So have you studied 250 hours?

CFA Level I
#1

Just curious to see how much time people are putting and how they are doing on the practice exams. I can’t say i’m killing myself, still go to the gym and take evenings off. However, I started studying in … march/april. Went through CFA books, then through schweser books 2-3 times, and did 3400 question plus 1.5 practice exams, scoring 74,76,84 and 81 average on Qbank. It seems that reading CFA books was a waste, as it was long time ago. Now I just want to take this thing and get it over with. So how much have you studied?

#2

I’d probably put the minimum bar around 400hrs, I’m definitely buying supplementary study guides for the next levels though. It’d be great to have a summary of the LOS and 3400 questions to practice on. CFA books can get pretty dry and drawn out.

#3

i have put in somewhere between 80 and 150 hours. have not counted. I Have read secret sauce several times, read a good % of the schweser notes from within the Qbank, done a bunch of Qbank questions, watched some Schweser videos, listened to audio tapes to and from work and done 3 sample tests so far. plenty of time left!

#4

ive logged 250 hours and started in the begiinning of September, but it truly is the bare minimum I feel for this exam…

#5

I’m probably in the 300 - 400 hour range. Started off reading the CFAI books but ditched them in September when I got a hold of some Stalla guides. I’ve been averaging about 70% on my practice exams. I wish I had one more month because I know I could get those scores up to 80.

#6

you can get the scores up to 80 in the remaining time until the exam…

#7

i got my CFAI package in mid september, started studying regularly in october with schweser books. i didn’t keep track of my study hours but i probably did not put in 250 hours. hence, me freaking out right now and doing poorly on practice exams. at this moment i am probably band 10, hopefully mad studying this week will help me slide through the pass mark. if not, oh well. life goes on.

#8

I started in sept. Went over the Schweser material - didn’t bother with the actual CFA books. Just finished doing about 3,000 questions on Q-bank and have 1 week left to review my notes.

#9

what’s band 10? i’ve seen several times and have no idea what it means

#10

It’s a wonderful number. I failed in band 10 in June08 - simply means you failed in the top 10% of all those who failed. There’s still a few questions on that exam that haunt me that I should have known. I never came close to passing a mock or sample back then, so all those who are scoring 75 on mocks and still freaking out, I can assure you that the mocks were MUCH harder than the exam.

#11

You guys are freaking out? Until Friday, I was barely halfway through Book 3 in Schweser. I spent my weekend photocopying the section summary pages for Books 3-5 and reading through those and now I’m finally on Alternative Investments. It should be an interesting week and I hope I can somehow get lucky and pass.

#12

I started my studying extremely light around June, right after I graduated from college. I received all my books around April/May, so they were sitting around for a while. During the summer, I was averaging between 8-10 hours a week but really picked it up in September when my review course started. I’m sure I’m in the 300-400 range.

#13

I’m north of 300 hours easily. I’ve done ~3500 Qbank questions in addition to all of the CFAI questions at the end of each reading. I’ve been pretty consistent with my scores, ~67-75% on the sample/mocks. My weak areas continue to be FSA and Quant. I got 90% on the last mock in ethics, so I’m going to be focused on FSA the next five days. Good luck to all.