Schweser Vs. Curriculum

CFA Level II
#1

Hi All,

I just wanted to get your guys experience with Schweser and level 2. For level 1 i signed up in Late february and primarily studied schweser, did the problems in there and did the problems in the book and managed to pass. I work full time and am currently signed up to take the exam in june.

I was wondering if any of you guys had the same plan and passed level 2 using it?

Also I heard schweser notes aren’t as detailed for level 2 as they were for level 1, which topics are better to study in the CFA books rather than schweser?

Any insight or past experiences are appreciated.

-Thanks

#2

i used schweaser last year for level 2 and was very disappointed because they missed a lot of the material that i found on the exam, considering that i answered about 2500 questions from their bank. also, the questions are not in the item set format which is a big negative. to be fair, i used them for level 1 and i was very satisfied but for level 2 it is a different story.

#3

I used Schweser for Level 2 and 3 and i have to say it saved me a lot of time going through the textbooks.

I think the curriculum is too wordy and intimadating for me, if i have to read every line i will forget everythign from the previous page and i just find it very unproductive. i’d rather spend more time solving problems (including the ones in the CFAI curriculum), i think that’ sthe best way to know if you understandt he material. and if i didn’t get the answer, i will look more into it, but most of the time the answer is sufficient for me to understand the material.

#4

Look through some threads in the Spring. Schweser was way off the mark for Level II Econ and FRA. I personally think people who used Schweser a few years ago are ardent fans, but Schweser was very lazy in their coverage of the new Level II material for 2013.

#5

+1 to all of this.

In the time it takes you to read all of CFAI’s extra “fluff”, you can read Schweser twice, and work through the whole Q-bank. That will take you a lot farther than just passively reading CFAI’s stuff.

BTW - Arse-nal sucks.

#6

True, i took level 2 couple years ago, so i can’t say if Schweser is good for recent years!

#7

Can anyone who used Schweser level 2 for primary study material in 2013 talk about their experiences?

Thanks

#8

I used Schweser exclusively for L1 and was 70> on everything except for Derivitives, 50-70. Unfortunately, I also used Schweser exclusively for L2 in June! IMHO, if you’re going to use the Schweser Notes and videos you absolutely HAVE to review and internalize the blue box examples AND do all end of chapter questions in the CFAI materials. I thought the Schweser mock exams were great but, unfortunately, I only took one and spent waaay too much time doing questions from the Q-bank which aren’t in item-set format which may not sound like a big deal but I think that was my downfall on the exam.

This time around:

  1. CFAI texts for Equity, FRA, Corporate Finance, Alts, and Derivitives.

  2. Schweser notes on areas where I don’t see a big ROIC; Fixed Income, Portfolio Mgmt, Econ, Ethics, and Quant.

  3. All blue box and EOC questions from CFAI materials (including those areas I’m using Schweser notes)

  4. Fin Quiz Item set questions and Tests

  5. Schweser and CFAI mock exams (an absolute must)

  6. Elan videos

Regardless of what you choose make sure you do a ton of item-set questions!!!

Good Luck!

#9

I used Schweser for L II and L I (I passed L I in Dec 2012 and passed L II in June of this year). I am a fan of Schweser and will use them for L III for next year’s exam.

How man hundreds of hours did Schweser save me during my L II run up? – not entirely sure but probably at least 100 hours more would have been needed to read the entire CFAI text. With anything it is somewhat of a preference choice. On the one hand Schweser is giving you a shortcut, they cut down the BOK and package it in a way that they think you will be able to benefit from, on the other hand in order to cut down the BOK they will ignore certain things and there is always a chance that other items will not get presented in a way that CFAI will test on. If you understand this going in then you can make an informed decision.

The decision tree for me was if I use Schweser and save about 100 hours reading text will I benefit more with the extra 100 hours of review time versus spending the time reading the official curriculum? For me the answer was Schweser and it worked out alright for L I and L II. Notice that the question was not can I save 100 hours of study time but can I better use 100 hours of study time.

If you go Schweser AND you understand that it is a shortcut then you should not be surprised on exam day when certain things come up that Schweser did not cover – it’s part of the deal. My 40/60/80 was 78 on L I and 74 on L II, meaning that Schweser will not get you a 100, you will need to use the official text to get that, but if you work Schweser in a structured manner you can pass.

Here is was my game plan for using Schweser for L II

-Read all Schweser text, making highlights

-Do all Schweser EOC questions as you finish reading each topic in Schweser

-make lots (hundreds) of note cards as you go and keep reviewing them over and over again

-re-read all highlighted areas of Schweser text, do EOC questions you missed on the frist pass

-use Qbank – this tool is not as functional as it was for L I but if you ignore the easy level questions and stick to the intermediate and advanced level questions you can still benefit from it - I went topic by topic as part of my review rather than having it generate practice tests - use the Schweser provided practice tests for your mocks and use the Qbank to focus down on individual topic areas

-do all CFAI EOC questions – this is an important step as these are closer to the real deal than the Schweser EOC questions, I wanted to set a base with the Schweser EOC and Qbank before I did these as they are useful and you only get so many of them.

-do Schweser practice tests (as many as you have time for)

-do the CFAI mock test – this is important as it is near to what you will see on exam day (after taking L II I felt like the Schweser practice tests were closer to the real deal as I had issues with the CFAI mock; but you need to do it - and they only give you one so do it at the end when you are really ready for it).

-keep reviewing notecards through the process, again and again

If you do all this you will see stuff on the exam that you did not see in Schweser or in the CFAI EOC questions but the trade off is that you had 100 extra hours for review of the stuff that you did get and I think the tradeoff is worth it (even factoring in the cost – though that analysis will be different for all of us).

Finally - with the understanding that Schweser is a shrotcut try to get into the low 80s on Schweser practice tests, I was able to get just above the 80 line by the end of L I on the pracitice tests and was in thd mid 80s on L II, for me exam day is harder so I expect that my exam scores were lower; but if you can pull this on the Schweser practice tests you should have enough wiggle room for any tricks that get thrown at you by the good folks at CFAI on test day. So there are no free lunches, there are horror stories on AF of people getting mid 80s on the Schweser practice tests and still failing, but if you can get to this point you have basically taken a test in which the odds were stacked against you and put them in your favour.

#10

Thanks for your experiences.

Just a question when you passed level 1 did you use exclusively schweser and not the CFAI book at all? And also did you not look at the CFAI book at all when you failed the second time?

#11

I passed all three levels using schweser notes only. But that should not decide what you should do. The key is whether you get your basics right or not. Schweser is no doubt a little brief and everything is to the point. In curriculum there is quite a detail. So it depends what’s your style of doing things