reality check: what candidates face after level 1

iteracom Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I agree. If you put in 4 hours, but spent 3 hours > imagining sugar plums dancing around, you still > spent 4 hours. > > Heck you can further divide productive studying > into levels of productivity. but what’s the point > of that? +1

All this discussion on the amount of hours studying is useless… Instead of simply saying how many hours you plan on studying, describe your BACKGROUND too… People who have studied many of these subjects in graduate school (or undergrad) are clearly ahead of the game as most is refreshing…and comparing hours studying is like comparing apples to oranges (same idea to professionals in finance already versus fresh graduates in a major unrelated to the material) Also, a major factor is your ability to understand material quickly… Some people can study Time Series analysis for 15 hours and still do worse on an exam compared to someone who spent 2 hoursEverybody’s mind works differently and some are more intelligent than others.

CFA Jay Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am sorry but I do not beleive you can study 600 > actual hardcore hours and fail L2. Just cannot > happen. Assuming 600 ‘actual hardcore hours’ could likely be >1000 ‘actual real hours’, sure, why not. That’s over 5 hours everyday for 6 months in order to ensure passing, as opposed to merely having a chance of passing. Some may scoff, but for those who fear uncertainty, that’s the reality check. To address individual differences, here’s a multi-factor model I am pulling out of my rear end: the probability of passing is related to 1) the number of 'hardcore hours’™ spent, 2) prior knowledge of the aggregate material in the curriculum, 3) IQ, and 4) random chance.

There is no point comparing how many hours others put in and whether they passed or failed. The real benchmark is your own effort level for passing level 1. For L2 preparation, make sure you put in 25 to 40% more effort above that benchmark and your chances will be fairly decent. Just know that L2 is more complex and bigger in volume than L1. So, adjust your effort levels accordingly against your own L1 benchmark.

+1 I think that’s the best advice !

Not working in a traditional analyst job, I put in about 150-200 hours of good studying and posted a good score passing all but econ and ai - although not necessarily killing everything. Studying efficiently is important because if you don’t you can spin your wheels a lot. I know people who passed with as little as 30 hours of studying in levels 2 and 3. They tend to be in the industry and quite smart. I.E. one is a buy side analyst for a top institutional investor with econometric degrees from a prestigious university. He told me his cfa charter is in a manilla folder somewhere forgotten about along with his varsity letters from highschool. For people like that the quant, math, econ, fra, port, equity, corp fin sections are second nature and they don’t really need to do very much except master ethics and get the basics of fixed income and derivs. This is why the required hours doesn’t really make sense. Odds are if you are on this forum you are probably not one of those guys. For normal human beings just put in a lot of time, writing, and repeating until you know the subjects well. It’s not impossible to pass because it is not very specialized. I’d guess: Analyst with a few years experience and fin degree <50 hours of solid studying required Non analyst > 100 hours of studying required what do you guys think?

Bottom line: It all depends on the person. I have some friends that are scary smart (Perfect SATs, 770+ GMAT, etc…). These guys can look at something once and completely understand it without asking a single question. On the other side of the “smart” spectrum are those people who work and work and work until they understand something. Case in point, I have a friend in medical school who self admittedly is not that smart and he is kind of right. He spent almost every waking hour while we were in undergrad, in the library, studying his @ss off because he had to work so hard before he could understand the material. So basically you have “lazy smart” and “work hard smart”. There are plenty of people that fall somewhere in between. If you combine “lazy smart” with a deep finance background you will end up with the type of candidate that can clear L2 or L3 with <100 hours of study. Even the lazy smart folks can fail any level of the CFA exam. I know a derivatives professor that failed L2. He even failed derivatives. What did he get on his SAT? 1600

Chuckrox8 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Bottom line: It all depends on the person. I have > some friends that are scary smart (Perfect SATs, > 770+ GMAT, etc…). These guys can look at > something once and completely understand it > without asking a single question. On the other > side of the “smart” spectrum are those people who > work and work and work until they understand > something. Case in point, I have a friend in > medical school who self admittedly is not that > smart and he is kind of right. He spent almost > every waking hour while we were in undergrad, in > the library, studying his @ss off because he had > to work so hard before he could understand the > material. > > So basically you have “lazy smart” and “work hard > smart”. There are plenty of people that fall > somewhere in between. If you combine “lazy smart” > with a deep finance background you will end up > with the type of candidate that can clear L2 or L3 > with <100 hours of study. > > Even the lazy smart folks can fail any level of > the CFA exam. I know a derivatives professor that > failed L2. He even failed derivatives. What did > he get on his SAT? 1600 Yep, that’s it: lazy smart vs work hard smart. And I completely agree about the second paragraph. The smartest fin guy I know past level 1 with virtually no studying, level 2 with less than 20. He then went on to study about 30 for level 3 and failed. He never went back again. The fact that he makes over a million a year without the charter probably had something to do with it though.

oh yeah Chicken Tikka Masala, I know a bro who studied 10 hours for L1, 15 for L2, and 20 for L3 and passed them all on the first try. Bro was SCARY smart.

do you guys really sit there and count hours? how should i normalize (hard hours vs lazy hours)? which weeks you studied more which less? i thought about giving you a kind of 90% confindence interval but it would be far too wide… so let me put it that way: read schweser twice (incl doing EOC), did all CFAI EOC (once, except FSA which I took three times), read ethics with CFAI in addition to schweser, did all schweser mock exams (vol 1+ 2) and did the CFAI mock. passed with a reasonable margin. would just work work through that plan again no matter how many hours it takes… still L2 is a beast…price in a margin with the practise exams (had for example 84% on CFAI Mock, which was a joke compared to the real one)

Counting hours isn’t that useful unless you are really starting from almost scratch. Then you could probably see how much it takes from learning this for the first time. If you are already pretty well into this stuff then hours done isn’t such an issue as the benchmarks don’t apply to you. Research analysts have a field day with econ, equity, fra, corp fin, port man(?) unless they suck. It’s second nature. If they come from a math background quant is a joke. That really makes ethics the only hurdle. The rest they can afford to bleed a bit.

completely disagree. every topic you have to learn it the cfa-way. you mentioned a senior analyst could do it <50h: CFAI has a special offer for those: take all exams in 3 weeks time. just talked to a super senior analyst who was a bit bored because there was too much time for l1. CFAI now thinks about offering the possibility to earn the charter in 2 1/2 weeks. for the more realistic people: even if you are a specialist (analyst or whatever) you will have maybe 2-3 topics which are quite easy (for me was derivatives, and in part FI and quant) but the more senior you are the more knowledge you lack in the other stuff because university is simply too long ago. and still my advice is to not underestimate “your” topics, you have to learn how CFAI asks you about it…there are people out there who structured CDOs and got hammered on CDO vignette and also math guys got hammered on quant.