Hello, Ive talked to a few friends who have taken level 2 (I had 5 or 6 of them take it this past June). I was wondering what peoples opinions were on CFAI vs the Schewser books were for this level of the exam. It seemed like those who studied off of CFAI strictly passed whereas those who studied off of Schewser only failed. For Level 1 I only used Schewser and did fine, but was wondering if this time around it would be a little different since Level 2 is much more technical apparently. Thanks.
“It seemed like those who studied off of CFAI strictly passed whereas those who studied off of Schewser only failed.” Impossible. I used Schweser only for Level 2 and did ok. A couple of the sections could have been more elaborate. The pension accounting chapter, for instance, did a poor job of explaining the meanings of various terms. However, overall, the level of detail was acceptable. I appreciated that Schweser’s books were concise and did not fluff the material. This gave me time to read everything at least twice, and to do things in my life other than studying.
Mister Walrus, which Schweser stidy pack did you use?
Mister Walrus, which Schweser study pack did you use?
schweser covers the major points, but there will always be sections you’ll want to go over in CFAI as well, sections you just don’t understand, etc, and also the big complex ones such as FSA to make sure you have everything
schweser is a joke.
perdition Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Mister Walrus, which Schweser study pack did you > use? Er, I got mine indirectly, so I’m not sure what package it was. For Level 2, I had: 1) Schweser textbooks 2) Secret sauce 3) QBank As a disclaimer, I already knew some of the material, particularly the quantitative, economics and CAPM parts. The rest of it is just dry memorization - I really don’t see how the way it is presented would have mattered that much.
I took Level II in June '09 and did not clear it. I used only Schweser material, so i thought maybe i failed because of using Schweser. So recently I started with derivatives and started doing CFAI texts. However, I found the CFAI text to be too verbose and full of lots of irrelevant details, I just got so lost in them that it’s taking too much time to get done with small small things. That said, I did think the end of the chapter questions and the examples were helpful. So I think now I would supplement Schweser with CFAI text and do end of the chapter questions instead of getting completely lost in CFAI text. And I would really like to know what the other retakers are planning to do differently this time.
Shilpi I think you are right on the money. I intend to follow precisely the same strategy.
I used Schweser and some CFAI for this past June and failed band 7 … this time I will buy both but try and stick with mostly CFAI and maybe use the schweser text for review/questions… Dont be fooled by the flawed logic that you should study schweser to save yourself the time only to risk a fail in June and having to blow another 300 hours of your life the next year. I have also heard the theory of using Schweser for L1 but not L2 in the past couple months and I think it makes sense when you consider that L2 is less LOS oriented (something schweser teached very well) than L1 due to the nature of the material and the test itself being item sets. That being said my advice is two-fold… be sceptical of everything you read on this forum(most people wont start studying until Nov-Dec… and even then wont start in earnst until Jan) and secondly that you will need to take as many schweser practice exams as you can get your hands on (they told me I was going to fail and I did).
I’m going mainly schweser with CFAI as bonus. Last year I reversed it and failed. Not this time.
i had background in the material and went mostly schweser, but CFAI would be fine if you can take good detailed notes once and then look at them again and again… one area i definitely recommend schweser is derivatives. borrow someone else’s book if you have to.
I’ve been reading the CFAI book and I have to tell you…, you can really get lost pretty fast. I might have to start reading Schweser Notes and supplement it with the CFAI book. I had planned to do it the other way around before, but dude…, this CFAI book is crazy man.
CFAI is more comprehensive and gives a lot of details. I would recommend you to study CFAI and use Schweser as a reference point for remembering details.
Can anyone share notes for level 2 with me?
I read CFAI text on SS5 and was completely lost in the woods of words. Enthusiastically studying and working example to example, I found it too verbose and lengthy.