Minimum Time Required to Pass Level III

[rockmania]

@waleedhussain

@Thelasthurdle

If you are a wealth manager, a portfolio manager, an investment advisor, an investment banker, a senior finance analyst with 10 year experience in wealth management and use all kind of products (fixed rent, variable rent, derivatives, structured assets, real estate, etc); you may pass the exam with little study. If not, it will just be a gamble.

Good luck mate.

Thanks for your response:) I have one month of time in August. So, will try get a start now in this month and then move on further from there in April.

Do not believe in such Cinderalla stories. People say such things while drunk. If you have full time job then least amount of time l think ‘may’ get you pass is dedicated study of atleast 3 months 4-5 hours weekdays and 20 hours weekends. CFA is not get-pass-quick thing–like there’s no get-rich-quick things in real life, except in very few and exceptional cases.

+100

[babyik]

300 hours

[FlyingIguana]

i dont think i studied 600 hours for all 3…

[JohnnyDeformed]

@Harrogath

@JohnnyDeformed

I passed exam 2 with two weeks of studying. That was full time though, 12+ hours a day. For exam 3 I did three weeks. In some ways it’s better, since there’s less time to forget, but 2-3 hours a day for longer would be a better approach. It just wasn’t possible for me to do it that way.

I also have a lot of experience in the topics and these types of exams.

Let me guess… you did L1 in one week.

Well, maybe the experience.

I did level 1 over 3-4 months. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I figured it would be best to put in the time. I knew the material well, ready for any question. That was overkill, as the questions ended up being much easier than the material could have allowed for.

There was just no time for exams 2 & 3. I did worse on those, some 50-70s on exam 2 and and some under 50s on exam 3, but passed nonetheless. I am a actuary with pension and insurance experience so I was familiar with many of the topics.

[Macro]

I did some detailed accounting of my study hours. I put in 290 hours in total, but about 25% of it was inefficient/distracted (social media checking, tv, breaks). I would say if you really focus yourself, you can squeeze it out in 220 hours, which is what I consider to be my amount of focused time.

[Mathy29]

I’m almost in the exact same boat - I’m a pension actuary and studied for a couple weeks for level 1 and level 2. I put maybe 4 weeks in for level 3, and I just barely passed. It could have easily gone the other way.

A lot of the material is covered somewhere in the actuarial exams and we discount cash flows for a living. A lot of advice for pension plans translates well into retirement planning for individuals, which was a plus as well.

[reisaroni]

For level 3, 200 hours minimum if you have notable experience in the area of asset mgmt

300 hours if not

I agree with those who say start early. A lot of this is conceptual, fits together and takes a while to sink in unless you have significant work experience in this space. It’s not like level 2 where you can simply grind through it with brute force, albeit brutally,

[MrSmart]

I may be an outlier seeing as I started sometime in late February, early March. I registered 200 hours at the most, and judging by my matrix, could’ve gone down to 150. However, I found the material interesting to read, which made it easier to absorb. I’d say 200 is the minimum.