June test takers- Please help the Dec folks

Hi all! I have been lurking these boards for a long time and it was heart-warming to see the comraderie among the members here helping each other out. There have a decent number of posts from December candidates who like myself seek to learn from your experiences with the Level I exam, but since they tend to get lost in the numerous threads here, I thought you all can post your expert thoughts in one thread which all future candidates can refer to for tips and advice. Please post your comments on… 1. What materials you used (CFA and/or prep providers) and your feedback on them. 2. Which mock exams you took and how easy/tough they were compared against the real exam and which ones you would recommend. 3. How much time would you recommend for review. I would think that longer is better but some people have warned against starting too early coz of burnout and retention issues. Thanks for your time. Do keep checking in on us beginners once you all are promoted to the Level II forum.

Hi Spongebob Glad to help. I just sat level II so I can’t answer any questions about the recent level I exam, but can give my thoughts re your questions: 1) I used Schweser study books for most of my prep, but would use CFA books for anything I didn’t understand (because Schweser was too brief) or for subjects which I needed more detail on. Everyone uses CFA books for Ethics. I also used the Schweser question bank (QBank). QBank is a software program which generates heaps of questions and is great for revision. There are other study providers which also have test-bank software. 2) Schweser mocks. But the CFA mock exam is the best indication of the real exam. Basically, the more mocks (and QBank questions) you can do the better. 3) To plan your study schedule you should work backwards from the exam date. 1. Ideally allow 3 or 4 weeks immediately before the exam for doing mocks and QBank questions and the EOC questions (end-of-chapter questions at the end of each CFA reading). So I’d plan on doing this for most of November. 2. Allow 3 or 4 weeks before that to do a second review of all the material. So probably most of October is spent doing this. 3. When doing your first pass of the study material, CFA recommends spending one week per study session (there are 18 study sessions). If you follow the above schedule it adds up to about 6 months, which is probably too long. Most people spend about 4 or 5 months to prepare for the exam. If you’re going to reduce the schedule I’d cut down on the third step (first pass of the material) because steps 2 and 1 are very important. Hope this helps.

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  1. If you can afford it, purchase a prep provider text (I used Schweser), and a question bank. 2. The Schweser practice exams volume 1 are a must. And the CFAI mocks and samples. Also do all of the CFA end of Chapter questions and as many question banks questions as you can. 3. I sat in June 2009. I reviewed a small bit before Christmas and a lot from end January 2009 until the exam. I found the best thing for level 1 was questions, questions, questions. Good luck!

Dear Spongebob, Just like many people in this forum, the advice I have for you is to start early. If you could plan to read one reading in the official Cir. per day or per 2 days (depending on your speed) and write your own note to answer each LOS (if you find them new knowledge to you), link LOS together, work on and (if necessary) note down problems you identify as the common types of questions for the LOS, you will crack this exam. I believe self- motivation, hard work, dedication and time management are the keys to this exam and others. Unless you thought out and complied the whole existing knowledge yourself (which we did not, we are just learning a pool of knowledge what is already there and nonstop evolving), no other shortcut would come close to passing all 3 levels without doing so. I believe in the existence of luck in life but not when you take the standardized tests such as the CFA ones.

  1. I used Elan Guides. I used their videos and notes for most of my prep and used the CFA books for ethics and EOC questions. Elan does an excellent job i think. Well worth the money. 2. Elan’s mocks are much harder than the actual test, but very similar in length and style. Schweser’s are too heavy on calculations, but useful nonetheless. It’s nice to get as many mocks from different providers under your belt so that you’re familiar with all kinds of questions. 3. 3-4 weeks is essential. Less than that you will be struggling to review and retain. I don’t buy the burnout argument myself, but everyone’s different. I would also say that you should do practice questions STRAIGHT AFTER going through a reading. Don’t save questions for later. If you run out you can always get more. Don’t even wait till you’re done with a whole study session to do them. Just do them right after you finish a particlular reading. This will help your retention in the long run for sure. Good luck! and I’ll do my best to keep helping you all for the months to come.
  1. I used Élan guides, was overall impressed with the material. my only complaint was that they missed some of their own deadlines in terms of getting the books sent out. Still, was definitely worth the investment.  I also read the CFA books for the more important chapters (FRA, quant, fixed income) and referred back to them if I wasn’t understanding Elan’s explanation. the CFA books are much much wordier, I wouldn’t recommend them as your primary learning tool but I also wouldn’t ignore them either.  2) the CFA mock was closest, followed by Elan, followed by Schweser, in my opinion.  3) here’s pretty much what I did.  I have no finance background and didn’t want to study more than 10 hours a week (on average) so my timeline is quite long, if some of the material is familiar to you or you have more hours a week to study, you could make it a lot shorter.  step 1: 2 weeks on each of the 7 topics (quant, eco, FRA, equity, fixed income, corp finance + portfolio management, derivatives + alt investments). Making notes from Elan books, making sure I understood the concepts, referring to CFA books if confused. I didn’t stress about memorizing formulas at this stage, just focused on learning the concepts and attempting the CFA end of chapter questions to check my understanding. I think I ended up doing 3 weeks on FRA because there is so much in that topic to learn.  Step 2) One week revising each of those 7 topics plus a week of ethics. This was when I knuckled down and learned the formulas, did all of the Élan practice questions, the EOC questions again etc. Basically all the questions I could get my hands on.  Step 3: general review: you want at least 3 weeks for cramming, practice questions and mock exams, and reading through ethics again.  This is roughly a 6 month schedule. I felt super prepared by exam day.  Good luck!  

@Kiakaha I was wondering, how much score do you get on Mock exam close to the exam’s day? since you felt that you were super prepared.

  1. I used the curriculum exclusively for reading material. For mock exams, I had Schweser exams from the 2009 exam that a friend gave me since he already passed. 2) I did 4 Schweser mocks and the 1 official CFA mock. I think doing lots of mock exams and practice questions is essential to feeling confident and doing well on the exam. 3) I only hard core reviewed for about 2.5 weeks, due to graduation, moving, etc. That being said, I had a big advantage over lots of other test takers in that I had studied 90% of the curriculum in school over the last couple of years and was already familiar with it. How much time you spend on review totally depends on you. Toward the 2nd half of last week, I was getting burnt out on reviewing and studying.

I’ll give you some critical advice that impinged my exam results…do lots of mocks the week or two before to make sure you become proficient at them. I ran out of time in the AM and could have used more time in the PM also…other than that, my studying was very similar to Kia’s with similar non-finance background…definitely do practice questions after each reading, the ones that I didn’t do questions for on the first revision, I was very weak on.

@willsim: worst score on a mock session was 75, best 93, most in mid 80s. Agree with spreads, doing the EOC questions on your first pass through the material is really important.

Some good advice here…I have nothing to add except that be careful not to take any material for granted. For the subjects I had trouble with (FRA in particular), I spent lots of time until I was comfortable with it. Economics, on the other hand, seemed very simple and intuitive when I was going through it so I didn’t bother to review it much. In the end, I think I did better on FRA than economics. You have to get comfortable with the kinds of questions you’ll see. That’s the bottom line. And the only way to accomplish it is through practice. I am of the camp that thinks more time is only better. The material has more of a chance to penetrate and stay put if you have more time with it.

go over everything, no matter how insignificant it may be. they completely skip huge topics and ask about the minute details of others.

My backround: I was a finance major and failed this exam band 10 in December. I agree with the statement that 4-5 months can be enough. Definitely err on the side of caution though. For December I studied for about 4 months. Due to being busy at work, I fell short of time in the final few weeks. Consensus is that at the end you will feel like you need another week or two so start your final review/mock exams with at least 4 weeks left. I used schweser notes and Elan questions/mocks because they were cheaper. While Elan does a good job of covering the materials for the most part, I did run across quite a few errors in their review questions/mock exams. Mostly, these were cases where the solution guide would say answer “A” was the correct one, but then go on the explain that it was actually “B” which was correct. Not sure if that makes sense to someone reading this. Just be careful because although I found that they explained the answers correctly, they often stated the wrong letter of the answer. It was still a very helpful review but did make it confusing at times where I would have to sit and re-read a question and answer to realize they screwed up. In my final review I only found 1 mistake where they actually got the answer wrong completely wrong (misstated variation margin), however, I forgot to review this question to CFA material before the exam and ended up answering it wrong on the exam.

I read the Stalla material and went through all of the Passmaster and almost all of the EOC questions . I thought I would use Passmaster for my review as well but I found the questions to be much easier than the mock exam questions. I ended up doing both CFA sample exams + four mock exams which helped immensely. My advice: - Schedule your studying so that you have AT LEAST 1 month to review at the end - the review is crucial. - During the review do as many mock exams or practice questions as possible. The practice questions will really drill the material into your head. - Read Elan’s Eleventh Hour guide during your last 10 days. There were a number of questions on the exam that I wouldn’t have gotten right if it weren’t for the 11th hour guide.

Just background info: I am 4 years out of college and earned a finance degree, also just finished my MBA. I work in commercial lending, so analyze financial statements regularly which helped. This was my first time taking it, so keep in mind that I don’t have the credibility of some of the other folks here. Still, I felt pretty confident going in and feel pretty good about how it went on Saturday. Materials: I used Elan guides almost exclusively and started the last week of November '10, which would be right about now if I were taking the December exam (about 26 weeks before the exam). I thought Elan was pretty good…in my opinion, their materials are definitely geared toward people who have some finance/math/stats background. However, there were a few topics that I had very little experience in (portfolio management, fixed income) that I still was able to grasp using just the Elan guides…so even if you have no background, I think its definitely still better than using CFA materials. The problem I found with official CFA materials (as you’ll see mentioned in other threads as well) is that they don’t do a great job indicating the depth you need to know each topic. In some areas, you are expected to do the soup-to-nuts process (hypothesis testing), but others you simply need to define and differentiate terms (technical analysis/alternative investments). Elan (and I’m sure Schweser) do a nice job letting you know what you really need to invest time in to understand fully, and what things you can get away with just knowing the terms. Basically, I probably saved at least 4 weeks of time using Elan vs. the official CFA books and didn’t feel lilke I missed any important topics. That time was spent doing problems, which I though was a much better investment of study sessions. The other thing I didn’t like about the CFA materials is they don’t clearly break out the LOS’s within the chapter. The LOS list basically encompasses all the testable material, but when reading the CFA cirriculum, its sometimes hard to distinguish when 1 LOS starts and the next one begins. Elan does a nice job breaking out each one. Study Strategy: As I mentioned earlier, I used Elan guides exclusively and started in late November. The first time though, I went through each chapter pretty slowly and wrote down all the important concepts in a separate notebook. I also did the EOC questions from the official CFA books after completing each chapter. I probably averaged about 1 chapter each day to begin with (2 hours a night), but might double up if the chapters were short (econ had a few short chapters). After getting through all the chapters, I reviewed them all again, then just did a bunch of problems from the Elan problem sets. I started Mocks in early April and just kept reviewing stuff until the exam. Someone earlier mentioned the risk of “peaking too early”. Honestly, I don’t know if that is possible with this test…the cirriculum is so broad that every time you review stuff, you still pick up bits and pieces you missed from your prior passes. Thats why nobody in the other “how’d the test go” threads is saying “I knew every possible question”. Even after almost 300 hours of studying, there are still things that caught us off guard (at least for me). The trick to this test is not to know everything, but know just a little more than the guys sitting next to you. If this were a high school math test, starting a month too early would probably be deterimental. With the CFA, retention (for me) was not a huge issue because once you do enough problems, you internalize the concepts and they become automatic…you really don’t have anything to worry about “remembering” because you see the info and automaticlly know which formulas apply…long-term vs. short term memory. Mocks: For me, the CFA official mock felt closest to the real thing. I’m paranoid about violating the code about exam info (yep, I’m that guy) so won’t say anymore about the similarities/differences, but yes, CFA mock, definitely best proxy in my mind. Anyway, in a nutshell, my advice would be: 1) Start early…it can only help you. The perceived risk of “peaking too early” is offset 10-to-1 by the risk of “peaking too late” 2) CFA materials are well written, but sometimes more wordy than necessary. Investing a few bucks in 3rd party prep can save you a lot of time. Definitely do the official EOC questions though. 3) CFA Mock > others Good luck!

thisisbrianly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just background info: I am 4 years out of college > and earned a finance degree, also just finished my > MBA. I work in commercial lending, so analyze > financial statements regularly which helped. This > was my first time taking it, so keep in mind that > I don’t have the credibility of some of the other > folks here. Still, I felt pretty confident going > in and feel pretty good about how it went on > Saturday. > > Materials: > I used Elan guides almost exclusively and started > the last week of November '10, which would be > right about now if I were taking the December exam > (about 26 weeks before the exam). I thought Elan > was pretty good…in my opinion, their materials > are definitely geared toward people who have some > finance/math/stats background. However, there > were a few topics that I had very little > experience in (portfolio management, fixed income) > that I still was able to grasp using just the Elan > guides…so even if you have no background, I > think its definitely still better than using CFA > materials. > > The problem I found with official CFA materials > (as you’ll see mentioned in other threads as well) > is that they don’t do a great job indicating the > depth you need to know each topic. In some areas, > you are expected to do the soup-to-nuts process > (hypothesis testing), but others you simply need > to define and differentiate terms (technical > analysis/alternative investments). Elan (and I’m > sure Schweser) do a nice job letting you know what > you really need to invest time in to understand > fully, and what things you can get away with just > knowing the terms. Basically, I probably saved at > least 4 weeks of time using Elan vs. the official > CFA books and didn’t feel lilke I missed any > important topics. That time was spent doing > problems, which I though was a much better > investment of study sessions. > > The other thing I didn’t like about the CFA > materials is they don’t clearly break out the > LOS’s within the chapter. The LOS list basically > encompasses all the testable material, but when > reading the CFA cirriculum, its sometimes hard to > distinguish when 1 LOS starts and the next one > begins. Elan does a nice job breaking out each > one. > > Study Strategy: > As I mentioned earlier, I used Elan guides > exclusively and started in late November. The > first time though, I went through each chapter > pretty slowly and wrote down all the important > concepts in a separate notebook. I also did the > EOC questions from the official CFA books after > completing each chapter. I probably averaged > about 1 chapter each day to begin with (2 hours a > night), but might double up if the chapters were > short (econ had a few short chapters). After > getting through all the chapters, I reviewed them > all again, then just did a bunch of problems from > the Elan problem sets. > > I started Mocks in early April and just kept > reviewing stuff until the exam. Someone earlier > mentioned the risk of “peaking too early”. > Honestly, I don’t know if that is possible with > this test…the cirriculum is so broad that every > time you review stuff, you still pick up bits and > pieces you missed from your prior passes. Thats > why nobody in the other “how’d the test go” > threads is saying “I knew every possible > question”. Even after almost 300 hours of > studying, there are still things that caught us > off guard (at least for me). The trick to this > test is not to know everything, but know just a > little more than the guys sitting next to you. If > this were a high school math test, starting a > month too early would probably be deterimental. > With the CFA, retention (for me) was not a huge > issue because once you do enough problems, you > internalize the concepts and they become > automatic…you really don’t have anything to > worry about “remembering” because you see the info > and automaticlly know which formulas > apply…long-term vs. short term memory. > > Mocks: > For me, the CFA official mock felt closest to the > real thing. I’m paranoid about violating the code > about exam info (yep, I’m that guy) so won’t say > anymore about the similarities/differences, but > yes, CFA mock, definitely best proxy in my mind. > > Anyway, in a nutshell, my advice would be: > 1) Start early…it can only help you. The > perceived risk of “peaking too early” is offset > 10-to-1 by the risk of “peaking too late” > 2) CFA materials are well written, but sometimes > more wordy than necessary. Investing a few bucks > in 3rd party prep can save you a lot of time. > Definitely do the official EOC questions though. > 3) CFA Mock > others > > Good luck! Thanks man! Really helpfull info!

Thanks all. Good luck with your results.

qbank qbank qbank

I’m reluctant to give any advice until I receive my results. I will say, study as much as you possibly can. Do, and understand, all of the CFAI EOC questions. No mater how much you study, you’ll feel like you need to know more the day before the exam. Don’t walk out of the exam wishing you’d studied harder. It’s a somewhat comforting feeling walking out knowing regardless of what happens, you really did give it 100%.