I’m considering paying $1.3k to take the live classes for L2. Have you taken the class? Do you recommend it?
I took the live online weekly class last year that was taught by Andy Holmes… it was very beneficial. He’s a damn good teacher, too.
Andy Holmes is awesome.
I did it for Level 1 and felt that it was excellent review and kept me on track. I stayed well ahead of the class in my readings though. For level 2 I am doing it again.
Disipline is my main concern! I want to be consistant and have a schedule/plan. I think i will do it for L2.
BTW - Did you guys who took the class. Did any of you pass because of it?
The class will not make you pass!! Only your commitment to learning the material and time can do that…
The class is great for a solid review of material and for staying on track from a pacing standpoint. To get the most from it, I suggest completing the readings and EOCs for the topic of the class well in advance. For level 1, I stayed a minimum of 2 weeks ahead of the class topic at any given point. This was beneficial in that the class was an additional review and reminder of the material as well as giving me the oppotunity for additional explanation and the ability to ask questions and recieve study suggestions.
Biggest Benefit for me is the additional repition… Hammer in the concepts to long term memory.
You also meet other people that are torturing themselves with this CFA program and you feel a bit better about you predicament… 
Great advice!
THank you SO MUCH and good luck in your CFA quest!
I took this last year with Holmes and in my opinion it’s worth the money especially if you’re learning the material for the first time. As a retaker this year I would get nothing out of it but last year when I passed L1 in December taking this course helped me stay on pace studying in the time I had. Holmes will teach you the high level concepts but understand that he is going to skip over lots of important material that will be on the exam. He’s there to teach you the biggest concepts and is very good at at it, but don’t only use his course for studying.
One other thing I would mention is he will over and over tell you to use his strategy of mastering the biggest weighted topics and only know “enough” on the smaller weighted ones. Basically he is telling you that you can’t know everything on the exam so your goal should be to get 70%+ on your “strength areas” and then 50% on everything else. I followed his advice and based on last years topic weights … well I am back again this year doing it again after getting band 8. No matter what he says you DO need to know everything and don’t skip over anything.
So overall its worth the money in my opinion but understand that he isn’t teaching you everything you need to know, he’s teaching you the high level concepts and you need to dig deeper into each reading on your own.
Bobby,
Did you work lots of problems on your own?
Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, that’s not great advice that he gave you, imho.
It’s impossible to know everything in the L2 curriculum, but it’s not impossible to take a serious shot at learning everything.
Focus on your weakest areas, whatever they are. Regardless of whether they’re big topics or small topics, it’s a lot easier to improve your 50% areas, than it is to improve your 70% areas.
I just wanted to quote this again for emphasis.
I’m also a retaker L2 Band 10 from Dec L1. I passed FRA,CF, Deriv,EQ and thought I had that sh!t in the bag. But alas, they had thrown some more crap from other smaller sections. Alothough I didnt approach the material thinking that I was going to ingore the smaller sections, I may have overweighted them in my study time to the extent that it became detrimental.
I’m looking at this as an opportunity to REALLY understand everything which I hope will help more in real world application rather than just regurgitating at the exam.
I think it’s required that you learn at least ~92% of the curriculum to pass. And solve 75% of the questions on the topics you learned correctly. Sounds realistic.
So guys!
What do you think? Should I spend the cash to take the course?
Yeah I did all the EOCs once and did the larger weighted topics more than once but the problem is there are readings that have no EOCs or are smaller readings that got item sets when they were never covered in the schweser material well enough to be able to answer the questions. Hard for me to describe without actually saying what was asked that gave me trouble. An example would be I got over 70% on equity and ethics … thats 30% of the exam right there and I was well prepared for those. On FRA I got 50-70%, I knew all the pension stuff, I knew inventories, multi-national currency stuff … but there are some other FRA readings that Holmes blew through because he was always behind and this caused me to overlook them and then boom, there was an item set on the exam on stuff I overlooked because in Holmes mind it was not “important” information. It’s my own fault for not putting more emphasis on it but considering he tells you he’s been teaching the material for 10 years you feel like you can trust him. But the truth is he cannot predict what they are going to ask on the exam.
In my opinion I would still recommend the course, just understand that it’s nearly impossible for Holmes to teach you everything you need to know in 3 hours per week from January to May. Anything he doesn’t cover in detail go back and learn on your own. I highly recommend the Elan notes. I am about 40% through the Elan notes and I am reading topics that were on the exam last year that I felt like schweser overlooked.
If I had to do it over again I would have taken Holmes course and also read the Elan notes, I think it would have made enough of a difference that I could have passed.
Great advice! Thanks for sharing!