Question for those who relied exclusively/primarily on third-party study guides

Was there anything on Saturday’s exam that you had never seen in your studying? Don’t say what – recall that you’re not allowed to discuss the specifics of the exam – just whether or not there were ideas, phrases, or what-have-you that you didn’t encounter in your studying. Feel free to identify the prep provider if you’re so disposed. Thanks.

I used Schweser exclusively, I can’t recall anything on the exam that I hadn’t seen before - if I hadn’t then it wasn’t big enough to remember, anyways.

Same for me. Used only Schweser (just did some BB/EOCs) and there was nothing completly new. However, I did a lot of old exams, so I may recall sth that has been asked there and wasn’t covered well in Schweser.

But for me it seems that my strategy of only reading Schweser worked as well as for the first 2 levels.

This was my third time writing L3. The first two times I relied exclusively on Schweser since that’s what I had successfully done for L1 and 2. This time, I used both the CFAI curriculum and Schweser, only doing CFAI EOC, practice tests and mocks. Personally, I found that Schweser was good for directing your focus to the necessary points of each LOS, but I wouldn’t recommend using it exclusively.

I used CFAI & Schweser (notebooks + mocks). I found the schweser mocks were very helpful in preparing, especially in that they shared a lot of the same heavy weights on their pm sections that we ended up seeing.

I used schwesers - I didn’t see anything that I was not familier with.

I have studied only with CFAI materials and were not familiar with some topics (5% of the exam)…

Which means: pay attention when you study!

Happy to see in the answers above that it was well covered. The exam is pretty much fair.

Apart from some minor details and some terms used in the actual exam, Schweser books were pretty solid

I used primarily Schweser and past exams, although I read most of the CFAI material months earlier, like back in 2014. I thought it prepared me well for about 95% of the test. There were at least 2 questions in the PM that were not directly covered in Schweser although I think I was able to piece them together. Overall, I’d say 95% coverage is pretty good for the time saved by reading Schweser notes compared to CFAI text.

Used Schweser books, mocks etc and past exams going back 6years. I did poorly on the last parts. Was not prepared for the way the material was tested. OK otherwise. Not sure how i’d prep for that next year…