Saw this posted by Golden Dragon in another thread:
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Let me first of all caveat this by saying that I have not written the exam every single year since 2004. I took some time off to go back to b-school and job search. There were also years when I didn’t study as hard as I should have, as I was simply too burned out. However, there were years when I went full bore and still failed miserably. In 2012, after maturing and getting my MBA from a highly-ranked b-school with an emphasis in finance, living in NYC and having access to a weekly course, I knew that would be my year. When I got my results, I was in the 6 band and devastated. I had never had trouble passing an exam (I got a 710 on my GMAT) and was humiliated. I assumed this just wasn’t my exam, but vowed to give it one more shot, all or nothing.
This year I tried a different approach, thinking about the various study methods I had used in the past, what worked, what didn’t, etc. By the time I took my mock exams this year, my scores were going up, and my last timed exam was around 80%. When I walked out of the real exam I knew I had aced it (though I couldn’t say that to anybody in case I was wrong) and on Tuesday I got my results…>70% in almost every category. I’ll share with you what I did, and I sincerely hope it helps at least somebody who didn’t pass and is thinking about throwing in the towel.
There were four major ”stages” to my study plan: 1) Read the material, 2) answer curriculum questions, 3) answer vignette item sets, and 4) sit timed mock exams. If after moving from one stage to the next I wasn’t answering the questions with high accuracy, I went back a stage until I was nailing the material, then went back up again to the next stage.
So here’s how it worked for me:
Knowing that Equity and FSA make up somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the exam alone, I wasn’t about to mess with these topics…I read both curriculum books cover to cover. I started with equity because it’s the most interesting topic, so by the time I finished something interesting to me, I knew I had successfully finished studying 20-30% of the exam. If you start Oct. 1 and finish equity by Nov 15, then read FSA from Nov 16 - Dec 31, you’ll have 6 weeks dedicated to each book, and then you can move on to the Schweser material (or whatever prep provider you choose) by Jan 1. When I finished each chapter, I dedicated myself to diving into the CFA books and completing all curriculum end of chapter questions. This is REALLY important, as the authors are careful about difficulty progression in the questions. For any given topic, the questions tend to “build” in difficulty (not exactly, but it trends this way within the topic being covered), then usually at the end there were vignettes, or item sets. I answered the questions as best as I could, then checked the answer to each one before moving to the next one. If something still wasn’t clicking, I went back to the reading. If I was doing well, I went to the vignettes. If I did poorly on the vignettes, I went back to the questions to see where the disconnect was.
In January, I began reading the Schweser notes. For me, I felt the best areas to hit, in no particular order, were corporate finance, economics and alternative investments. This is because they are either more conceptual or the math wasn’t as cumbersome, which means that when late April or early May came around I didn’t run as big of a risk of forgetting what I had learned. When I finished the reading these three topics in Schweser, I answered the questions at the end, but more importantly, I went to the end of chapter curriculum questions. Goal for completing this was Feb 15th, so two weeks for each topic. Not umanageable.
Feb 15-March 15 was dedicated to fixed income, quant and PM. A little more math and fixed income is a bit cumbersome, but still manageable. Same plan.
March 15-April 15 was two weeks each dedicated to re-reading FSA and Equity in Schweser. This time it stuck more because I had a strong foundation from the curriculum readings, but it was important for me to revisit these massive topics since it had been a few months and there were only a few weeks to go.
Last topic was dreaded derivatives. I saved it for last (aside from ethics, which I’ll explain momentarily) because it’s math intensive (which increases my likelihood of forgetting something if I don’t truly understand it and try to memorize the formulas instead) and because if I was running short on time, it doesn’t hold enough weight in the exam to matter much if I needed to pass on this nasty topic. As a side note, for swaps, swaptions and options valuation, my single most effective strategy was to draw a timeline before even reading the question. EVERYTHING was based around the timeline. Once I figured this out, options didn’t make my palms sweat anymore.
My goal was to sit the first timed mock exam on May 1, so whatever time I had leftover from the schedule above I either played catch-up or reviewed the topics as needed. Usually I budgeted 1-2 day windows and reviewed each topic to get ready for the mock exam based on how I was doing in the curriculum questions and vignettes. May 1 was first mock exam, though I did it over a couple of days and not timed. I answered each question or item set and looked at the answer before moving on. If an item set crushed me, I went back to the curriculum vignettes, and or questions. If it still didn’t make sense, I went back to the reading.
For the entire month of May, after that first exam I took a timed exam on Saturday, reviewed each question on Sunday, and spent the week in the evenings reviewing the questions either in the curriculum, the book, or by sacrificing an exam or two from Schweser (I got two books with 6 exams total) and using those questions merely for fresh vignette questions. With only four weeks to go, I figured I could only budget for about 4-5 exams total. That was about right, and what I discovered was that the early curriculum questions are easy, the later questions are difficult, and the mock exam questions rested comfortably in the 5-7 range on a 1-10 scale; they only seemed more difficult because I timed myself and the topics were mixed. I completed 8-9 mock exams the first year and it didn’t work, but 4-5 with all of the curriculum questions did work.
The last week in May I picked one topic every day and reviewed what I thought might be the most obvious exam questions/topics asked on the exam and reviewed them again. This gave me a chance to cycle back through the material yet again.
I also used this last week or two to read ethics in the curriculum. This is because there are so many nuances to ethics that they are easy to forget, but it doesn’t take that long to read. I gave myself the window of May 15-June 1 to read ethics and it was perfect.
The summary is that for me, it all came down to a few key things that I didn’t do in the past:
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I read the original material for Equity and FSA.
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I answered almost every CURRICULUM question, recognizing that for me, this was the powerful link between the material and the exam.
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I continued to recycle the topics. A critical error I made in the past was assuming that I KNOW the material because I KNEW the material. Not true. Just because I learned it didn’t mean I remembered it later, so going back to review and condensing the time between topics each round was critical.
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Rather than stressing about having every single formula or sentence memorized, I focused on core areas of competency within the topics and being able to answer them in a timed exam or vignette setting.
This study program helped me walk into the exam feeling good and walk out feeling like all I had to do was wait to get confirmation about what I already suspected, and I was right. I know it’s a long post, but 9 years after failing the level II exam for the first time, I felt it was worth the energy to write this so the next person doesn’t fall into the same pitfalls I did. More importantly, this exam is not beyond anybody, and I fully believe the CFA Institute wants us to pass…they just don’t want to give the designation away to people that haven’t mastered the material.
I already have my Level III online curriculum material and starting to study right now. Not about to go through this ever again.
This is how I mastered the Level II material, and I sincerely hope it helps at least somebody on here in 2014. Good luck everyone…"