Does anyone else see how strange it is to have such a delay in receiving results from the test? The CFA institute doesn’t want us to use Schweser or other 3rd party materials, right? So they say, “ok guys, you have to buy our books now when you sign up”. They also tell us that you’re not allowed to sign up or order books for the next level until after receiving results from the previous test. They also tell us that at a minimum you should study for about 5 months, from these books, at a clip of 12-15 hours a week. I think I have my facts straight, let me know if anything’s off… So we all take Level 1 on December 1st (a scantron nonetheless, and only one level to grade). They send us an email saying it will take them 7.5 weeks to return this to us! Ok so we all resign ourselves and say “even though this is ridiculous, that’s the way it is”. So that means if we were able to pass Level 1, we wouldn’t even be able to order our books for Level 2 until January 23rd at the absolute earliest. Right? Remember, in their minds, we’re only studying from the Institute materials because we’re required to buy them now. So given normal mail services, we could probably get going with Level 2 material on the last days of the month of January or the first few days of February. At that point there’s only 4 months to study for the Level 2 test, which is also deemed by many to be the most difficult of the 3 tests. So we’re already under the minimum study hours required by the CFA institute, solely because of…the CFA institute. Am I missing something here?
And to think, the candidate pool grows larger and larger each year. If the time to grade correlates with the size of the testing pool, you might be able to assume that as the years go by, candidates will get less and less time to prepare for the June exam after the Dec exam. That, or they can just hire more test markers I guess.
In a way, they are helping the 3rd party vendors. Everyone rec’vd the special offer email from Schweser. If you think you passed L1, it would only make sense to get Schweser and start on L2, no?
Well there’s the catch. Not sure if I passed Level 1, so buying L2 Schweser could be a potential waste of $$, assuming the worst (that I never get past L1).
I doubt if there are many candidates who are confident of passing L1 in any given year. Majority would not be sure of their reult. Going by that, I think it is a smart move from CFA because by declaring the results late, they are forcing candidates to stick to CFA books since candidates would not have enough time to go thr. 3rd party material thereby killing 3rd party sales.
They aren’t forcing candidates to stick to CFA books by delaying results. They are just delaying people from ordering their third party materials. If anything it takes longer to go through the CFA texts than third party notes.
You mean more scanning machines, not test markers. Unless of course they do the hanging chad thing with borderline scores.
Doshi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > […] I think it is a smart move from CFA > because by declaring the results late, they are > forcing candidates to stick to CFA books since > candidates would not have enough time to go thr. > 3rd party material thereby killing 3rd party > sales. That’s assuming that candidates go through the cfai books first, which I don’t think is the general case. If anything, they’re helping 3rd party providers by declaring the results late.
Doshi… How do you figure?? Short time frame, ridiculous amount of material to cover - use 3rd party, get a head start - 3rd party, CFA material not available - 3rd party… Lehmetelya… Read the Schweser deal, if you found out you fail the 289 bucks can be applied to LI costs for the June writing (ie not a waste of $$). I’d say fire off your post above to the CFA. It would be interesting to see their response. You have a couple of valid points there.
Perhaps it would be in their best interest for people to use 3rd party. You register & pay for the cfai books, but you study from 3rd party – and becuase they ask esoteric questions from a 1line blurb on 1 page out of the 30,000pgs of the cfai text – your bound to fail becuase you were rushed by even skimming 3rd party study notes. Hence, less people pas, more people re-register and pay again.
I’ll have to check out the Schweser deal…
Thanks Cielito
Lehmetelya, I definitely think that sending your post to CFA would be a good idea.