I had passed L2 last year and had registered for L3 right away. i ordered the print curriculum and have also got hold of Schweser.
Now the trouble is… I’m not finding enough motivation to start studying.
I picked up Schweser book 1 and started with behavioral finace (thought of proceeding in order… ethics in the end)… but found it really not so interesing… i tried it thrice… gave up all 3 times
Now its hardly 100 days to the exam and i haven’t studied anything at all. feeling totally lost. Scared like shit that i’ll flunk. I work full time so i hardly have the enery on weekdays to study after work.
any tips would be welcome… especially what order should be followed for reading the topics…
L1 and L2 i did CF first, then Equity and so on… topics which i loved. In L3 I believe everything is inter-connected… so don’t know where to start.
100 days = 3 hours a day, or 2 hours on weekdays and 5.5 hours on the weekends. It’s definitely possible, I didn’t start studying until March for level 2 and passed first try, it’s a lot of work, but worrying wont help, just gotta do it.
Understand the difficulty in getting motivated. I also got the print materials right away and eventually did start studying, but really didn’t hit it hard until January. Very hard to get motivated after the relief of passing L2.
I started on Vol 2 Behavorial Finance and went straight through with Ethics interspersed. I’m just about done w/ all the reading (first pass) and would recommend going from Vol2 - Vol6. It kind of comes full circle and you start to see the big picture as you get into Vol6.
If you’re short on time, try skimming instead of reading word for word. That’s what I had to do for L2 due to time constraints.
Last year I put in a huge effort and failed band 4…and you can search in here…and read all the people who invested hundreds of hours, yet failed band 8,9,10.
You’ll definitely fail unless you start now and put in 100%. It’ll be a ridiculous shame to suffer thru L2, to give up at L3.
Take my experience of failing last year, and START NOW. Agree with the top poster…forget reading CFAI at this point. But you should do end of chapter questions from both CFAI and Schweser, and blue box in CFAI if you have time.
Skipping CFAI isn’t to take the easy road…it’s becuase you probably wont have time at this point. You should also do about 6 practice exams.
Do take storlab’s advice seriously… i am taking it seriously. It takes guts to share one’s painful experience and let other learn from it…Experiential learning!!
The point of my statement, dhruv, was not to tell you not to read the curriculm. But instead to encourage you to arrive prepared. You don’t want to arrive having read part of the CFAI, not done sufficient practice exams, nor formula memorization.
So, believe me, it’s a hard exam, and know that you’ll have to arrive after giving 100% effort over the next few months. The CFAI curriculm is about 2200 pages, and you should try to finish reading by mid-april to start the final push of review and practice exams. So that means you’ll have to complete approx. 37 pages a day, without missing any days…or the avg goes up.
If you can commit to that, many people say the curriculum is best. I started the with the CFAI and in middle of book 3 realized that I wasn’t going to have enought time to finish all of books by mid april and now I’m using Schweser.
There will always be obnoxious elements around. Any retaker is a model for me if he is sincere in his advice. Storlab seems sincere in his approach. So I keep his advice at the back of my mind and I certainly IGNORE Tooper Hurley going forward for being a prick.
BTW, there are people whom I have seen posting havingt failed Band 0 and Band 1 came back with all cylinder firing and made it through. I think they are real heroes.
