As I sit here ready to begin spending my Saturday night alone and studying, again (last Saturday for awhile ;)), I thought it’d be good to start a thread that would provide me with just a tiny bit of entertainment while I study.
We are less than one week from D-Day and I’m sure everyone regrets something or another regarding their studying or lack thereof.
For me,
I regret not studying for Level 2 during the 60 days between level 1 test day and test results day. I felt pretty good coming out of the L1 exam and I feel like that was a lot of time wasted waiting. Alas, I didn’t have the stomach to start studying for the L2 exam without the certainty that I passed L1.
My second regret is spending too much time on Quant. I have no background in statistics so Quant was very difficult but also very interesting. I spent a lot of time trying to fully understand everything and I’m not sure how necessary that is for passing the exam. I wish I had spent that time mastering Derivatives and Fixed Income instead because I still am not at all proficient in those two topics and they both have a higher weighting than Quant.
Anyway that’s it! If you need a few minutes away from studying, please share what you wish you’d done differently.
This is not easy…at all. I did well on L1 and have nailed L2 six ways from Sunday. My regret however, was not getting to the CFAI assessments sooner. Are you finding them to be a bit more difficult? I didnt seem to have a problem with EOC CFAI/Schweser Mock or Wiley Q bank…but these assesments are making me think twice. Any thoughts?
I regret not watching the 11th hour video on FRA last weekend…b/c of olinto now i’m praying for a pension and multinational question in FRA…
Again Wiley you suck…for releasing these videos 30 days before…If you released these earlier…I think many of us using your material…would feel 1000000000x more confident passing the CFA level 2 exam.
This would be my regret #3 lol. I couldn’t agree more, I’m finding them more difficult as well.
I feel very stupid because I didn’t realize there were so many practice questions on CFAI, I would have started them sooner. I should have checked early on but just didn’t.
What do you mean Olinto did the 11th hour video? I have the Wiley CFA Level II Videos and those were done by Basit Shajani and I have the Wiley Virtual Classroom and these topics were covered by someone else - I think Bill Campbell. Is there another set of videos somewhere? God, I just spent the whole day rereading pensions and multinationals and I could have been watching Olinto??? I feel like crying.
Lammy they are part of the 11th hour intensive review course.
It’s really confusing and Wiley really messed up this year with this…
But it’s inside the review section where you set up a review schedule/study plan.
They put up 16 new videos of intensive review, on May 7th I believe. These intensive reviews are straight to the point and is most videos they just explain to you how to solve the toughest problems and how to remember stuff better.
The ones done by Olinto is where he goes through the hardest topics and just solves problems and goes the length in explaining it in detail.
Derivatives, Equity and FRA are all done by him…and are really really good which makes me wish…I had to watch it twice.
What is messed up is these were last years videos. The only ones that were new are done by a guy named Daren Campbell. He’s really good as well.
So they could have easily just released these videos with the other 50 something videos in January.
Started early Feb. Would have been preferrable to start a month earlier. I second the overlook of the practice tests on CFAI. I was using QBank instead, which I realized was useful but a bit too easy. I since discovered restricting Q-Bank to the hard questions makes it a bit more adequately challenging, at least at par with the CFAI material.
Also, preferrably I would have used CFAI all across. As I review, I find some parts of the material more comprehensible than Schweser and augmented with real-life context. Only issue: way too lengthy for the time I had on hand. But I might consider CFAI-only to study for L3 next fall…
For me, I started studying FRA first, out of all the topics, a couple months after sitting for L1 last June. My thought process was that I would bang that out first since it’s one of the most heavily weighted topics, and then I could constantly brush up on it once I moved onto the other sections.
This plan COMPLETELY backfired, and I practically forgot most by the time I got done through the curriculum. I would have been better off saving that for the end.
My Regret - Passing too much of time in reading notes and book and not practicing. Though completed all the mocks (only one left is CFAI), But i think more than reading, its all about practice. More you do, more you get a grip on the subject.
I think you can always wish you had more time. To be in the position I am in now one month ago would put me in an even better position to pass but you’ll always wish you had more time because there’s so much to know.
The practice tests on CFAI website. If you are being serious with that question, you should log on to CFAI today and start hammering away at the practice tests IMO.
