Ok, so I registered for the June exam in Nov. /07. I started the Stalla class and everything was going great. 3 classes into it, my life fell apart - i had some serious personal medical issues, work got insanely busy, etc. Anyway, long story short I haven’t thought about the exam until yesterday. Regardless, I still plan to sit for the exam in June. I was wondering what you think would be the best way to go about absorbing as much info as possible in the least amount of time. I was an economics major in college and have taken graduate level macro and micro so I should be ok on that front. I have graduate level econometrics and global portfolio management under my belt as well. I do financial statement analysis for a living, though I know that I will need to brush up on my journal entries, inventory valuations, etc. It is my hope that some of the information will be a refresher for me. My thought is to take one of the Stalla Practice exams, skip over the questions I literally don’t understand at all, completely review those sections and then use the rest of the test results as a gauge of how to spend my remaining time. I will do one test every few days or so. I had reviewed ethics in the beginning (when I actually studied) and did a problem set last night to see where I stood and scored 85% which I guess is alright but I’m assuming should be 100% for something that is basically given to you. Does this sound like a good approach? I understand that I am screwed and there is a very slim chance that I will pass but I really do want to give it my best shot. I will be attending my Stalla class tonight so I will ask my instructor his opinion as well but I’m afraid he will just laugh in my face. Anyway, any advise would be greatly appreciated. If you could keep the snarky “I hope you fail for waiting this long” comments to yourself too that would be nice, I already know I’m pretty much screwed…I don’t need it hammered into my head. Cheers, Erin
Erin, you’re probably going to get a lot of backlash from people on this board. But to be constructive, yeah, I think your approach is fine. Since you already have the background, just do questions. Read up really quickly on parts you don’t know. So when you do an exam (which should take a couple of hours), review the test and read quickly over the parts where you need a little refreshing. I’d say this whole process - taking a 120 q exam, and reviewing it should only take you maybe 4-5 hours total. Just keep doing this over and over and over until game day. My 2 c.
Yes I am aware of the backlash I will recieve. Without going into too much detail, I have a very serious heart condition that was acting up for the past few months that I had to take care of…it’s not like ~lol i frgot to studee how can i pass in 4 weekz pls~ In any event, I appreciate your response and I think that is what I will do. I have the Stalla CDs so I can watch the lectures on stuff I really need to focus on. I feel so badly that I spent so much money on this class and never really had the chance to get anything out of it. Best of luck to you!
the heaviest weightings on the exam are in Ethics and FSA… seems you have a higher chance of passing if you get above average scores in these two areas… i would put more focus on these subjects if i were you…good luck.
Thanks Skip - I will be taking off 4 days before the exam, most of which I will dedicate to taking the CFAI mock exams, really nailing into FSA and making sure my Ethics is impeccable. Cannot afford to miss those giveaways. I also plan on spending a little extra time on quant since in most of the scores posts I’ve seen here - many scores that are very similar overall seemed to have quant as the deciding factor between pass and fail.
Given your background, do this and you should pass. Get hold os the Schweser Videos (I used Schweser, I guess Stalla would work). Sit and watch them with pad at hand, take notes as if you were in class, stop them and refer to the texts if a topic is not clear from the presentation. If you finish by the Monday before the test, crank out a couple of practice exams, and ID the “low hanging fruit”, ie topics that you got wrong on the practice tests that are very testable but easily crammable in a couple of days. And your thoughts on the practice exmas are exactly right. When you takea practice test NEVER answer a question unless you are sure that you know it. Est your score based on # right plus 25% of those skipped. It’s faster, and that way you know to review those topics in addition to the ones you thought you knew and got wrong. Otherwise you might guess right now, skip the review, and guess wrong when test time rolls around.
Thanks Super - Yeah, I have the Stalla videos so I would use those. I also have the Stalla Mock exam next Saturday where they mimic test taking conditions and then go over the entire test the next day which I think will be very helpful for me. Thank you for the advice on the scoring. I really hope my background will make this a bit easier but I’m fully prepared to/would not be surprised/upset if I failed. That was a weird sentence. 