All, I’ve decided to start studying for the December L1 after recently completing the CPA. I was hoping to hear from other people who have studied for the CPA exam and could offer insight as to how different your study processes have been for the L1 vs studying for the CPA exams. Specifically, have you found that you’ve been able to use similar study techniques for CFA as you did for CPA or have you found that you needed to drastically change how you studied? Also, with CPA the best studying technique is to keep doing questions over and over since the actual exam questions are very similar to the homework questions…is that similar with CFA? FWIW, I did Becker review for CPA and followed their study plan pretty much to the letter: attend class for 8hrs on saturdays, study ~16hrs every week for the 2 chapters covered in class (16hrs was mainly doing questions and flashcards), and have about ~1.5 weeks of final review before taking each of the exams
I’ll let you know if my strategy worked if I pass level 1.
Can’t help you here, but I know a post in the general forum would certainly get more responses.
I passed the CPA by cramming for 1.5 weeks for each part and passing all 4 in 6 weeks back in 2006. Its hard to compare the two, although understanding GAAP/IFRS will make studying for the Financial Statement Analysis portion easier. The CFA requires more time due to the need to master general concepts instead of situation specific type scenarios (in the CPA I noticed that a large majority of ?s I answered I had seen in some form through the question bank from Becker). Generally speaking, if you can remember the economics/corp finance from college, and master the quant concepts then you should be in good shape…