I’m finally finishing equity this week and I hopefully will be starting review on Monday. I have gone through every reading on the CFAI book as well as most EOC questions.
My review will consist of the following:
During the work week I’m averaging about 2.5 hours of studying. From May 14 - 18 I plan to use this time to do schweser mock questions in the morning before work, followed by reviews of what I did in the afternoon. This review will include going back to the reading/EOCs to strenghten the concept if my knowledge of it its too bad.
On the weekend, (Saturday, Sunday and Victoria Day monday) I will be doing all review on saturday in preparation of tackling the 2011 CFAI mock. I will divide the mock by doing the morning session on Sunday, followed by reviewing every question of the mock, and the afternoon session on monday.
The week of May 22 - 25, I plan to do the same as the previous week. On May 26, again review all day of mostly important, heavy weighted concepts. On Sunday, May 27 I plan to do the full 2012 CFAI mock just like the exam (same timing, breaks, etc). may 28-29 I work, and I will be reviewing the mock. On the 30th, full review of important concepts again, and the 31st will be all ethics review. The 1st I will probably do some warmup item sets and rest before the storm.
What do you think? Is thereanything I’m missing, should I do more mocks? I plan to do roughly 50 hours in total of review.
This sounds like a good plan, just do it. The fact that you are ready for the mocks, means you’re prepared.
My mistake was not doing the mocks because I never felt ready. Focus on concepts…don’t do my mistake #1
three years ago where I learned and memorized countless formulas. They are rare…every exam I took (and I took 3 already) was mostly conceptual, with occasional reasonable formulas, but nothing daunting.
For every topic, step back and ask what is the main issue (the big picture)?
What is the overall approach to the solution?
Supply your own numbers and check how the solution works… relying on values given sometimes masks the real concept behind.
Refresh concepts as you progress with your preparation…it’s easy to forget something you know so well! A good way is to visit 2-3 problems from each topic in the last 7-10 days, do it everyday.
I may have not passed the exam, but I sure have a lot of wisdom on this beast!!! ha ha.
I already did this. When tackling a reading, I would write the LOS then delve into the reading and find the solution. It was easy to link numerous LOS and get the big picture.
In some readings it was farily straightforward to answer, especially the ones that said ‘describe’ or ‘calculate’. In others, the authors didn’t make it as straightforward.
I did a full thorough reading on Ethics in Feb and another full thorough reading about 2 weeks prior to my first mock (mid May). Did another mock last weekend and didn’t review any ethics prior to it. I got 23/24 in the ethics questions across these 2 mocks with this plan.
I’ll be doing another full thorough read through (takes about 6 hours) on Victoria day (May 21st) and then will not touch it.
My suggestion to you is to do ethics earlier as there isn’t alot of memorization you can do with it and you should be able to do fine on the test even if its not 100% fresh in your head. I prefer to review topics like this earlier, and then topics with lots of steps/formulas (like derivatives, quant) the day or two before so that all the steps and calculations needed to answer the question are fresh in my head.
Thats my opinion anyways and how I approach the exam.