2017 Level II Musings

[archived_user]

Thought I’d start a general discussion board for those of us taking Level II this June. I failed band 10 last June and this will be my second attempt. In terms of study strategy, I’ll be using the CFA books exclusively, as the Kaplan course I took last year didn’t provide much value. If this your first attempt and you haven’t started studying yet, I’d suggest using this time before January to thoroughly read through Ethics – it’s typically punted by most candidates until a week or two before the exam, which by that point it becomes difficult to devote much attention especially if you’re pressed for time and a topic like derivatives is still giving you issues. Anyways, here’s to another 6 months of studying!

 

[archived_user]

Thanks for the insight.

 

[archived_user]

Hi Asymptotic,
I also failed band 10 last june, but I studied max 200 hours for the exam (exclusively on Schweser notes and I started in march) and I have no finance background.
To be honest I don’t think that I failed because Schweser weren’t good enough but simply because I missed to study very very hard the last 3 weeks before the exam. I think the secret are the last 3-4 weeks before the exam and do many many exercises. I had a look to the cfa curriculum books and I think there is not that much difference from schweser or at least there is, and I find them even worse. Too much complicated notations (I am an engineer) to explain relatively easy things.
If you already studied once for that exam, I don’t think that read the cfa books would change something, but practice more will for sure. Failing band 10 it means you did grasp the whole curriculum, but probably failed for just small details or for “stupid” error due to the exam pressure.

 

[archived_user]

Fair point. I wouldn’t go so far as to lay blame on Schweser for not passing – many have passed with flying colors using Schweser alone and there’s certainly no shortage of threads on here debating the merits of CFAI vs Schweser (let’s try to avoid that topic here). Nevertheless, I still plan on reading through the CFAI books in their entirety this time around, but that’s just my own preference.