Having cleared all 3 levels, the biggest challenge I feel is to retain most if not all that I have learned during the process. Like many others my main motive was to learn something which you don’t necessarily learn in your job. Definitely in job one doesn’t work on preparing IPS and managing hedge fund at the same time.
Now I feel myself in risk of loosing portions of knowledge that I don’t use on day to day basis in my job. One way I’m thinking is to scroll through my concised personal study notes once in a while.
It’s actually quite easy. Download the essay questions from each year and do those. If there is a completely foreign topic, you can ask the recent CFA Chaterholder for a reference in a revised textbook. Another way is to get the CFA texts from other textbook sources. They are actually a compilation of various texts. You just need to read the revised areas to update yourself with new knoledge.
I think it’s very admirable that you’re trying to retain all the CFA info. For me, I’m too busy killing brain cells with alcohol as soon as the test is over.
Where I work, we have lots of e-courses on very similar topics to the CFA exam as well as the FRM (such as Basel, securitization, sovereign debt and more.) As CFAs we should maintain CPE credits anyway. These e-courses go a long way to satisfying my need to continue learning. If you don’t have these, try the webinars from the CFAI. Also, you might think of writing a journal article or paper, you will learn a lot from this pursuit.
CFA does not require continuing ed (it’s optional), but I am also interested in retaining the information. I have the Schweser Secret Sauces and I plan on reading those every so often.
I think reading one’s own notes or some variation of it (Secret Sauce, EOCs) is probably the best way to retain that knowledge (asides from studying a crazily as before the pass). This entails some discipline though because, obviously, that’s a lot of content.
Other types of education may either touch on specific parts of the curriculum, or just teach us new stuff (which is also very good, but represent a different goal).
Differently than PassMe, I actually think L3 may have more useful knowledge than L2, but that’s probably more of a personal thing - both have a lot of stuff that may be helpful in different ways.
However, once our circle of financial knowledge gets really big (by reading, studying and working with other stuff) reviewing everything may stop being practical. Maybe having all of that messed up inside our minds can actually produce a “gut” feeling that actually reflects a lot of info. At least I hope so.
Edit: Actually, teaching stuff may be the best way to keep the knowledge, but it’s hard to be able to find a position teaching most of the CFA stuff while holding a regular job (if you want), learning new stuff and more.
There are those instructors who are able to teach through an entire level for many years (like Greg Filbeck or Mark Lefebvre for L3). I wonder how high they would score on a mock?