Last night I finally bit the bullet and decided it was time I go for Level I. Ordered the Schweser package this morning, and I already have a shipping notice. It will be here in time to ruin my holidays!!! I’ve been out of school for 2 years now, working on the sell side, and noticed I was actually excited about the CFA over the last month or so. That told me it was time to sit for Level I.
Welcome to the party (officially) FIAnalyst!
Ha, thanks! I’ve been reading and posting (mostly GD) for almost two years now. Talk about a slacker!
a friendly reminder - Please come back and comment on Schweser once you 1. have done its mock exams 2. have taken the June actual exam good luck studying and welcome aboard
Ultmustang Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > a friendly reminder - Please come back and comment > on Schweser once you > > 1. have done its mock exams > 2. have taken the June actual exam > > good luck studying and welcome aboard Will do. I understand there have been some questions about the focus of schweser on calculations rather than concepts, so we’ll see how it turns out.
to FIAnalyst Schweser’s notes, well almost all Kaplan review materials will cover more than you need to know and expect you to know more than what will actually be tested on the exam. But as a victim of Schweser’s notes, i ought to let you know that the difference was so big and I almost felt i was taking a different exam on Dec 1st. someone here in the AF … and most ppl i know who used Schweser’s book-6 (practice exam) call it “The Ultimate Demoralizer” - so NO need to freak out when you get to the mock exams. Well, i DID and i spent the last week ALL on Schweser’s mock exams, could and should have just recaptured the basics. I am not saying Schweser’s notes are not good… i sorta liked them while i was reading them. but i just felt that, let me put it this way: why teaching someone drifting if that person just needs to pass the road test for his driver’s license …
^agree. and i wish book 6 gave you explanations for the correct answers.
Book 6 explanations can be downloaded from their website.
That was hardly an explanation, for most of the questions especially the econ and other theoretical ones the explanation read: “Bhal bhal bhal is the only correct statement all others are wrong” if only they told why that was correct and others wrong.
UltMustang, What scores were you getting on the Book 6 practice exams?
57% for the first mock exam. included were a lot of random guessing, not even the 50/50 elimination, just completely guessing with phases like “what the XXXX!!!,” “holy $XXX,” “Man, i don’t know how to do this!” “OMG, they expect me to do this…” The frustration kicked in and then i started freaking out and began cursing in language that are so filthy, i didn’t even know what they mean 
I didn’t do mock 2, finished mock 3 but didn’t calculate the %.
Hah…yeah I felt the same way. I was in the same ballpark, and was very demoralized the day before the exam. (Course it didnt help that for a large section when I was grading my test, I was using the wrong answer sheet to grade the paper). Fortunately when I discovered that I felt a little better. When I took the actual exam, I felt the morning exam was very reasonable, and the afternoon was about in line with book 6 (maybe a little more straightforward). I gather from your earlier post you felt more confident on the actual exam than the practice?
Ultmustang Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > 57% for the first mock exam. > > included were a lot of random guessing, not even > the 50/50 elimination, just completely guessing > with phases like “what the XXXX!!!,” “holy $XXX,” > “Man, i don’t know how to do this!” “OMG, they > expect me to do this…” > > The frustration kicked in and then i started > freaking out and began cursing in language that > are so filthy, i didn’t even know what they mean > > > I didn’t do mock 2, finished mock 3 but didn’t > calculate the %. pretty much how i felt during the 2-3 days before the exam.
Oh, I am not confident at all. The calculations are very straight forward and not difficult at all IMO. But there were so many conceptual questions which I forgot about and I also went back and changed many correct answers to wrong ones … 
as my impression was like … it can’t be that easy, I must be missing something like there was one question asking what the price index for one stock is after the split, in a 3-stock portfolio but I automatically started calculating price-weighted index for the entire portfolio, then relized i didn’t even need a calculator to get the answer … many occasions like that … so