I need some advice… I have put fraction of number of studying hours I would have liked so far…about 110 hours total so far… which has included reading shcewser notes and Concept Checkers. I have now moved to reading Secret Sauce, reviewing the CFAI Curriculum Chapter Summaries and examples followed by EOC Q. and almost done SS9 (half way)… what do you suggest is best use of time for last 18 days here from list below and in what order…I should say I am taking all of next week and week after off from work (so 15 days off)
continue reading the schewser secret sauce + CFA chapter examples, and EOC question reviews
Do the CFAI online Tests and Mock
Do Practice Exams
I feel I certainly need to do #1 as a form of review to see what I remember from original readings of notes…Ideally I would like to do all three but may mean #3 gets the short hand of the stick and maybe get 1-3 Exams done…or I could cut #2 and do #3 once done with #1…
I can probably put in 150 hrs from now until exam so want to see where you guys think my best time is spent?..
Please do not reply by telling me to pack it in and good luck next year…I know my chances are not good but I want to sit the exam as I have been delaying this Level 3 for 7 years now and think sitting it this year (pass or fail) will help me with a good base for next year at the minimum…
My suggestion will be buy IFT’s Level III Crash Course at this time (Disclaimer: No personal interest!). It has 10.5 hours of summary videos and is an excellent source to brush up nearly all the major concepts. Great value for money for $190 and I think currently they are offering 25% discount as well. I have been using it and it has been of immense use as of now (fingers crossed for the exam!). It will take a couple of days to watch those summary videos. Post that, I would suggest:
Practice all the topic tests from CFAI portal (IMO, it should prepare you very well for afternoon session).
Do the past 7-8 years of actual CFAI morning exam and go over their solutions thoroughly (Again IMO, it should prepare you very well for morning session).
Practice tests should take 1 week and if you are able to go through couple of morning essay exams each day at max, it will take at max 5 days (conservative side).
So, roughly this entire thing will take 14-15 days. You will still have couple of days left and you can decide yourself what’s best to do then.
PS: I know a person who has cleared CFA LIII by studying literally just 2 weeks. His job was pretty much related to portfolio management but still it was commendable and inspirational. By any means, I don’t mean to say one can clear by studying so less. But yes, outliers do exist! So, stop counting the days. Make the days count!
Pick a couple topics and cram. For me I found book 2 (private wealth management + IPS) to be some low hanging fruit in terms of points and difficulty. Concepts are intuitive if you have any business background. You can probably spend a little time here and get a majority of the points. Behavioral Finance always seems to be mixed into this concept area.
The areas that have a high degree of difficulty and have a large weighting -> Fixed Income, Derivatives, Currency Management (Crosses into almost all subject areas). Cram these areas and master them otherwise you will be SOL. Additionally, these three areas pretty much interact with one another, so you will need a strong foundation in each of them if you have any hope to answer the morning section of the exam that likes to inter-relate topic areas.
Anyway, I think you have a solid strategy. Bought as good as any of us. Try to revise the full curriculum as quickly as you can while uncovering topics you need to put additional work into. If you have schweser mocks, I would bomb through the first couple right away to get a base line for what you are up against. Don’t even worry about your score, use them as a learning experience as the AM exam is very different than how you may expect from teh curriculum. Use the Topic tests of the CFAI website and CFAI EOC like you said. Hit it hard and I think you have a good shot given your upcoming time off!
With about 2 weeks to do, you wont have time to do EOC and Topic Test and then Mocks.
You will have to pick one, I’d choose Topic Tests so you know you can smash out the PM at the very least. 1 week of mocks might give you a chance for AM.
