I have the 7 (almost 5 years), along with the 63 and 65. To answer your question, I don’t think it’s as difficult as Level I of the CFA exam. But, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Treat every securities license exam seriously. The rules and regs portion of every exam is where you can easily trip yourself. The debt and options sections represent a large portion of the exam. Level I does not cover spreads and straddles, while the 7 does. You will also learn the rules and regs of each individual SRO, from the NYSE, NASD (now FINRA), MSRB, and CBOE. If you do well on the 7, you will have the foundation to approach the material on Level I. Look no further than PassPerfect for study materials. Do not waste your time with STC. STC is crap.
JoeyDVivre Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If it takes you more than a weekend to pass Series > 7 with a >90% score, than LI is going to be > rough… Well, I can see your point if you have a sense of humor. I scored a 95%, but I didn’t get cocky and study in a weekend and take the exam Monday morning. I spent my time learning the material to the point that I fully understood the reasoning behind it, the same approach I’m using with Level I.
I agree with nikko0355, they are two totally different exams. I took the 7 and passed but I had a shorter amount of time to study. The 7 was more quantitative as opposed to L1 of the CFA. This test seems like it will be more conceptual.
Thanks a lot guys. That’s very helpful.
Primerica is a f’ing racket. They will not accept the Series 7; “No” they guy tells me, “You have to get the Series 6.” I told him the Series 7 is a Series 6 plus some, he said, “Nope, you need the 6.” Oh, and they had a $199 application fee? WTF is that? I need to bribe you to process my job application? I’m staying far away.
I also have a Series 7 license, and thing the difficulty of the exam is quite downplayed here… the Series 7 has a 60% pass rate… higher than the CFA, but not a joke at all… It takes people an average of about 2-3 month to study for the exam and pass it. The problem is you have to be sponsored by a firm to be able to take it, not like the CFA that really anybody with free time and a college degree can try to tackle…
What I remember about the Series 7 is you don’t need to learn the concepts at all. Simply memorize a few facts about options, muni’s, etc and run with it. The firm that sponsered me said read the book once and then do practice tests over and over since the practice test questions are in the NASD Series 7 test bank. For the record, my friend passed after 10 days of studying.
The CFA and Series 7 are two different animals. With the CFA being a lion and Series 7 a cat. That’s what I can say. I have have the 7 license, and just took the lev 1 CFA in December. I am yet to recover from the CFA exam. I can’t even think of comparing the two…
I have the 6,7 and 63. These exams are so easy compared to the CFA Exam. I didn’t really study all that much for it. As someone mentioned, read the book once and do sample questions and you’re golden. If you plan on taking the CFA, you NEED to devote at least a few hours a night (assuming you’re working) and all weekend for about 3 months (being the min.) to have a good chance of passing LI. It all depends on what you want to do as well…
is series 7 realli that ez? I just looked at some sample questions and they seem to be more geared toward technical terms concerning stocks/exchanges, which is not that prevalent in the CFA L1. It seems like alot of memorizing tho.
A lot of the preparation material comes with Q&A CD Rom’s. Most of those questions are straight from the NASD Series 7 Test bank. Yes it is that easy. One could do it on 30-50 hours of reading and 10 hours of drill and practice.
The series 7 is easy. The 60% pass rate is misleading. The ease of the test and limited prep time attracts alot of kids right out of college who take a shot at the broker/ financial rep career path with no thing to lose and no real incentive. Here in NY, it took a month to open up a date to take the exam. If you don’t start studying until two weeks before the test you’ll be fine, but do read thru the book and take sample tests for practice. When I took it in 2004 or 2005 it had a lot of the muni stuff on it (way out proportion with what the average licenseholder does), and a bunch of option payoff calcs that were simple even if you had never done them before, but had practiced a few when studying.