Failed band 8 here. First time failer after easily clearing L1 and L2. I must of put in minimum 400 hrs for L3, starting in November. After the exam I was 95% I passed, thinking I killed it. This is what scares me. Reading your posts is really motivating me and as another poster mentionned, I was amazed at what I remembered when I was reading the 2010 LOS, I feel I could possibly do the exam tomorrow and this time pass. Plan: - Keep things fresh here till January, light reading 3-4 hours per week - January on: EOC 3x; All 10 CFAI past exams (and actually write down my answer); re-read schweser; complement with CFAI on week areas. 2010 is ours gents.
Sims, I’m with you - L1 and 2 were pretty easy for me. I unfortunately only put in 150 hours for L3, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with my result. After the world blew up at the end of '08, my work life just became totally insane. I haven’t ordered the books yet. I think I still need a few more days to cope with my decision. There goes another 550 bucks and then another 400 for Schweser.
Yeah, 2010 is ours. I’m glad I found this forum. You guys are motivating. One thing that I did for level 1, 2, and 3 that I think helped tremendously was that I took many of the CFAI EOC and Stalla problems and modeled them in Excel. All you have to do is hide the answer, change a few inputs, attempt the problem again, then unhide and see if you got it right. You then have infinite practice problems. I think my score said it all, I had no trouble on most things that need to be calculated…except for that dang cost of capital calculation on the written side. I agree with a fellow poster, there’s not enough IPS practice anywhere. I’m not sure how to address that. My strategy will now be to go ahead and order the 2010 CFAI books, and lightly review a few hours a week. Come January, I’lll turn the afterburners on again.
Second time failing. I knew my work so much better this time round and ended up doing worse in the exam (still not sure how but assuming the exam was easier thus the relative scores where higher). As far as those repeating I’d say its a good idea to spend about 50 hours or so running through the schweser material. Some Time over then next couple month just to do a refresh then start in January with your study plan. I think all out early studying too often leads to burn-out. I might thrown in a couple reviews of the secret sauce before the end of the year, just for good measure.