Hello all, I signed up to take level 1 in June and have a few questions regarding how I should go about studying for the exam. 1. How many hours per week did you study? 2. Would you recommend the books that the CFA provides or other material (i.e. stalla, schweser)? If you used other materials what package did you buy? 3. How did you study for the exam? I really appreciate any help I can get. Thanks
- About 7 months on each level. L1: About 300 hours, L2: about 500 hours and L3: about 600 hours. 2. Schweser 100% and CFAI books for ethics and GIPS. Also qbank on L1 and as many exercises as possible. 3. The optimal study differs from person to person. I did the following (7 months in total): - 4 months: Read everything and understand as much as possible - 2 monts: Read everything for the second time and understand everything and remember as much as possible. Do exercises to help you remember and understand. - 1 month: Do exercises and read fast everything or the parts you don’t understand I studied in the morning before work 5-7 and in morning in the weekends 6-11.
I would recommend you also check out Elan Guides. Their samples have been very promising.
What Schweser study package did you get?
-I made a total of 400 hours -Stalla was more than enough -I used to read watch the video ,then read again and solve all the passmaster questions -I started in May the revesion , and by the end of that month i solved about 13 of 3 hr exams . -I ended solving about 4000 question from Jan through June .
Anyone else care to share their study plan?
-Read all CFAI texts/took notes while reading --Took about 3 months -Read all schwesser texts/no notes --Took about 1 month -Took practice exams (one per weekend) -Read Schweser again in weak areas --Took about 1 month -Started drilling Qbank (started WAYYYY too late) -Practice exams -Schweser reading, supplementing with CFAI texts --Final Month solved about 2500 Qbank Q’s and maybe 600 mock exam Q’s. My result; Probably a band 9 or 10 fail.
Started mid-june. -Read all schweser and took pretty extensive notes (supplemented with CFA books for stuff that wasnt clicking) -Did Qbank tests all throughout the readings including comprehensive qbank tests every 2 weeks. -Reread notes and drilled qbank some more -spent the last month doing half practice exams, reviewing questions wrong, rereading poorest sections and checking for improvement with qbank, repeat -The CFAI provided mock is the closest to the real deal, schweser volume 2 exams are computation heavy but they are good as a wake up call when you start doing well on volume 1. I’ll let you know the result
- I started in March and averaged about 9 hours until September/October (taking about 6 weeks off during that time), then I started doing about 12 a week, so I am guessing that my total was around 280-300h. 2. I used Schweser. For most things that was good, but also looked at the EOC for each topic in the CFAI. With hindsight, I would also recommend reading the CFAI for FSA. 3. I spent the last 1 1/2 months before the exam revising and doing practice questions. Lots of Q-bank, and all the test exams. Three things that I learned: a) it’s no good to start too early (which I probably did), b) studying only makes sense when you are fully focused - I would often read stuff or do a couple of questions during a break in the office and i don’t think that was necessarily very productive, c) when you do practice questions and test exams you need to take considerable time to review your answers, otherwise there is no learning effect.
Agree with what kingstongal said, esp the last paragraph
I was just checking Schweser website for L1 material. There is so many. What is optimal / economical must have from the list they are offering ? From parac0da - Seems he used to see some videos as well. But I didnt see any specific link for that. This is the link I visited - http://www.schweser.com/cfa/cfa1.php
I have the 2009 schweser videos and went through one for a quant reading the other day. I felt that the videos are extremely brief compared to the curriculum. I am just finishing up with CFA Volume I and will be ordering the Schweser notes package shortly. The curriculum has great examples that have helped me understand the material and how it is applied to financial research. My study plan has been 2 hours a night Monday through Thursday, Friday off, 4 hrs each on Saturday and Sunday. I have been getting through the curriculum at a good pace as it took me about 2 weeks to get through Volume I. I am planning on using the Schweser notes for my review, and then hitting the Qbank and practice exams.
Here is what I have done in the last 1 month (I passed Level I, preparing for Level II) -Reviewed all the questions that I didnt get right in Schwesers Q bank(I solved the complete bank and about 1/3rd of them were wrong in first pass). Noticed my incorrect answers were resulting from same LOS. Went back and reviewed LOS and incorrect answers -Took all 6 practice exams. 1 day for full exam, and took 1 days for review and 1 more day for reviewing corresponding LOS. I could not clock more than 7 or 8 hours on a full day. I have to take days off (from CFA) between each exams for relaxing (I was totally exhausted by then; if you are planning to take a week off, then plan that your stamina would steeply fall after 4 days or so) -I created my own notes out of class slides and mistakes I made from above 2. I was totally unproductive in my last 10 days because of exhaustion, but my notes saved me. Rather than counting by hours of work, you should count based on how uniformly you would spread those hours over 4 or 5 months; and how you would you identify your weak areas, then improve on it. Few more tips: --donot miss on those high scoring areas: ethics+FSA is approximately 1/3 of exam --quant+fixed income(bonds etc) is 1/5 of exam --you can imagine that 10% of exam is only theoretical questions(so memorize often). Ex topics are econo, all the theories from other chapters (like GIPS, technicial analysis,CAPM etc) --again, above 3 tips matter on the exam day (on exam day, I first solved ethics and FSA and then went to other sections) I have not heard people talking about shortage of time on exam day (though they talk everything else)
I used Schweser I think they are all good but I would advise the following: Read don’t skim, do practice questions ASAP after any reading. You may think you understand what you read but when you do questions you actually learn. Go back and retest on sections you have already completed often. Make sure you don’t go 2 weeks without reviewing what you did in the past. Once you have completed a section only test on the Q bank on Moderate or higher, the easy questions are a joke. The CFAI questions are excellent make sure you use those. Do not “Save” like I did the Schweser Exam Book questions for the end it is impossible to do six 6 hour practice exams and the CFAI practice exams in enough time. Do the math that is 42 hours plus review. In the last few weeks use a stop watch especially on the CFAI practice exam, learn how to manage your time. Don’t cram in the last few days just study ethics. For Dec 2009 the CFAI practice was in the ballpark of the real exam. The Schweser Exam book #2 was actually harder than the real exam. If you can work through that entire book you should do fine.