How to revise for L2?

I know that for L1, it was ALL about Q-bank/practice ?'s, but for L2, I keep hearing that you gotta know the material inside and out and doing q-banks is not going to be enough. Is this correct? If so, how did you revise for L2?

I know this is the L3 forum, but in case during your “study break” you wanna help a fella out, feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.

for me i read schweser twice and did schweser eoc questions twice. did not touch cfai except for maybe ethics. differnt approaches work for different people.schweser videos were also helpful. i think its true you need to know everything, well almost everything. you cant do selective study for cfa exams. different people do it in differnt ways. some do loads of questions and revise weak areas, some read the course many times and do “reletively” less questions. but practice is super important dont ignore it.

If you can find the time, i think reread schweser and do eoc again by hand. make sure to revise fra stuff in the last few weeks as it can sort of escape you. and also have a look at ethics at the end.

Another approach could be to do a ton of exams. schweser cfai and q bank and whatever else you can find and revise weak area. I wrote a guide on how to pass level 2 exams. have a look in the level 2 forums.

I basically did the same as Rain01 for L2. I read the Schweser curriculum twice, doing all the questions each time. I also did a ton of QBank questions (almost 6,000). And, mocks from CFAI and the Schweser Practice exams. That’s it.

The fact is that there is way too much material at L2 to know it inside and out honestly. You have to know the major things really well. Do a heck of a lot of QBanks. It will definitely help! Do the “hard” ones too, as they tend to more closely resemble the item set format you will get on the exam.

Any study plan that does not inovle a ton of practice questions will surely fail. You should continually be doing a lot of them. I just don’t understand people that say they read through the curriculum without doing questions - saving practice question until the last couple weeks or until the last week! Crazy. HAMMER THOSE PRACTICE QUESTIONS!

As a matter of fact, I did not prepare as well for L2 as I should have. But, I think the only thing that saved me is that I did soooo much practice! I don’t mean to embarass anyone, but I know of at least one very avid poster on these forums (L2 forums from last year), who know the material very well, but just didn’t do enough mocks. And used the same study method for 5 attempts, and failed every time! Have a look at these:

http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/91314183

http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/91312781

http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-ii-forum/91313208 I can’t emphasize enough. DO TONS OF Q-BANKS and MOCKS. Knowing the material inside and out WITHOUT doing a ton of mocks IS NOT ENOUGH.

Thanks for the feedback & posting those prior year threads - just gotta keep moving forward, although it seems like the number of days keep decreasing and the workload increases by the day! I just feel like I’m going to run out of time and starting to wonder if I need to change my strategy to just focus on the heavy weights. Just to confirm, you guys did the Schweser Concept Checkers twice, but not the CFAI EOC/BB, correct?

Personally, I’ve never cracked open a CFAI text.

Focusing on heavyweight areas is a good idea, but you still have enough time to do more than that.

yes my strat was basically

  1. read schweser do all eoc

  2. read schweser again do all eoc again (exactly like the first step no skimming and did questions by hand again)

  3. watch schweser videos with step 2

  4. Last 2 weeks, tear formulas from the back of schweser books and learn them by heart, go through ethics questions from cfai (i dont remember if i read the ethics from cfai or not, go through fra stuff that i felt was escaping me)

I did not do a single exam (schweser or cfai) because i ran out of time, i had 2 or 3 days left and i was like if i give an exam and i crash it, i will totally shatter confidence on the real exam. I was so nervous, so i did not dare test where i was at. But DO NOT recommend this strategy at all. I was lucky to pass. Please do all 6 schweser exams and any mock or sample availible for cfai.

I thought schweser videos were excellent for level 2, especially fra stuff. You can watch them selectively if you find something that you are not sure of, maybe not watch all of them as time could be an issue.

I think you have decent time left. My sugesstion would be in order of importance

  1. Reread schweser and do eoc again (optional: very selectively watch schweser videos if you are unclear on something)

  2. Do atleast 3 to 4 full exams, more the better (time yourself). Do do the cfai sample/mock for your current year. (since you have gone through the course, you can start exams in small chunks now, and revise your weak areas etc, like a process of learnning by doing if you like).

  3. Remember to give time to learn schweser formulas by heart. There are loads if I remember correctly

Plan according to time you can give and how much total work is and how much you can accomplish in a day. dont put something too ambitious on your plate and end up not finishing your plan, come exam day. start something you can accomplish. cos this could be fatal.

I do not know your work situation and how many hours you have but if time is very very short and you just simply will not be able to reread schweser and do eoc. Another option could be to just reread schweser and skip eoc but it is way more risky as practice is key.

If even less time, an option could be just read secret sauce, eoc summaries and learn formulas and then do a TON of exams and go back revise your weak areas.

Yet another option could be just to watch schweser videos, read secret sauce, learn forumuls and do a ton of exams and go back and revise your weak areas. Again for these practice based strategies, it is crucial to do a ton of practice. do all 6 schweser, all current cfai mock and sample and if you run out of those, hit qbank.

Yet another strat could be, only read schweser secret sauce, and learn end of book formulas and aim finish qbank. Every single question. There are countless other combination you could follow, but i hope you get the idea. Again I posted a detailed guide to my experience with level 2, you can check it out.

I have already stated my prefered option (reread schweser) but again it is important to make a ambitious and realistic plan, given your time situation etc. dont start something you cant finish. I hope this helps.

Wow - thank you for putting the time & effort into listing those options above - very nice of you! Currently I’ve read all the Schweser notes once but only did Schweser BBs (and then went back after first read to do CFAI EOCs and feel like I retained NOTHING & was randomly guessing). I’m now watching videos + doing q-bank (again, I feel like I need to learn the concepts b4 jumping into the CFAI style questions). Hoping to finish this by mid-to-late April, take first mock, and then review + practice questions. The review phase gets me - not sure if it’s worth reviewing all my handwritten notes + doing all those CFAI BBs/EOCS (in addition to Mocks/formula memorization) or just to go in that level of detail for heavy weights and use secret sauce/11th hour for the rest of the topics. Hopefully my first mock in late April will serve as a guide…

I can only speak for myself, when i finished my first read i did not remember more then maybe 20 to 30 percent of the material. If i gave the exam then i would have failed band 10. Its when i went through my second read that things began to click for me both in terms of retention and greater understanding.

As for cfai eoc, they can only do good for you if you have time. But imo schweser is more then enough for level 2 provided you know everything in it inside out. You could cfai eoc for ethics.

If you have detailed handwritten notes you can use them for review instead of schweser if you think it could be faster for you. But i highly recommend going through schweser eoc another time. I think schweser eoc are well written in terms of what is expected on the exam. solve each one by hand again.

One complete review (schweser or your own notes) + schweser eoc should have you sorted. The remainder is as much exam practice as you can. Again this is what worked for me and everyone is different. One last thing i could add dont lose your cool come exam day, one of the sessions am or pm is gonna knock you out. But the other one would be reletively much easier. For me it was am session. It hit me like a ton of bricks. But I hung in there and did my level best. PM session was much much easier and i think i nailed it for the most part and hence overall i passed. So just know that this is expected and can happen.