I start studying for Dec L1 tomorrow

Not leaving myself as much time as I would have liked, but I plan to put in 2 hours after work each day and a good deal of time on weekends. I will be using the Elan Ultimate Prep Package. Anyone else just start/not started studying for L1 yet? I just graduated with a Finance degree in May and did extremely well in all of my finance/econ/stats/accounting classes and am working in fixed income now so I think I should be in a good starting position. Good luck everyone!

Good luck to you! I just started studying about a week ago (and no background in finance)…I think we’ll have enough time to be well prepared. You have an undergrad in finance, so I’m sure a lot of the info will be review.

I just started my studying 2 weeks ago for the December exam. I also graduated in may with a minor in finance. I’ve found that even after studying finance for 4 years it’s going to take a solid and consistent effort to retain all the material for the exam. Quant is a good place to start. Good luck!

BryGuy, Good luck to you and studies. I have schweser prep, but thinking about using more of Elan once I’m done with schweser, probably the mock exams and practice questions. Using schweser/elan, then CFAI to work out any issues/problems. My biggest weakness is probably Econ, its just been too long since I’ve studied these curves. Long Run vs Short Run demand and supply curves and which way they go, prob my biggest weakness on this entire exam.

Hey Good Luck Everyone. I signed up last night for the CFA in December. I graduated in May 2010 with my master’s degree in economics. I have minimal experience in finance, but I am excited to learn! I have a fairly solid understanding of Math and Economics so I hope that helps. I plan on doing an intensive 16 week study session starting this week, however I am waiting on my study material. (does anyone know how long it takes for them to mail it to you? I am currently located in the NJ/NY area.) I know online you can print the first chapter so I will begin that way. My study plan is going to be; read the CFAI material chapter by chapter, followed by a review of the “Schweser Video Classes.” (16 in total) making my whole study session 16 weeks. Followed by a remained of 2 weeks or so review. I currently work an average of 40 hours a week so I believe I should be able to maintain this workload. This is my first attempt at the CFA exam so if anyone has any suggestions / words of inspiration please feel free to share. Jason

@Jason My study materials took a day to process and two days transit time. I live in the Northeast, US. In the meantime, you should really lay out your planned schedule and set study goals for each week. Having everything organized and ready for when the curriculum arrives will help reduce the stress you feel once you see the size of the it.

Good Luck. I am also writing L1 this december. I prefer watching the video first and then read the CFAI material for that reading. Really works for me. But then, I used to be that guy who listened to the prof lectures in school and did well in exams with minimal reading. Might be different for someone else.

Graduated in may with finance and am registered for December. Have had the books for a month but just got serious about reading them. Im going to give the CFAI material a shot first for about the next month, if im not kicking ass ill probably buy elan or something of the sort. This is my first attempt at Level 1 and i have high hopes seeing as i have been studying much of this material for the last 4 years.

I’ve been reading Elan for about a month now, just getting a feel for all the areas and not hammering home specifics. I plan on going over it all again being much more specific on the areas. For you Elan ultimate prep users, how are you giong to do practice questions? Do you think the ones the put on the website will be good enough? I like to see questions that explain why a given answer is wrong as well as a good description of why a choice is right.

JDiegelmann Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > @Jason > In > the meantime, you should really lay out your > planned schedule and set study goals for each > week. Having everything organized and ready for > when the curriculum arrives will help reduce the > stress you feel once you see the size of the it. + 1 My CFAI books took about a week to arrive (1 day to process, then shipped to Toronto).

I have just started studying for Dec L1, I am using Elan and starting with Econ. Finance undergrad.

Ski2Much Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Im going to give the CFAI material a shot first for about the > next month, if im not kicking ass ill probably buy > elan or something of the sort. > i have high hopes seeing as i have been studying much of > this material for the last 4 years. I’ve studied much of this material in my underdrad as well; the biggest frustration/change for me is that the CFAI treatment of individual topics is much more dense/detailed than any of my course texts dealing with the same material. At this point, it’s difficult to assess whether that extra detail is really necessary or just overly-descriptive.

HI All… i have started studying for CFA Dec L1 …a month ago…Studying thru a combination of Schweser study notes and CFAI …done with FRA & Econ…doing Quants now…and my plan is to finish it up by this weekend and take up Corp Fin, Equity & Fixed Income, Derivatives and AI…in that order,…my biggest concern is retaining all this information and juggling a 12 hr a day work schedule n home/…hardly leaves me 3 hrs a day to study thru the week!!Can anyone suggest a better way to revisit these subjects after all the readings are done?any guides that would help to brush thru everything in limited amt o time? and how do i get maximum practice on each topic??.. Thanx a ton…in advance :slight_smile: Good Luck to all appearing of Dec L1…Happy Studying :slight_smile:

ravinsu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Good Luck. I am also writing L1 this december. > > I prefer watching the video first and then read > the CFAI material for that reading. Really works > for me. > But then, I used to be that guy who listened to > the prof lectures in school and did well in exams > with minimal reading. Might be different for > someone else. Hi Ravinsu, I figure that if I watch the video first I am going to cheat when it comes to studying the CFAI notes and just skim through them rather than actually read and try to understand every detail. MY main goal is going to be to understand the notes fully and then use the video as a review or in case I am having trouble understanding any of the material. I am actually pushing my studying back until starting on Thursday, have a job interview coming up and would like to keep my mind focused on one thing at a time.

Sometimes I don’t feel like I am retaining all of the information and at other times I feel that some of it is sticking. I can’t really offer any advice because I am a first time candidate. I found that I am struggling a bit with Quant but only the areas of Hypothesis testing with the t-distributions, z-distributions, F-statistics etc. Should I keep going and review it later? I just don’t want to spend too much time on one area especially if it’s only worth 2 or 3 questions on the exam? (I mean for Hypothesis testing, I know that Quant has at way more questions than that) Can anyone here who has taken the exam already give me some advice.

determined Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sometimes I don’t feel like I am retaining all of > the information and at other times I feel that > some of it is sticking. I can’t really offer any > advice because I am a first time candidate. I > found that I am struggling a bit with Quant but > only the areas of Hypothesis testing with the > t-distributions, z-distributions, F-statistics > etc. Should I keep going and review it later? I > just don’t want to spend too much time on one area > especially if it’s only worth 2 or 3 questions on > the exam? (I mean for Hypothesis testing, I know > that Quant has at way more questions than that) > Can anyone here who has taken the exam already > give me some advice. I’m going through these same issues, but of course have not studied long enough and have plenty of time left. Will probably have to go over the material a couple of times before it all stocks. I think the first time I finished econ and quant only about 65% of it stuck. I’m pretty strong in FSA, FI, EQ, Alt, PM. Econ and hypothesis testing probably my main weakness. Hypothesis testing, the main issues right now are just knowing WHEN to use a certain table. It’s easy to use the table, but just finding i guess the key words in the question, to find the right table to use. Still have 4 months. Gonna check out Elan’s hypo testing freebie

allegro-cpa/cfa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > I’m going through these same issues, but of course > have not studied long enough and have plenty of > time left. Will probably have to go over the > material a couple of times before it all stocks. > I think the first time I finished econ and quant > only about 65% of it stuck. I’m pretty strong in > FSA, FI, EQ, Alt, PM. Econ and hypothesis testing > probably my main weakness. Hypothesis testing, > the main issues right now are just knowing WHEN to > use a certain table. It’s easy to use the table, > but just finding i guess the key words in the > question, to find the right table to use. Still > have 4 months. Gonna check out Elan’s hypo > testing freebie Thanks, I feel better knowing that others are going through the same thing. I agree with you on the tables. I think I read somewhere that for the most part they provide the relevant tables for the questions in the exam, meaning they will provide a small table in the question that it relates to. I am hoping that’s the case.

> > Thanks, I feel better knowing that others are > going through the same thing. I agree with you on > the tables. I think I read somewhere that for the > most part they provide the relevant tables for the > questions in the exam, meaning they will provide a > small table in the question that it relates to. I > am hoping that’s the case. Yes, it is the case from what I hear. Which should help some. Let me know your strategy for Econ. There are so many graphs to remember.

@ravinsu: Your strategy is great. I was one of those as well at college. Keep jotting stuff down during the lectures. @analyze_this: They’re giving around 2000 questions which along with all the CFA book EOC questions and mock exams should be enough. Elan’s mock exams are great, so their PQ’s should be good as well. If you feel you want more questions look into the QBank and FinQuiz. @allegro, determined, raut.ria: The material will come back to you quite quickly in your second/third reads in November. Just make sure you get enough practice now and be thorough. If you need something to keep reviewing while you’re studying, get the Eleventh Hour. If you have problems with hypothesis testing, checking out Elan’s free Hypothesis testing reading is definitely worth your time. @jwiszyns: Good luck for the interview.

I started Last night with the CFAI books and plan to get the Elan guides soon.