Hi all. Am looking to take a class to keep me motivated through this process. I need some kind of structure. Would Stalla be a good choice? Would it be excessive for me to get the Schweser QBank and Secret Sauce in addition? I don’t want to overkill.
Stalla’s fine enough as it is. You don’t need Schweser. I’m a Stalla baby…I thought it prepared me, but I’ll confirm if I pass.
Thanks & good luck!
I use the Stalla books with Passmaster which come with lots of questions. Their questions seems to be less quantitative than Schweser but no less challenging. I also took the Stalla mock exam and found it rather useful because it came with video explaination for all the questions. Btw, I chose Stalla over Schweser inspite of the recommandations of many in this forum because it has more detailed explaination for the concepts and it has keystrokes for HP12c, which I use. Then again, I should also confirm with you whether it works when I pass. For Schweser I think most people in this forum would agree that Qbank is essential. It’s more important to practice the questions than to keep reading the material.
Thanks for the advice.
The Stalla material is excellent and Peter Olenta (he’s the head instructor for stalla but only is shown on the CD-ROMs or for the weekend mock exam) is one of the better teachers i’ve seen. However, I would just view the lectures on the CD-ROMs. The tutors they provide are not worth the structure of having one class a week. There’s no value-added in going to the classes. I needed to travel an hour to get to the classes and stopped going half-way through because i thought they were a waste of my time. Specific examples: The was a seemingly homeless man in the class that asked totally off-topic questions and the instructors entertained these digressions for 10 - 20 minutes a class. (Washington, DC) The teachers were basically CFA holders in the area (they were certainly smart - but teaching is a drastically different skill than understanding the coursework), that were called upon to read the slides provided and answer questions. So, I would go with Stalla (I also worked from the CFAI books and Schweiser) but not waste your time with the classes. Anyone in the Stalla class want to confirm or deny ?
i think going to the classes are very important…but that might be the way i learn. again, i might have failed this and then i’d have to redact all i said because i really did put in the time…but, that’s my two cents.
Dennis: I took the classes because i learn a lot from an instructed class, too. However, there seemed to be no value added by these classes. The instructors aren’t experienced in teaching. They just read the slides. There are too many people in the class to stop at issues you don’t understand and have them continue to hammer it. They need to pack in a lot of info in a little amount of time. One can still access a network of individuals within stalla without signing up for the classes. I am not saying it isn’t worth the money. If it were free, it still wouldn’t be worth your time. Please re-read the last sentence. So, if you get the Stalla material, i would just get the lectures, books, and passmaster software(by Peter Olenta who is better on Cd-rom than any of the instructors were in person). The discipline is up to you. That’s my view of it.
you must not have had peter olinto.
I took Stalla here in LA and I have to say that the teacher we had for the FSA segment was fantastic. I would recommend stalla for anyone that needs a foundation in all the topics (with the IT background, I needed all the help I could get). I’ve seen the schweser stuff and I think its good if you already have the background in a lot of the topics. Plus their questions are more closer to the L1 questions compared to the Stalla Qs off the books. Having said this, IF I have to take the exam again in June, I would probably choose schweser to review the topics and just hit the questions off their Qbank.
Peter Olinto teaches the course in NY, does he not? I think I will get the QBank also. I always learn better by doing problems…can never do enough questions.
My bad I didn’t commit the man’s name to my memory exactly. The man was a good instructor and I sat in for his mock review. It isn’t like the guy is Barry Bonds; names that I’ve seen more than one thousand times I have a better chance at committing to memory.