zero exposure to the Institute’s code of ethics and get them to do an item set, they are likely to do quite badly.
I was just joking about common sense, It was Sarcasm
THat’s me… haha… That’s why I just posted a question on Mosaic theory and am still confused.
The key word at Mosaic is Non-Material + Non Public information. If is Material and Non-Public, then is abuse.
I would foucs on the Asset Manager Code of Conduct.
Thank you!
go through every EOC question multiple times untill you essentially memorize the answers… bonus if you have the Schweser Qbank and got through those also… same strategy with GIPS
I would argue against a point being made above that ethics (CFA exam questions) is just common sense… the item sets that they end up putting on the exam are typically among the most difficult from any practice example and they choose the answer options VERY carefully… they like to test the exceptions to the rules.
The common sense thing was sarcasm. You need to practice these ethics questions a ton. I am not sure if reading the sections is even beneficial, and a better use of time may be to just start hammering questions and get through as many as possible. I feel that ethics questions get harder at each level, so you better know this stuff cold by level 3. Try some on the online CFAI vignettes and you will see what I mean.
I plan to just pray to my many many gods and hope 1 of them answers me
In my personal experience, I found it helpful to save the reading, blue boxes, EOC questions, and QBank items related to Ethics until a few weeks before the exam. A lot of the material covered in the CFAI and Schweser materials is conceptual in nature so, for me, I found it helpful to tackle this later in the review process. Also, Ethics is covered in the previous two levels so, unless much has changed year-over-year, you’re likely already familiar with the core of the Ethics material.
I have to say, the CFAI Online Topic Tests for Ethics are very difficult so far. I have only done the first two but I plan to do them all at least twice.
If you haven’t yet, I would strongly encourage doing the first couple soon. This will help you guage the difficulty which I feel is much greater than the Q-Bank questions.
They are quite easier than it were on level 2 or maybe I have finally started understanding the Ethics.
for ethics i just did as many questions as i could …i learned to think like the cfa question writers
There’s 148* Ethics questions in L3, and the exam will have 6-12, so at least 12 practice questions for every 1 exam question.
Just do them until you get 100%. (EDIT – i haven’t looked at the mocks yet. PP+TT=148)
I never did well in ethics because I tried to score strong in all the other sections. Also, I dont want to study ethics for too long. So, I am doing just like everyone else said to practice all the ethics questions I can find including several hundred in Question Bank, all the Topics Test, CFA book questions and all the ones in the mocks. In total, I think there are at least 700 ethics questions.
This time, I went though all the CFA book examples which I never did before in the previous two levels because I am hoping this is the last year I read the ethics for CFA in the life