Which CFA Level Was The Hardest For You?

To those who have passed all 3 levels of the CFA, Out of curiosity, I was wondering on a scale of 1-10 (ten being the hardest) what would you rate the difficulty of each level? And if you have hour estimates of how long you studied or anecdotes of how hard you studied, I’d love to hear them as well! -Flowers123

2 used to be the hardest but 3 is doing its best to catch up.

L1 - 7 L2 - 10 L3 - 7

6, 10, 8.5

I thought 3 was the hardest.

2

L1 - 3 L2 - 8 L3 - 10

L1 - 4 (quantity) L2 - 10 (formulas) L3 - 6 (boredom)

Out of the two that I’ve taken… LOL… the 2nd was much harder than the 1st.

LI doesn’t aproach LII or LIII. LII & LIII were unique in their difficulty. I found the LII curriculum more complex than LIII - I breazed thru the LIII readings, and was rarely stumped, even remotely, by any concept. Can’t say that about LII. The actual LIII exam was harder than the LII exam. First off, there were major time issues on the LIII morning session. If I had studied for 800 hours, I don’t believe I would have finished the entire test. There was just too much to done in 3 hours. I didn’t have a time issue on LII. Also, they threw more curveballs on LIII than LII. In short, LII is harder to prepare for, but if you are prepared, you are golden in June. On LIII, I was well prepared, but I think it’s God’s hands.

L3 was hardest. Way more subjective. Although all the FSA on L2 was bear. Pension accounting, merger accounting, currency translation, ugh.

naturallight Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Pension accounting, merger accounting, currency > translation, ugh. Makes me shudder. If I ever have to work with any of the above for a living, I’ll quit this game.

If possible, would you mind putting in the associated dates of taking each level? [to put it into context as JDV’s comment makes it clear that the difficulty is changing] uejjap Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Out of the two that I’ve taken… LOL… the 2nd > was much harder than the 1st. And out of the one level I took, it was much harder than not taking anything… so either Level 1 = 5 (for no benchmark -> average) or Level 1 = 10 (much harder than doing nothing)…LOL.

LEVEL 2 was the hardest!

builds in difficulty in layers I - in hindsight, a joke. but for a newbie, 240 Qs with 1.5 minutes each, with the sheer volume of material to be covered II - lots of new stuff (structured finance, advanced FSA, derivatives securities) with lots of formulae, but ultimately not that hard in my view III - big boys game. complex, overlapping material. assumes knowledge of LII stuff or you’ll be at sea (e.g. derivatives for portfolio mgmt) frankly, i enjoyed LIII material the most, although i did not enjoy the AM test!

level 3 was hardest for me.

1 - 3 2 - 10 3 - 9

L1: 2 L2: 7 L3: 9

L1: 2 L2: 5 L3: 7

oh man, i thought if i managed to get through level 2 i was sitting pretty… i guess not.