LEAVE YOUR LEGACY BEHIND - WHAT WORKED FOR YOU?! KEYWORD: GUIDE

[jojogaut]

Passed on my 2nd attempt (band 7 last yr). Except for Ethics and IPS I used FinQuiz notes exclusively plus I did all CFAI BB and EOC Qs. Didn’t really use the FinQuiz summaries though. I also did some of the problems in the FinQuiz Q bank after every chapter. Their Q bank is not amazing but it’s helpful at reinforcing concepts at that initial stage of study. Not re-reading the curriculum the second time around helped me save a ton of time that I could use in the Mock phase of my studying. This is where the rubber really meets the road! I started in January and by mid April I was already doing Mocks. I did past AM papers from 2005 to 2014. All the PM papers from Schweser’s book 1 and 2 plus every CFAI online question and all their Mocks. So a total 10 AM papers and 6 Schweser PM plus 3 CFAI PM Mocks (two new ones and one from last year). I didn’t do the FinQuiz mocks though. This time around I had time to go back to the curriculum and redo BB and EOC Qs in my problem areas. This was key! Another thing that worked for me were those Schweser mocks (only PM, I didn’t touch their AM). They definitely turn up the heat on the level of difficulty and they expose you to new material on every Mock. I was scoring in the mid 70s towards the end and even scored an 85 on my last Schweser PM Mock so the practice definitely paid off. I found the real deal CFA PM Session considerably easier than some of the Schweser Mocks I took. As for my score, I did the same as many others here. Killed the PM (7 sections over 70%) and got killed in the AM (7 sections under 50%). I felt extremely confident walking out of the PM session and I must say, my poor AM performance was a bit of a shock. But you really never know with the AM. Goes to show you what they say is true, you gotta kill the PM to give yourself a chance on this level. Later and best of luck to those taking L3 next year.

[Resinworx]

@SydneyisSkyBlue

1) Do you need to read the CFAI readings thoroughly for L3? No

Subject to the exception I make in (2) below, you don’t need to read the CFAI books to pass.

Schweser + CFAI EoC + couple of CFAI mocks was more than enough for all 3 levels.

2) Is Ethics really that difficult? From the perspective of a native English speaker, no.

When I started L1 a colleague charterholder told me Ethics was critical. Worried by his advice, I was extra thorough - read the CFAI text in detail and wrote detailed notes. Fortunately, this proved invaluable - barely had to do more than skim Ethics in L2 and L3 as a refresher.

Ethics is pound-for-pound the best topic to know well for the exam - know it well and you can fly through the Ethics item sets, banking plenty of time for the tougher questions later on.

Personally, I found Ethics the easiest topic on each exam (contrary to many on here).

3) Are mock exams helpful? Schweser mocks aren’t helpful - avoid. CFAI mocks invaluable, but I only did 2 before each exam.

4) Can you pass with less than 300 hours study? Yes.

I managed to pass with <250hrs for each level. Of course this varies person to person, but if you have a background in finance, work less than 60hrs a week, don’t have kids and are discplined enough to allocate, say, 8hrs each Saturday for 6 months (and 2-3 full days pre-exam), it can be done. Personally, it helps I had an understanding wife.

5) Tackling the AM: When I started each section of the AM, I wrote what time I needed to move onto the next question. Eg if I had an 18 minute question at 10.30am, I wrote 10.48am at the top of the page so I knew when to move on. Remember, you get partial credits in the AM - if unsure, at least write up the formula, take an educated guess, etc then quickly move on!

your experience is an anomaly and your interpretation of langauge being an obstacle for ethics performance is also completely unsound. Anyone with language issues will simply not survive any part of a program like this in any topic, so it goes without saying that despite the majority of candidates being non native english speakers, myself included, the language part is not a factor what so ever.

Yes there is a possibility that many people will pass even on doing as little as one month of studying and one mock however that is not the norm and most candidates would much rather have over studied and passed than understudied and failed. I know many people who went through the CFA program with so much ease simply because they did each level at the best year they could have possibly done it at. Just like many of us underperform on exam day on topics we truly know extremely well, so do others as well who perform amazingly well on topics they know so little about.