Ok, i know there are a lot of posts as to how you guys passed the exam and different prep. providers you used. I passed L1 but given a second chance, there are quite a few things i would do differently. With that said, If you L2 passers had a second chance, how would you do it differently…Mainly concerned with studying strategy and techniques… Sorry this may sound redundant, your comments are greatly appreciated. Thanks…
start earlier so i could have done more mocks, more review. the further i went into the material, the more i kept saying, “wow i cannot believe how much information this is…”
qft. the last few books on derivatives and alt investment ripped me a new one.
start early
I am not really sure what do do differently. I studied over 700 hours and ended up guessing at lots of questions.
I would pay more attention to the topic weights. I knew the quant section like the back of my hand, but it’s not a large percent of the test; and the same went for several other sections. If you look through the scoresheets of people who passed, they primarily did well in equities, accounting, and ethics. There is nothing surprising about this, but it needs to be said. So know those topics well, even though accounting sucks (and ethics is a bit of a crapshoot when tested). Regardless of how easy or interesting a topic is, you ought to know it in proportion to its weight on the test and not its length of material. (Quant probably has the worst ratio of ‘#pages’ to ‘test weighting’ of any topic.) I also think practicing questions is very important. I didn’t take any practice tests, but I also didn’t leave the test knowing I passed it like after Level I. The end of chapter schweser questions aren’t enough. I also strongly recommend doing questions immediately after reading the chapter, and not coming back to them later. I think this will greatly improve how well you remember the material, even though it can be tedious if you just want to cover material (because hey, it can be pretty interesting). Level II is objectively harder than Level I, and simply incredibly broad. You really beat it with effort and practice, not intelligence. Spend the extra $60 for the real books too. The eBooks suck which is why I didn’t use CFAI notes, but I wish I had skimmed them and done the questions. Hope this helps.
^ I would also make sure to know all the LOS thingies at the beginning of each chapter.
Yeah, start early. How early? Start planning from exam day and work backwards. 1. Allow one month for doing EOC questions, practice exams, mock exams etc before the exam. 2. Allow about five weeks (i.e. two days per study session) for a second pass of the material. 3. Allow one week per study session for your first pass. So all up that’s about six months of serious study. Don’t forget an allowance for holidays etc which will interrupt your study. Good luck peoples
The+1Guy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yeah, start early. How early? Start planning from > exam day and work backwards. > > 1. Allow one month for doing EOC questions, > practice exams, mock exams etc before the exam. > 2. Allow about five weeks (i.e. two days per study > session) for a second pass of the material. > 3. Allow one week per study session for your first > pass. > > So all up that’s about six months of serious > study. Don’t forget an allowance for holidays etc > which will interrupt your study. > > Good luck peoples Good strategy, For L1, for some reason i mentally thought 6 mnths since the exam was in June, this was a mistake, i shouldn’t even count June since the exam was on the 4th. I will prepare early, people say its a good idea to read CFAI text but i couldn’t stand them for L1, hopefully i am interested enough to follow through this time. Thanks for your insight.
The key to Level I is working a lot of questions (mock exams and the Qbank). That doesn’t change in Level II, although the questions are much more complex and take longer to work. But, if you do 7 mock exams, the CFAI sample exams, and all the EOC questions, after you have made your first pass through the material, you will cover everything you need to know for the exam.
start earlier, less qbank and do EOC from CFAI instead. but, can’t complain, passed anyway.
I agree with Chaddy on recognition of topics weights, I spent way to much time trying to master Derivatives and Quant and it really didn’t do me any justice relative to the time I put in, I would have spent more time on FRA and Equity (using CFA EOC) to make sure I mastered those first. Qbank was OK, but the people who recommended it made it sound much more useful than I did. Although, it was nice when I was traveling with my laptop in airports. More time is definitely right, I started in February due to starting a new job where I need to pick up four securities licenses and an insurance license between November and January. Really came to bite me in the butt in April and May (Especially with a 9mo pregnant wife who didn’t appreciate my new study schedule). Only thing that kept me on track with studying and my wife was having a well written out weekly schedule to keep me on pace and work in some family time. Already cracked the books on L3, not going to make the same mistake this time.
I DONT KNOW
Mastering heavy-weighted topics is a slippery strategy which has let me down. I have got the highest scores in those areas but still, no pass. I have still read all the material with the CFAI books, I have just not spent enough time revising the “marginal” areas. So my advice would be to MASTER EVERYTHING! There is no free lunch with this exam, guys.
PositiveOutlook Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Mastering heavy-weighted topics is a slippery > strategy which has let me down. I have got the > highest scores in those areas but still, no pass. > I have still read all the material with the CFAI > books, I have just not spent enough time revising > the “marginal” areas. So my advice would be to > MASTER EVERYTHING! There is no free lunch with > this exam, guys. So you are saying you got >70+% on Ethics, FRA, and Equities, yet you did not pass? Did you bomb the rest??
No one is advocating skipping some sections and only learning the largest-weighted ones. The point was to keep in mind the ‘marginal score improvement’ / ‘amount of studying time’ for various topics, typically given by those with high ‘test %’/‘length of material’ ratios. If one can’t appreciate the benefit and efficiency of this, then he’s going to have bigger problems on this test. Also, I did not use this strategy, but passed anyway, and I can recommend it as something that would have improved my score. Since you failed, or perhaps have failed, PositiveOutlook, I don’t think your advice against this is very well grounded.
who passed Level 2 in here?
I did, thank Christ. Start early and EOC are a must.
I had to take level 2 twice. The second time I relied almost entirely on CFAI material. Don’t get lazy and use Schweser online. Schweser is a good product but they tend to dumb things down when they shouldn’t. Also, spend a good solid week on swaps. It will be useful come level 3.