I am a CFA level 1 retaker for June 2014 and I finally have some time to put more effort into studying. I am currently using Schweser 2012 books (1-6) and I also have the CFAI ebooks. I plan on relying more on the Schweser books.
What else should I get? Any recommendations?
Mock exams.
I used Analystnotes for L1 and it worked out well. The charge like $70 for the notes, practice questions and mock exams. Their mocks are very hard but will help you be ready.
Elan’s 11th hour is also quite good.
Thanks - the Analystnotes you used was just the online package right? http://www.analystnotes.com/pay_info.php
Is that the only material you used to pass? All I will be using are the Schweser 2012 books + this Analystnotes online package
It is the primary material that I used to pass. I also read CFAI Ethics and did all of the CFAI EOC questions. In the final month I purchased Elan’s 11th hour and read most of that to review. I took several mock exams, about 3 of AN’s (which as I mentioned were extremely hard, I started off by scoring mid 50’s on them, but they really helped me when I reviewed the answers). I also took the AM session of the CFAI mock and scored I think a 77. On the real exam I got >70 in all but Quant and Econ, where I got 50-70.
Yes I purchased the online package. The drawback is you have to read from your computer screen which I don’t like. But they give you a lot of review and practice questions along the way which was good.
How long were the study notes? (In terms of pages for each section? Was Elan 11th hour more concise than AN notes?
Hard to say about the length, since they don’t really use pages. The best thing is to look at them for yourself. You can access a lot of the notes with a free account http://www.analystnotes.com/browse_notes.php.
Elan 11th hour was far more concise because it is not intended to be comprehensive - it is just for final review (like Schweser Secret Sauce). I thought it was very helpful, especially for topics I had covered earlier and mostly forgotten.
I don’t remember having trouble answering the EOC questions after reading AN’s notes (as in, the topics of the questions were covered in the notes. Some of them were still hard!). I think AN is very good, especially for the price. However, there were occasional spelling errors and the like. Though to be fair even my current $600+ L2 Elan package has a couple of spelling errors too. Another thing I liked about AN is that at the end of each section, there are user comments, questions and discussion. Chances are if you were confused by something, so was another person and they have asked about it the comments.