he is medical student studying to be a doctor and he saw my 6 CFA books, flipped through them and told me that writing the CFA will be a walk in the park compared to his medical exams. All I could say was he just has to memorise his stuff while we have to take the time to understand concepts, calculate and apply them. Is he right or should I slap him for talking shit about the CFA Level 2 exam? Anyone know about the difficulty of the CFA Level 2 exam compared to other professional career exams?
My little brother is a doctor. My impression is that medical exams are more difficult (depends on the school, of course) but medical school is all encompassing so they spend a significantly more time studying and applying all aspects of the material.
I could be wrong though, but I know some incredibly brilliant people with CFAs and some dumb with CFAs. But I’ve never met a doctor who was anything less than at least above average.
The CFA curriculum is difficult compared to most undergraduate coursework, although nothing is inherently difficult to grasp. Any given concept can be learned within a matter of minutes, and usually mastered within an hour or two. The only difficult portion is that you’re expected to know such a wide array of material for a single exam. I feel that the only thing holding back most candidates is the sheer amount of practice required to keep your retention high. I’ve quite accurately heard the CFA material described as “an inch deep, but a mile wide”.
I feel that medical exams likely move to the other side of the spectrum. Many of the things they are learning will be inherently much more complex, although they volume of material may not be as crazy. That being said, they require a ludicrious amount of memorization, whereas you can get through the CFA material while memorizing very little.
Overall I feel like it is an “apples to oranges” comparison.
If you want an apples to apples comparison, consider looking into the PRM material. Not only do they need to know a huge volume of material, most of it is actually inherently difficult for the average person. I respect the hell out of those guys, haha.
“he is medical student studying to be a doctor and he saw my 6 CFA books, flipped through them and told me that writing the CFA will be a walk in the park compared to his medical exams”
Before you take him seriously consider the fact that he is neither qualified or experienced curriculum designer or evaluator (by the way they are one of the highly paid professionals in education field!), he is merely a student (still studying his books!) and probably is not even remotely aware of what the concepts, graphs or equations in Level 2 books mean and associated application issues/ problems. Unless he has been a finance student too at some comparative stage his opinion is worthless and if he was a finance student he would not have said so as his opinion then would have been a ‘considered’ opinion based on his exposure and valid basis. Comparing ‘medicine‘ with ‘finance’ professional programmes (only similarity being both lead to professional certification) at least in terms of content by any one who is not expert or qualified in both is like comparing mangoes with hotdog (only common ground being both are eatables! That too by some one who is comparing them has never eaten mango!). There is simply no lowest common denominator for a valid comparison that too by a mere student of either.
“Is he right or should I slap him for talking shit about the CFA Level 2 exam? “
If you are a level 2 student for June 2013 or even otherwise, your time is precious and you simply don’t have the time to think about such bogus comparative statements , (what to say of taking it seriously and thinking of you reacting to it) is sheer wastage of time. February, the shortest month is about to end and your exam is on the next day of May ending. Even if he is remotely right what difference does it make? As you yourself feel he is “talking shit”, so why waste your precious energy, time and thought process on such matter of no consequence?
“Anyone know about the difficulty of the CFA Level 2 exam compared to other professional career exams?”
I have done Masters in Applied Maths. (specializing in stochastic processes),then ACCA and then at later stage PhD in OR (stochastic modeling) and finally CFA after another gap (all in first appearance) and honestly did not find any of them, so to say, “a walk in the park” compared to another. Every professional or academic programme has its own objective and every curriculum covers specified learning outcomes, with varying difficulty levels and study time requirement. If one has done more than one programme oneself then he/she can compare only with how much ease or difficulty he/she could qualifiy /pass each programme/course. Even then if one says a particular high-level professional programme was a ‘walk in the park’ compared to the other, either he is not being honest or simply boasting to boost ego, it deserves no attention.
@realjohn
Even in that case, I feel, compariing PRM with FRM, both being risk management programmes will be more valid than a comparison between CFA and PRM or FRM (though many queries in this regard has been raised in AF). You can compare the chances of entry level job / career transition or current job market for both (CFA and PRM or FRM) rather than comparing their relative ease in terms of contents or passing. Even comparing the easyness of passing one compared to other or their content of CFA and PRM/FRM will depend more on weaknesses and strengths in the specific curriculum areas of the aspirant and differ from one candidate to other with no ‘justifiable’ generalisation possible…
The exam certainly is not easy, but there is a biased perception of how academically tough the exam really is, mainly because most of the test takers are business/liberal arts majors and have had very light course work in university, so in comparision the exam seems hard
i hope your friend is right…would be weird if it was the other way around no?
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Very skeptical that you can determine the difficulty level of 2000 pages of text just by flipping through.
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However, it would be a bit scary if doctor exams were the same level as CFA.
In addition, I don’t think people understand the concept of difficulty with respect to CFA exams. The material is not too difficult. The problem is that you are supposed to do CFA on top of a full time job, which is probably 50-60 hours a week for most people. If you could study CFA full time like that guy is a medical student full time, then of course the exams will be super easy. That’s not the point though.
Hmm
Does his opinion matter . Tell him to prove L2 is easy by passing it 
I don’t think you should worry about a guy who casually flips through books and feels the need to declare that his exams are harder. A good friend would pat you on the back for pushing your career forward; it shouldn’t be a competition. This guy seems to have confidence issues.
As has been said, apples to oranges. Get him to model an acquisition between two international firms with opposite inventory cost methods and consolidations and all that and see if he still thinks its a walk in the park 
But as has also been said, I’d definately hold MD’s to a higher standard than my financial managers.