Hey everyone, i cleared my level 1 exam in december. i studied for the level 1 exam 2 months in advance and it worked out. what helped me alot is that i didnt have a job. anyways, i just started studying yesterday for the level 2 this june. im studying from the schweser notes and started with the economics LOS since i find it the easiest to master. anyways, i guess im a bit late, so any advice will be very helpful. what sections i should start with? what routines i could do to help me stay focused? what sections should i study from the cfa curriculum books and not from the schweser notes? what sections are the hardest to master? (any helpful tips) I appreciate your help. M.A.K
Do a slow carefull read of Schweser. Do Schweser problems right after the reading. Do not do EOC till few days later, (lets you know how well you retained, also good review) Take two mocks from Schweser books ( 2 mocks will give you better sample than 1 mock) The topics you find yourself weak in, go study them fro CFAI. I studied the hek out of everything except for FSA. and I can tell you Schweser does a very good job. That does not meen they are not good at FSA, I just have not seem it. You can find a thread on Level III that I started, many Level III candidates answered and said they passed with Schweser only. I found nothing very hard to master. I simply skimed FSA and left till later because it is all memory. A lot of people I know suffer in derivatives, but if you slow down and think about them they are realy nothing more than an application of TVM and some arbitrage thinking. If you consider yourself a “smart” guy you will see that nothing is hard. It is just that some concepts will be a little bit strange at first but with time you WILL master them. The issue is time, forget about what to start with, what to use, for now what matters if you get moving. Best of luck, email me i got something for you.
Hey buddy- Good to hear about your L1 pass. Here’s the skinny: Last year, I was in exactly the same boat you were. I had passed the L1 exam with only two months of preparation (I used only the Schwesser books). I wasn’t working at the time and could dedicate a nice 2-3 hours a day in a quiet place without stress. I found out I had passed L1 in (february?) I believe, and started on the same routine for L2, using only the Schwesser books. This time, I was working, and found myself simply going through the motions every day. I was still doing 2 hours or so for the 3 months before the exam, but it was labored. In the end, I was a solid “fail” for L2. It wasn’t even close. I felt a little unlucky because I have extensive i-banking experience, and the test barely hit up my strong points. It was almost all my weak areas (basically, financial analysis was well represented, trading - derivatives, equities, etc - barely). I’ve been studying again for L2 now…except this time, I’ve taken people’s advice and actually used the CFA Institute materials. Let me tell you something: Schwesser falls short in preparation for the L2 test. Faithfully reading the CFAI materials, then actually doing their questions is a much better preparation for the L2 test, having taken it once. I did - literally - a thousand QBank questions, and few of them came even close to preparing me for the L2 test. The CFAI questions set you up for precisely the sort of problem-set questions you’re going to see on the test, with exactly the kind of little “tricks” the CFAI likes to throw your way (for example, when doing a capital budgeting project, installation costs are part of the overall cost of equipment and can be depreciated). The prior poster here is correct in a lot of what s/he says, but take my word for it: L2 is nothing like L1. Even if you’re good with the subject matter from your professional experience (like I am), you’re not being measured that way: You’re being measured against the CFAI material, and they make the test. Best to learn directly from the source, you’ll thank me for it.
i would skip the schweser eoc and focus on CFAI eoc. just redo them a couple weeks later to check for retention. cfa eoc are a must right after you read it - they will show you how little you actually know after reading the material by itself.
i think the text itself becomes a much easier read after i understood schweser first. *now i feel much better for being 3 days behind my study schedule.