Hello eveyrone, I use the CFAI books. For the level one I read each chapter and did all the exersices right away. I dont know if it was the best solution because after a few month I could not remember a lot of the exercises I did when I started or even just a month back. For level 2 I am wondering if I should: 1) fast read all the books and skim the exercises so that I can re-read everything but only focusing on the exercise and material and did not assimilate. Or 2) Do like I did in level 1; read each chapter and do the exercises after each chapters. What do you personnaly do? Thanks a lot for your inputs.
Both.
What do you mean both? You just making fun of me ? 
is it not a valid question?
He means it, do it both. This is Level II. Memorize the whole book if you have to and do what you feel is neccessary to pass. I write tons of notes and will be doing questions probably.
Read each chapter, then do the questions for that chapter.
When you’ve read everything, go back and do all of the questions again.
In short, do both.
Alright… Thx guys
I was wondering this myself. Whatever level it is, we all have time restraints and want to study as efficiently as possible. Doing the questions gives you a much better understanding of the topic, highlights weaknesses and gives you exam practice. However, it’s time consuming and doing the same questions a second time isn’t that useful.
Like you I did the EOC questions in L1 after each chapter. Despite this giving me a good understanding of the concepts, I still had to relearn a lot of what I’d done in the early months. When I went back over the questions I remembered a lot of the answers, diminshing the use of those questions.
At the moment (i’ve only just started) i’m doing the readings to get an understanding of the topics, but i’m not trying to commit everything to memory and not doing the EOC (I am doing the mid-chapter questions though). I’ll go back at the end and do them all as practice. I’d be interested to hear from someone who’s done this whether they felt it was the best approach, or whether they finished reading the material and had barely learnt anything.
I think what is key and will be critical in the later stages is how well you write your notes.
If you write good notes you can use those notes as review. If not, you may have to restudy various concepts.
read 1st
Then go back and answer all of the questions a third and fourth time.
Then do your Q-Bank (if you’re using Schweser).
Then do as many mock exams as you can find.
EXACTLY, this is the best (and probably only) way to study.
If you read everything and then go back to the questions, you would have forgotten everything you read, because the curriculum is HUGE.
Not to say that if you do the questions right away after each session will prevent you from forgetting things, but i think you will retain more information if you actually use it.
I will suggest that do questions the next day of reading any topic. That will help you know how much do you understood or remember.
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Read the chapter and try its exercises.It helps to improve your concepts.And you wont forget if you keep on practising the questions .Because doing questions is extremly helpful.
Level 2 is just really, really hard because there is so much material. No matter how you study, you have to go through each study session thoroughly then after you did all of that and questions for all of the material and hopefully you are done by April because you will have to relearn everything all over again. No matter what you do, you will forget it all and have to relearn and study it all. It’s like anything else you studied in school. First you read chapters, you do problems after you read the chapters (like homework) but all of that is for understanding, it’s not studying for the exam. Then you have to study for the final exam. The difference between CFA level 2 and everything else you have ever studied IS THE OBSCENE VOLUME OF INFORMATION YOU ARE EXPECTED TO KNOW INSIDE AND OUT, STANDING ON YOUR HEAD, WHILE DOING FLIP FLOPS ALL ON THE SAME DAY. And you will promptly begin forgetting it all the day after you take the exam. The only short cut that you can take is to use a test prep provider for reading only and use it in conjunctions with the CFAI books and then be very, very careful in what source you choose. I don’t recommend Schwesser, they omit a lot and haven’t kept up to date with changes in focus in the curriculum for years. I just read Elan’s free version of notes for Quant and was very impressed. I can’t say anthying about the rest of their materials since I haven’t used them. I would also stay away from videos, I find them much less helpful.
Level 2 is just really, really hard because there is so much material. No matter how you study, you have to go through each study session thoroughly then after you did all of that and questions for all of the material and hopefully you are done by April because you will have to relearn everything all over again. No matter what you do, you will forget it all and have to relearn and study it all. It’s like anything else you studied in school. First you read chapters, you do problems after you read the chapters (like homework) but all of that is for understanding, it’s not studying for the exam. Then you have to study for the final exam. The difference between CFA level 2 and everything else you have ever studied IS THE OBSCENE VOLUME OF INFORMATION YOU ARE EXPECTED TO KNOW INSIDE AND OUT, STANDING ON YOUR HEAD, WHILE DOING FLIP FLOPS ALL ON THE SAME DAY. And you will promptly begin forgetting it all the day after you take the exam. The only short cut that you can take is to use a test prep provider for reading only and use it in conjunctions with the CFAI books and then be very, very careful in what source you choose. I don’t recommend Schwesser, they omit a lot and haven’t kept up to date with changes in focus in the curriculum for years. I just read Elan’s free version of notes for Quant and was very impressed. I can’t say anthying about the rest of their materials since I haven’t used them. I would also stay away from videos, I find them much less helpful.