L1 was 85% good enough, i felt ok . I passed L2 on my first attempt with a very uncomfortable feeling about Schweser- the format of the questions were not the same feel, and some of the material was not covered. For L3, is the gap less? Do you attribute failling last year to the lack of notes? The qualitative material is just summarized so much cleaner in schweser, but i dont want to make the same chance again.
For most areas, Schweser will get you about 90% of the way there. But every year, there are one or two topics that show up on the exam that Schweser just doesn’t cover. I would absolutely use the CFA texts for the IPS and GIPS and then to make sure there isn’t any type of examples that are in the CFA books but not in Schweser, particularly stuff from Derivatives, Fixed Income and Performance Attribution. In the 07 exam, there was a style of attribution problem that Schweser didn’t cover at all but was almost identical to one in the CFA text. You can probably go back in the forums and find the discussion about it. No one knew how to do it because they only used Schweser.
I wouldn’t ruin my 90% for the last squeeze of 10%. If I just manage to do 80% well of the 90% that Schweser teaches me I am a PASS. Do the math, check!
Unless that 10% of material is 30% of the exam. It’s certainly possible. CFAI is sneaky like that.
^agreed. So to work around such bottlenecks, do the foundation with Schweser and then keep referring to CFAI texts as and when needed. If I have the sanity left in me after doing Schweser, I would read the CFAI text cover to cover - because I would know by then what to focus on - as the LOSsification is nicely done by Schweser. Note: Under no circumstances, we must miss the CFAI-EOC and the old-papers’ stufff.
not a retaker myself, but here is what I found out: I went though 09 schwesser a couple of times already, now going through cfai and 2010 schwesser side by side. CFAI text seem to have completely different focus from schwesser on certain topics, (option strategies for one). the reason why I say focus is different is that cfai questions test you on completely different things. other than that, schwesser doesn’t cover 100% of cfai textbook, for example schwesser doesn’t cover how to add a call or remove a call from bond with swaption, and hedge structured notes with swaption, it didn’t even mention vega hedge other than that, cfai explains certain topic in different ways from schwesser, and I have to say occasionally cfai text does a better job of course schwesser may choose to ignore some topics because they never show up on the exam. my take on schwesser is it seems to be a concentrated version of the text, definately not 100% coverage. it comes with trade off, more pain or the comfort of 100% coverage of topics. despite how much I hate this I am going over both cfai and schwesser.