Hey there guys, just wanted to get a feeling for if im crazy or not Ive been studying about 3 weeks, Im on page 375 of the 1st book and plan on finishing it by January 4th because I have hired a a tutor so I sent that goal for myself to review all of that and learn how to use the calculator for all the quat stuff and plan the rest of my studying. Anway, It takes me a substantial amount of time to comprehend the material, I am on track to spend over twice the 250 hours (and I’m ok with doing it) but as i spend this time comprehending everything I know that im not remembering it all. Am I ok? What should I be doing? at this rate I will only get through the books one time… what should I be doing? Am I too worried? Thanks
Hey Im kind stressed too, and I just graduated with a Finance degree. It is virtually impossible to retain the material without doing questions over and over, do questions, do a little, review then do more questions…write the formulas…understand them… I’m about at the same page as you are, have been studying for 10 days pretty much all day …I guess i’m gonna end up studying 400/500 hours. This is tough, but hang in there…
Keep studying…You’re doing fine…This stuff isn’t supposed to be easy.
yeah just keep at it guys - I never did this style of memory retention in college - you just have to keep on keep’n on and it will start clicking
Ive always felt that college was just a bunch of memorization exams. This is not the case for the CFA. They will ask you anything and everything in as many ways possible in 6 hours. So you HAVE to know everything.the best advise i can give you is to just read through it and not spend so much time trying to do a calculation. the test is designed to allow each question 1.5 minute to complete. Think about that. 1.5 minute is such a small window of time, they wont ask you to compute anything that can take that long. But in the test, there will be questions that WILL seem like they will take longer, but there is usually a shortcut to the answer. Okay, so heres my suggestion: The text is lengthy, and the LOS are plenty but i learned one thing while reading the text… the most important stuff, is usually in the very first section of each chapter. If you read that, then you have yourself a roadmap for the rest of the chapter. The first section pretty much tells you what you need to know, the rest is just really hammering the nail in the coffin. SOOOO… if something gets too hard at one point, skip it, move on with your life. the hard questions are worth just as much as the easy questions. Plus the readings gets easier to understand as you move on and pretty soon youll start to expect what the answers are to the questions theyre trying to solve because EVERYTHING is related.
Listen to Joey, keep doing practice problems and you’ll be fine. There’s a lot of time left
Relax…breathe. This is very very expected…
buddy this happens to everyone… believe me… jus calm down n keep studying…i was goin through the same thing…every student has these jitters… jus relax… u’l pick up pace soon…and remember everything too… u’l do great in the exams…
I’d be very impressed if you COULD remember everything on a first read. Don’t worry about it, it will come. Oh, but if you are just reading alone, i’d suggest that you start doing questions after you finish each section, don’t just read the books alone, doing questions will really help you grasp the concept. Remembering the material isn’t all that important compared to understanding the concept. Even when you come back and think you forgot the concept, once you start doing questions and review the answers, the concepts comes back really quickly, given you’ve understand it once before.
If I remember correctly, the first book you are referring to covers Ethics and Quant. Most of the really complicated material in the Quant readings probably won’t even be on the actual exam. By this I mean that I wouldn’t get too worried if you struggle with sample problems that involve long, complex formulas. The CFA books give sample problems that can take 5-10 minutes to solve even if you know exactly what you are doing. It is highly unlikely that you will see these problems on the actual exam because of the time constraints. I am not saying to study less, you still need to know the material. Just don’t kill yourself trying to memorize every big equation in the book and don’t get discouraged if it seems overwhelming at first.
Comprehension only truly comes with quizzing yourself. I would also suggest watching some videos on YouTube on some of the specific Quant stuff. I had issues with the hypothesis testing until I watched a few videos and it started to click.
i am going through the same now…started 2nd week of studying and it all seems so time-consuming…i am scared to leave out reading CFAI books but i get so sleepy when i start reading from there :-s
sumz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i am going through the same now…started 2nd week > of studying and it all seems so time-consuming…i > am scared to leave out reading CFAI books but i > get so sleepy when i start reading from there :-s Take frequent breaks. I highly recommend Qbank or Passmaster to drive home the concepts after each SS.