don’t waste your time wtih CFAI curriculum - use all schweser. went 3/3 in 18mo with schweser only (premium package, including vids, extra practice tests). spend the money, unless 6 more months of your life is worth less than $1,000.
There are valuable takeaways in the books. Schweser is a good study tool to have, but do not skip the books entirely.
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Kaplan Secret Sauce
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Kaplan Cheat Sheet
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PRACTICE EXAMS
mine is here
Mock Manifesto
http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-iii-forum/91344856
I used CFAI material only and passed each exam on first attempt. Not a single question in the exams took me by surprise although it took forever to go through the material compared to other providers i guess.
I respectfully disagree with marshallbrm’s “avoid Finquiz” comment. I passed on my second attempt (Band 7 last year). I used their Notes (didn’t do their Mocks though) rather than re-reading the CFAI curriculum this time around and found them very helpful. I saved a ton of time that I used later on in my Mock (aka: where the rubber meets the road) phase:
- 2005-2014 CFAI AM papers
- Books 1 and 2 Schweser total 6 exams, PM only (a lot of these were considerably harder than the real CFA PM imho)
- All CFAI BB and EOC Qs
- 3 CFAI PM Mocks (2 from this year and one from last year) plus all their web Qs
- And back to BB and EOC Qs on weak areas.
My matrix had 7 sections under 50% in AM and seven sections over 70% in PM. Thank God for the PM!
Hey.
This my first and probably the last post in this forum.
Feel its like my duty to share WHAT WORKED FOR ME.
- Its completely TRUE that scheweser books are more than enough to score above average scores in all levels of exam. This is especially crucial as it reduces so much of required hours of study. Although CFA ciricullm books are excellent, you can study them out of passion later. for exam oriented study scheweser covers everything. Afterall we all are working professionals here and after returning from office its hard to have enough energy left daily to study from ciricullum. i have never read single page out of the ciricullum.
2.Read and revise at least three times before the exam. my short term memory is good, so for level 3 i have followed this time table. i started in april and i started slow and gradually picked up speed and interests. you dont want to get exhausted one month before exam. you should be at your best as u get close to exam. so i started late. from april 1 to may15th. first round of study from schweser. then two days of practice exams. then first revision of all books in ten days. followed by all remaining papers. totally i did 10 papers. 6 schweser. 3 past year AM. and one mock exam. At last third revision in 3-4 days. you are good to go.
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most important thing i noticed in level 3 is to study in order of ciricullum. i mean you must start with private welath managment, than insitutional than capital market expectations and so on. because the portion is constructed so beautifully, if you go in order it helps to build a perspective. i have seen people who start studying with fixed income and than equity and than something else. i feel thats not a good idea. going in order will be easier to understand and to rememeber.
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Please try to keep your answers short in AM session, otherwise you will definitely not complete the paper.
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Dec / Jan start Read through CFAI texts and do EOC, don’t care too much about complete knowledge, skip ethics, this is mostly so you can know were to look to review for problem areas quickly when you start mocks.
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March / April Take first Mock and get face ripped off. Go back and review scheweser notes and questions, Blue boxes and EOCs on problem areas, Repeat as many times as possible till exam date.
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One week prior to test read up on ethics, mostly do practive questions. Try to do at least 3 timed mocks in final week, makes exam day feel easy.
Tip for AM section.
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Read question and think about if it was a multiple choice question what would the answers look like, this helps you pick out tricks and keeps you focused.
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For every question write down the minute hand of the clock. so if it says 10:12 you write down 12 on top of the question. When you finish the question compare that time to the time alotted to the question. This allows you to easily see if you are keeping pace and if you can relax or need to speed up for every question.
Also use Anki to create equation flashcards and do them every day (ankisrs.net). Add new ones for problems you fail.
Best flashcard system out there and free as well.
Overall Strategy:
Go through the curriculum (for me - Schweser reading material & EOC Qs) in about 2 months. I studied from March to April.
Early May - review any weak areas, try to redo EOC questions.
Mid May - start practice exams (Schweser, old mocks).
AM Section:
People who failed did not finish in time. Make sure you pace yourself, and do not go over the suggested time. If you spend 20 minutes on a question on a 10 minute question, this will hurt you big time. I am a quick reader and I pass on questions as soon as I realize that I do not know the answer. This helped me, as I finished the test in about 2 hours then I went back to the questions that I did not know. Time management is key.
Don’t be discouraged. I finished the reading by beginning of April and spent two months doing mock exams. I took a really hard red pen to each exam and graded myself really thoroughly. I scored below 70 on each practice exam I took (to be fair none lower than 50) and passed.
Do not bother with the Kaplan Schweser mock exams. They are terrible. I took three of them and left the last set of exams untouched. They teach you nothing.
Flashcards aren’t my thing but I bought them anyway. They were “ok”.
I did a 3 Day Kaplan Review in Boston and it was decent but not nearly as useful as the Level 2 one.
David Hetherington is no Andy Holmes but his videos are pretty good. I’d recommend watching the videos for each subject/reading then doing the actual CFA reading and then doing Kaplan reading in that order.
Overall, read the material (especially the CFAI readings), do the EOC practice problems (all of them) and do at least the last 4 years of CFAI actual exams (preferrably more than once) and sit back and relax because you’re done with the CFA program.
Yeah, never take advice from a guy who passed all 3 exams in 18 months. After all, what would I know?
Before hitting most of the advice already addressed above, I’ll add one rarely touted resource that helped me at all three levels. THE SCHWESER 3-DAY EXAM WORKBOOK QUESTIONS. This is a book of ~200 of the most challenging questions, organized by topic area. Finish all of the problems in early May and you will (1) nail most of the formula based problems and (2) identify areas of weakness. The 3-Day class itself is useless, but you have to sign-up to get the workbook. Why it is useful: (1) The Q-Bank is too large for rapid review of key questions by topic, (2) EOC questions are too broad and numerous, (3) practice tests are too disperse. The 3-Day workbook allows for a focused review of 70%-80% of the questions you’ll see.
On learning the material (while working a full-time job): Schweser text, CFA EOC, Quizlet
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Ignore the order in which CFA presents the material and start with Individual/Institutional PM. You want to practice the CFA EOC questions for Individual/Institutional Portfolio Management early in the semester. IPS ARE CRUCIAL TO LEVEL III and a very different animal than the LI/LII material.
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Read Schweser text and do Schweser EOC questions before the last week of April. CFA text was too dense for me (see below; except the CFA text on Ethics, which you should read).
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Do CFA EOC questions. Try to get in as many as you can before the last week of April. I didn’t have them all done by then, but finished most by the end of May after revisiting topics for focused review.
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Make Quizlet flashcards. Keep track of key formulas or concepts in a doc like those linked to below and convert each bullet into flashcards. The epic “Helpful Notes” post by adam.runk64 has a lot of good flashcard material (it is overkill, but worth a look, I had ½ as many flashcards). Review the flashcards whenever you would otherwise check twitter/Instagram, etc. Quizlet lets you only review terms you don’t know so over time you will narrow the knowledge gap. Learning the formulas/terms will help you move quickly on exam day.
Link to notes page example: http://wikisend.com/download/385082/CFA Level III Self-Quiz (ANSWER) v3.pdf
Link to “Blank Quiz” example: http://wikisend.com/download/540628/CFA Level III Self-Quiz (BLANK) v3.pdf
Quizlet CFA L3: https://quizlet.com/_1e9dx3
[Note: these notes have lots of shorthand cues only I can interpret and may contain small errors so you shouldn’t copy it. Making your own notes reinforces the material]
Helpful Notes: http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-iii-forum/91343173
On getting in reps: Essay Workshop, Schweser mocks, four years CFA exams (~10 tests)
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Do the Schweser Saturday Essay Workshop. You will cover 50% of the AM questions from the last decade. I sat down to do the last 10 years’ AMs after the class and found we had covered a lot of the material. SIGN-UP EARLY TO GET AN EARLY MAY SPOT. You want your poor performance to scare you early.
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Do the Schweser Practice/Mock Exams starting the last week of April (even if you aren’t through all the material, start testing): some people on this forum hate on Schweser tests at Level 3, but don’t buy it. They are great for finding weak points and relearning material. Come May, you won’t remember what you read in January so mocks are a useful refresher. Try to squeeze in all six before mid-May (maybe 1x per weekend, 1x during week = 6x). Goes without saying that you should review what you got wrong. Test difficulty varies so don’t be discouraged if test #2 is a 70% and test #4 is a 62%. I think Schweser varies difficulty to keep you on your toes.
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Do the Schweser Live Mock in early/mid May. You can sub one of the 6 Schweser practice tests for the live mock.
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Do Last four years’ CFA exams: focus on time management. GET TO EVERY QUESTION WITHIN THREE HOURS. Grade and learn. Combined with the Essay Workshop, you’ll cover enough AM material to feel comfortable on exam day. 10 years’ worth of AMs is overkill.
Very useful post about past AMs:
What is relevant from past Level III essay exams…: http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-iii-forum/91341866
Last two weeks: current year CFA mocks, daily Quizlet review of what you can’t remember, selective review
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DON’T GET FREAKED OUT BY OVERACHEIVERS POSTING HIGH SCORES ON PRACTICE EXAMS ON ANALYSTFORUM OR TALKING ABOUT DOING EVERY PROBLEM IN THE Q-BANK. KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN AND FOCUS ON THE CFA MATERIAL IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS. No disrespect to the harder working people on the site.
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Do one of the official, current year, CFA provided mock exams two weekends before the test and one the weekend before. Simulate the testing environment.
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Other CFA material to use:
o Ethics and GIPS multiple choice Qs provided on the cfainstitute website
o Portions of recent CFA exams that you haven’t gotten to (e.g., did 2013-2015, but not 2012 AM section)
o I reviewed the CFA Fixed Income EOC Qs because it is ALWAYS A BIG SECTION ON THE EXAM. Fixed Income is a strange beast that covers currency management, risk management, managing pensions and touches on a lot of topics.
o EOC Qs for sections that need improvement. I spent the last few days before the exam going over tough questions and material I wasn’t 100% sure of in the Workshop Workbook and CFA EOCs Qs.
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Ethics/GIPS: read Schweser/CFA Ethics/GIPS in January and do the CFA Ethics Qs the week of the exam. I did them the Friday before, but felt a few days earlier would have been better. I did CFA text GIPS Qs at some point in May—not knowing it will frustrate you on your practice exams because it is a consistent 5% hit to your score.
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Try to workout a few times the week of the exam and in the morning the Friday before the test. I forewent running to do Ethics Qs on Friday so I was wired Friday night and slept 30-45 minutes. You want to be tuckered out come Friday night.
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Probably a good idea to take a sleeping pill the night before. Don’t do it for the first time the night before; try it first one or two nights during the last two weeks so you know how it effects your mood and sleep quality. I used melatonin to avoid being groggy, only to take a second melatonin after three hours awake and never really getting to sleep. I wish I had used a prescription grade sleeping aid.
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Run flashcards until you go to bed the night before. I saved the last couple of hours on Friday night to review all the flashcards for one final refresh of the material. I don’t buy watching a movie the night before.
Exam Day:
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Review IPS material in the morning, pension/individual PM formulas, etc. I definitely gained 1-2 points from material I reviewed last minute before entering the exam hall.
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AM: work expeditiously. BE VERY DISCIPLINED ABOUT MEETING THE TIME ALLOTMENT FOR EACH QUESTION AND MOVING ON. Can’t stress this enough. If you’re falling 5-10 minutes behind, you have to speed up answers on other questions to make it up. You want to give each question a try. I wrote the time I had to move on at the top of the page of each new question.
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Review Ethics and GIPS notes/flashcards during lunch (unless tested in the AM). Again, you can pick up a point or two.
What to avoid:
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Don’t read the CFA text: I could never make it through the dense CFA text. I used CFA material for focused review on weak areas / topics I didn’t fully understand. Pro-tip: it is easier to scroll through the digital text when you’re pressured for time in May. A few mouse wheel scrolls doesn’t feel as burdensome as six physical pages of text. The exam will have a few multiple choice points’ worth of material Schweser doesn’t cover well, but those points are worth far less than the benefit of covering the material early.
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Don’t worry about doing every blue box question. It is overkill. Use them to better understand topics that confuse you. The EOC Qs cover most of what’s tested in the blue boxes.
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On the Schweser weekly online class (David Hetherington): waste of time. Having someone read Schweser text to you doesn’t help. The whole “you retain 10% of what you read and 20% of what you hear” is bunk in the context of high-level, CFA learning. Trying to actively understand the material as you read it is much more useful than hearing the material read to you for three hours. The class format should be: class does a question, everyone reviews together. Repeat for three hours (but it is not). The one benefit of the class are scary emails in late April/May telling you how many practice tests you should have taken at that point in time—those emails are motivating, but not worth price of admission.
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You can’t focus by topic weight like you can for Level I and II. Level III mashes a bunch of topics together in different sections (e.g., an Equity LOS could be tested in an Individual PM section). Assuming you’ll get enough IPS practice through mocks/CFA EOC, Fixed Income is the only topic that warrants extra attention.
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Never used Q-bank. Too broad, overkill.
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Found out about LevelUp Bootcamps on this forum in May and freaked out that I was behind for not knowing about it. If you can afford it, might as well do it, but you’ll be ok only doing mocks and the essay workshop.
See here for more on LevelUp: http://www.analystforum.com/forums/cfa-forums/cfa-level-iii-forum/91338171
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Don’t think that if you pass L2, L3 is a cakewalk. L3 is equally difficult.
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Start early…perhaps Jan.
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Beware of essay section and get in the groove of hand writting what you know. Definitely take some mock essay to get sense of time pressure for essay section.
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Have a target of 70% combined. Most likely essay will achieve less…so you have to hit more in multiple choice…which means less room for error in multiple choice as compared to previous CFA levels. So, know your stuff inside out. Damage control in AM (target of 55-60%) and Kill the PM (75% and above).
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Stay calm and control your anxieties on the D-day.
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form your study strategy and plan your study calendar before the 6 months of studying starts, and STICK TO IT
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Overstudying and passing is better than understudying and being an annual visitor to the exam hall for a decade of your life
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Text reading should be complete by the end of month 2 to give you 4 months of practicing and drilling stuff down
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do not frequent this forum during prep time as a means of entertainment or asking for advice or explanations on things you dont understand (i simply never come on here during the 6 months of exam prep)
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sacrifice and invest the time from your annual leave from work to study for the exam
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dont get too obsessed with timing yourself on practice exams but rather understand how to answer efficiently and how to make the executive decision to move on to the next question whenever you get stuck
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finally DONT MAKE PERSUING THE CHARTER DEFINE YOUR LIFE AND BECOME THE PURPOSE OF YOUR EXISTENCE !
AND ALWAYS SWICTH YOUR PHONE OFF WHILE STUDYING OR MAKE SURE ITS BEYOND REACH
Sounds like pretty solid advice to me.
- Schweser all the way - I only used Schweser for L1-3. Schweser covers at least 95% of the material in the exam. I don’t think it’s worth it to pore through the dense CFA material just to find the remaining 5%
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As long as you master the material in Schweser, you’ll be fine (duh)
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I did use the CFA curriculum, but only if I felt Schweser wasn’t being clear enough, which was quite rare
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Then again, different strokes for different folks
- Make your own notes
- The purpose of taking your own notes is two-fold
(a) It condenses the material into something that is shorter and easily understandable for you
(b) Writing down notes ensures that you are actively reading and understanding the material, not just passively glancing at what is in the page
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Practice past AM exams (duh)
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Answer EOC questions, both in Schweser and curricullum
- Personally, I never answered the EOC questions in the curriculum because the online version of the curriculum is just a pain in the ass, but answering the Schweser EOCs was a good barometer of whether I really understood the material that I just read or not
- Take note of common questions
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As you take your practice exams, you’ll notice that a lot of topics repeat all the time (e.g., writing an individual IPS, finding the number of futures, immunization, etc.)
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Identify these topics and make sure that you understand them through and through; don’t just memorize how to solve these; undertstand why the problem was solved that way
- Study ethics and GIPS last
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You should be able to remember ethics from L1 and L2, but if you don’t, just read the material once or twice and start answering practice questions immediately
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For GIPS, this should be fine: http://www.cfaexamlevel3.com/blog/Avoid-Memorization-and-Score-Points-on-GIPS-for-CFA-L3/
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Maybe read the GIPS material once or twice, aside from knowing the things above, but don’t spend too much time on it; it’ll probably be tested in one set in the afternoon
Use whatever tactic you used for L1 and L2, but allot some time to practice AM.
Master time management in AM portion so you don’t leave any easy points out there. No excuse not to finish if you practice writing short and to the point.
It has been said mutiple times before but it really helped me a lot for the AM: READ the question carefully. Focus on what is exactly asked. Structure the answer in your mind first, think does that make sense ? If yes only then put it on paper. Be concise in your response. Dont be tempted into writing too much. Focus on the content instead. Good Luck !
I believe writing in bullet points is a myth as the risk of leaving out information is higher; hence, the reason average level 3 passer has ~5 AM vignettes below 50%.