Hello all. I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy an IPad and I was wondering if anyone as successfully used one for studying? I’m thinking that the Schweser materials are not compatible, but I am not sure. Anyone have any success or failure stories with using an IPad to help study? thanks
if you are traveling, the CFA curriculum is nice to use on the iPad because you don’t need to carry around all of your books. However I prefer to read actual paper. And flipping to different pages/sections is a bit annoying with an iPad.
It is a good supplement, but I wouldn’t use it as a primary medium.
Yes. It’s great for reading CFAI materials.
If you download schweser PDF files, then it’s possible to read via iPad but I don’t recommend it. In landscape, 2 pages are displayed simultaneously which makes text look ridiculously small. It is readable but I got tired after 15 minutes. In portrait mode, texts are more readable but since its only 1 page at a time, you’ll be flipping through too often and get easily distracted. Not to mention its really hard to navigate to certain pages very quickly unless you know exactly where you want to go. The only time I used my ipad was reading ethics material on my bed. Anything e,se other than ethics it gets more stressful
(used retina ipad and 27" imac. Imac is better but nothing beats actual books IMO)
I was in the same situation for L1 last fall and ended up buying the iPad 2. Only thing I’d recommend is getting one with a retina display, after reading on it for hours on end your eyes will thank you.
CFA curriculum can be read through the Vital app bookshelf. The app does the job, not great - it certainly has its glitchs but it works. Same goes for Schweser’s PDFs, you can use Apple’s native iBooks app to read PDFs and use that. The only thing is that on Vital you can change font size but not on the PDFs.
I recommend an iPad though. Being able to mix it up between paper books and eBooks helped me study and allowed me to move around and study in new places to stay more engaged.
Use the iPad as your gift to self for passing a Level of the CFA exam. I could see the iPad being too distracting as a study medium, but it will be different for everyone.
Additional benefit that I just came accross… Schweser is now releasing their notes through the VitalSource app on the iPad. It’ll make it a lot easier to read them than PDFs.
it’s not going to “help” you (as in an advantage over traditional books) but like others mentioned, it is helpful when you travel alot (read on transit even?)
i wouldn’t use the ipad as a prime source of studying because i need to do the EOC questions on paper.
Anybody uses vitalsource on android? used ipad in L1 and 2 but now thinkin of buying samsung as most of my non-cfa friends use samsung or maybe i shud get a surface? mmm
Thank you all. It sounds like it’s doable on the IPad, but maybe not ideal. I think it would come in handy for when I’m traveling. Thanks again!
I’ve been glossing over the CFAI L2 texts on my samsung tab 3, it’s not bad… It’s probably as good as it’s going to get since CFAI uses VitalSource… Better than not having anything to study while on the go, though. As far as the tablet itself is concerned, I love it.
My hubby bought me an ipad mini yaayy (tho that means i wont have a hand of androod anytime soon)
Elan Guides website combined with an ipad is what I used to watch their videos and take the practice tests, you gotta scroll/resize the ipad to make it optimum for viewing but it’s amazing. As for reading text, i never really read the material, I mostly used ctrl f to find specific topics I got wrong, and you can’t really ctrl f in an ipad. I wish they had an app for their practice tests though, but they dont. I heard of stalla for the ipad, but it was freshly made so I didnt want to risk it without reading reviews.
i only used ipad and went 3/3. If you can search for a term quickly, it helps