New around here but very much like this forum! From your guys’ experience, what source of review questions seem to provide the best preparation for the actual exam? I am going through the curriculum and the end of chapter review questions seem, well… kind of not that difficult and sort of basic. And then once in a while, they ask questions that, though not hard, take a lot of time/lengthy work to solve… and I’m thinking with 1.5 minutes per question, there is no way they are going to ask this question.
I know QBank and the like exist but shouldn’t I, by theory, just be able to rely on what the CFA has provided me and do very well? Am I missing something?
This has got to be a popular question around here, so sorry if it’s a repeat!
In theory, sure, I guess. In practice, you really want to spend the 300 bucks get yourself QBank and practice exams. For L1, I highly recommend the Schweser ones. Just rinse and repeat over and over and you’ll pass L1 no problem.
At the beginning, I did those EOC questions. After I worked a few chapters, I found that working on those lengthy ones were pointless. Therefore, I switched to Schweser Qbank and gave up EOC questions.
Yeah, I agree with Eddie. I would only recommend doing the multiple choice CFAI EOCs. Forget about the open ended questions. I did all of them but looking back I wasted a lot of time on those that I could have used doing something more useful like QBank Qs.
QBank can be very useful in helping you identify areas where you are not so strong, particularly weeks after you covered a specific topic. I know I reached the point where I had done some of the EOC questions so many times that I had memorized the questions and answers, which doesn’t really help come exam day. So, my suggestion is to use Schweser as your primary material source, do the EOC questions, create some fake exams using QBank and read the CFAI material in areas you seem to score poorly on. You can also use QBank to generate a lot of questions for your problem areas.
I think it’s good to do the EOC questions, even the open-ended ones, because it forces you to “think” about the material, which forces your brain to work, which will only make you better. Sure, it sucks and it’s hard, but that’s the point. If you can’t remember it, look it up in your book (just like when you were in high school).
Remember–at Level 1, you have 90 seconds to answer a question. Do you think they’ll give you the return on a stock for 10 years and ask you to compute the variance on it? Sure they COULD, but I think that’s highly unlikely. They’re more likely to give you a question that gives you the variance, and asks you to interpret it somehow. These are the type questions I would focus on.
This question would probably be better suited to the Level I forum. On average you’ll get better responses for level specific questions. However, these guys did a great job. Just a heads up for in the future.