Hey Guys. Coming back for cfa level 2 after a gap (cleared level 1 in 2011). Things have changed a lot since then. Planning to start my studies soon but I am very confused with respect to the supporting material out there. There are so many options (Schweser, Wiley, IFT, Allenresouces, Finquiz, AdaptPrep etc.). Not sure which is the best way to go about it. Would appreciate if you guys can help.
Armaghan
hi there, i am in a similar situation. Any advise would help!
Its hard to give advice when i don’t know whether i passed or not, why not wait two weeks and get answers from candidates that just passed the exam?
For what its worth, last June was my first attempt at LII, my advice is to do EOCs (end of chapter questions) from the CFAI even if you’re using a prep provider notes, go through BlueBox examples too. Allocate two months at the end for cementing the material through practice and mocks.
I tried Scheweser and Wiely and I found Wiely much closer to the CFAI wording and more straight forward which is important for me.
Schweser is rock solid for Levels 1 and 2. There will be some parts that they skip over that you will need to supplement with the CFAI readings but those aren’t all that common. As stated always make sure you are doing the blue boxes and EOCs from the CFAI as well.
Can’t speak on any other provider, I always used Schweser (only started using Wiley in small doses at L3 which I wasn’t very impressed with at all).
what was wrong with Wiely for LIII? I think it was their first shot at providing prep material for LIII wasn’t it? If i end up passing LII i really need to get some reviews before considering Wiely …
Yeah it was their first year. Due to that I went with Schweser for study notes but I wanted some more practice problems so I bought additional questions from Wiley in the final month.
I probably should have done some better research into what they were, but they were just EOC questions for each reading. All multiple choice. They were also loaded with errors, they didn’t have an errata, there were lots of repeats (aka question #29 was almost identical to question #5… not really helpful).
So again I really only had experience with a very small portion of their offering, but what I saw of it was pretty weak. Maybe they’ll get it together for next year.
doubtful, they’ll probably need a few years to produce a solid and reliable product for LIII. Looks like if i pass, i will have to go for CFAI text, never done that.
Well like I said I did use Schweser for the bulk of L3 and thought it was great. I would recommend doing prior CFA papers over any of their mocks though. But as far as the readings go they’re just as good as L1/L2.
One of the posters here recommended we do AM mocks for the past 10 years, is it still relevant? Going back this far? a recently awarded Charterholder told me that anything beyond three years is irrelevant. What do you think?
I went all the way back to 2006. I personally found this to be far better practice than using current year 3rd party mocks. I think Schweser struggled in a lot of ways to re-create the AM papers and I preferred practice from the real source even if I had to cross a question or two out as being irrelevant. Some people might not need as much AM paper practice, but I didn’t really want to leave anything to chance. Obviously still not even sure how I fared 
Arif puts out a blog post yearly (I think) that lines up what is still relevant.
https://irfanullah.co/what-past-essay-exams-are-relevant-for-2016-level-iii/
As you can see even for exams 10 years old there is still a massive chunk of relevant stuff.
Great tips, thanks for the info.
I am still caught on whether to use wiley or schweser for L2. I used schweser for L1. But, am leaning towards wiley for L2 due to Anbu_ comments.
That said, it seems that wiley’s questionbank and mock exams aren’t great due to the comments above. Has anyone had any good experiences with them? Cheers