Hi brave ones, I am preparing for level 1 in june and have a critical decision to make. I finished my schweser readings 2 days ago. I did all the concept checkers, both schweser and cfa institute. Now i just don’t know which approach i should follow and truly welcome al your advices i have secret sauce, q-bank, 16 videos, and practice books (2008+2009) and i intend to take the mock and sample exams from the cfa institute web site. almost for sure will not remember most of the “little detail” stuff that i read on early preparation months…and i don’t know what to do next. 1) - read secret sauce and after that all the exercises (q-bank + mock + sample) and only after that start taking the big ones from the practice books. or - start doing exercises (q-bank for instance and some small exams like mock from web site) and check mistakes in curriculum/secret sauce, heading to the “big exams”… sorry for al this mix of ideas but as i saw some “advices” posted i immediatly thought that i cold seek some help from all of you… i don’t even know the right strategy to take the maximum return from secret sauce…(read it through or check when needed) and from the 16 videos… my last detail. i will take off the 2 previous weeks to the exam to dedicate 100% to my preparation. I appreciate your effort to give me some hint…I just don’t want to take a “bad decision” right now. cheers from lisbon and good luck to everyone. keep commitment high! tiago
we all are here to share…this is what I plan to do. I am starting my revision from tomorrow…I plan to ‘do’ the books in 1-2 days, by that I mean, if I start with, say, Quants…I will go thro the CFAI text (fast, or maybe superfast reading) in 1 or maybe 2 days…and then hit the Qbank…and do the other book, and the qbank. In the last 10 days, I will do the sample and CFA Mocks… tigas: it is NOT about making a bad decision…but more importantly it is all about being flexible. I have just described my plan…and I am pretty sure that it wont work out the way I have planned…and then I need to be flexible to change my course of action…1 CFAI Book/day…sounds crazy but I will try…
tigas It’s really about how you learn. With that said, it seems those who have landed in band 9 or lower have voiced a common thread of advice; that is, to spend a significant portion of review time on questions. The goal here is to expose you to a variety of different levels of questions to (a) solidify knowledge and (b) decrease time per question. Both are significant in this style/exam format. With that said, I think your best approach given the time remaining (38 or so days), is to start with questions. It is easy to get caught up in re-reading the material, but true comprehension comes from application. In essence, pulling your knowledge from the memory banks. With all that said I would recommend taking one mock exam to begin, for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are a number of mock exams on CFAI for later use, so using one will not be detrimental to your process. Secondly, it will give you an idea of the level of comprehension required to answer the questions on the actual exam. Thirdly, it will identify your weakest areas. With this last section, you can then cross reference the weights of the exams with the highest deficiencies indicated in your scores and proceed from there. So if you score 20% on quantitative methods, and 0% on Alternative Investments you know you should focus on quantitative methods, even though the scores by themselves don’t necessarily indicate this. From there you can drill down on qbank, AF’s search function (great tool), and your videos. Good luck.
Guys/Girls, thank you so much for your patience… i will go for q-bank (which in fact i still dont know its real intrinsic value for learning)…my first sample test was a disaster…some definitions simply gone away (3/4 months ago is so far away…) but i believe that by practicing and then aking notes about what should have been answered i will get exposed to a wide range of themes, formulas, definitions… this is my first day here and all of you are the only ones to whom I can express myself about this challenge till exam day… keep in touch. tigas