I was talking to a charterholder and he recommended using prior years exams to study. Im unsure of where to find these or even if theyre still available. Any one know anything more of this? I have the Q-Bank and the practice exams, etc., but the more tests available, the better. Thanks!
I had heard of a site called elitebook.net. You can find some old Schweser practice exams here. But I am not sure about the actual CFA (old) papers, I doubt they would be available. However, I just wonder how much going through past papers will help in the actual exam- if it does really help, then, given the time constraint to guys who are not able to devote time becoz of job demands, it will not be a bad idea to brush up all those questions and hope these questions reflect the actual pattern on D-day!
for some strange reason, it is converting the name of the site to some junk characters!
If you are using prior years exams to study, be mindfull about the changes over the years. It’s good, if you consider recent past year exams and their changes. Otherwise, wasting your effort in learning out-dated questions.
I want to know the site too…
The old exams are the closest approximation to the real thing in terms of structure and question quality. I highly recommend them if you can obtain somehow. The material will be the same about 80-90% of the time. I took a 2003 one and it was easily the closest in level of difficulty to the real thing. t The site automatically scrambles names of sites it deems to be either competition to AF or ones that post copyrighted material which of course is illegal and unethical.
I took and passed Level I in 1997 and I had some past exams that were quite helpful. However, CFAI (AIMR back then) stopped distributing past exams some time around that year–maybe before or shortly thereafter. So, if you think you have a copy of an actual CFAI exam from 2003, it was obtained illegally and you may want to consider reporting it to CFAI (remember your Ethics requirements). It’s more likely that it is not an actual copy of the exam–so, while it may be good practice, don’t expect to see the same questions on the exam. If you come across exams from 1997 and prior, they are more likely to be actual exams and some of the questions may be helpful–especially in areas where not much has changed, such as Accounting. So, I would not study intensively from these old exams, but it wouldn’t hurt to read through them during your “off” time–just don’t replace your designated studying time.
Here’s the answer from the CFAI website about release of questions: “CFA Institute has not released actual Level I multiple-choice questions since 1995 and does not release actual Level II and III item set questions.” Source: http://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprog/resources/questions.html