I was looking for advice on which test-prep provider was better for L2. For L1 I purchased the QBank from Kaplan and found it very useful yet I have heard mixed reviews, especially for L2. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
This L2 retaker would recommend Kaplan/Schweser with videos. Qbank was great for L1 and just barely ok for L2. For L2, Qbank should be used as a refresher tool. Keep in mind the questions in the Qbank will not even remotely resemble anything like the actual L2 exam… …biggest issue I also had with qbank was the questions became so redundant. By April you will feel as if you answered a 1000 different questions on “what is backwardation and contango…”. Spend less time on Qbank and more time on the EOC questions would be this retakers best advice.
Thanks! I completely agree there is a lack of question items, for L1 I think I calculated the same EPS about 50x! It got to the point that I knew the answers without doing the math! I am graduating in December and plan to sit in June, I am awaiting acceptance to law school so I have literally 6 months of nothing. Do you think this is enough time?
Yes and if you want the best advice from this L2 retaker …hit the the CFAI texts and be able to nail all those EOC questions. Do not become dependent on the study notes or qbank.
I much preferred Stalla to Schweser. I used Schweser my first time around and failed badly (band 4). I used Stalla my second time around and destroyed the test passing above 70% in each section. I felt very confident the entire time I was taking the test and left the test knowing I passed. I’m sure that passing my second time around had something to do with going through the material twice, but I also felt the stalla system was much better. The system I used included the notes, lectures on CDs, and the passmaster software. I’ll be honest, I did not use the passmaster much and didn’t think it was very good but the notes and lectures were amazing. I would typically read the notes (taking my own notes as I read) and then i would watch the video lecture, taking extensive notes in the provided slide books. After the notes and lecture, I would go through the corresponding questions in the CFAI curriculum. What I think really put me over the top though was doing ALL of the questions in the back of the CFAI provided materials. There were a lot of vignettes that were very similar to the test. A few footnotes to my recommendation: I studied for ~330 hours (I know because I tracked every minute while I was sitting at my desk or starbucks). However, this does not include time I spent looking at my notes on the subway or sneaking in some studying during lunch. so I think you can probably add 20-30 hours to this total). I did not use lectures with Schweser and did not do questions from the CFAI curriculum when I failed. As I said, I think the questions and lectures were the best part of my preparation. Having typed this, i still believe the quality of the stalla notes was much better than schweser. Good luck and I hope this helps.
Round 2 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yes and if you want the best advice from this L2 > retaker …hit the the CFAI texts and be able to > nail all those EOC questions. Do not become > dependent on the study notes or qbank. +10000
I’d be very interested to hear other people’s thoughts. Anyone else had an experience of using both? I am trying to make a decision which one to use. I failed the first time and used Schweser and put in A LOT of work, I think this time I will focus more on CFAI q’s but i can’t see myself reading through all the CFAI texts…
I say use CFAI text + Schweser on the 3-4 most heavily weighted topics. Ethics, FSA, Equity and one other one. On quant and the other smaller topics, focus more on Schweez