290 days to go - Here is my plan of attack

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onelasttime

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OK, I know most of you won’t seriously start until Jan or Feb but after failing for the 2nd time, I am not kidding around any more. Additionally, my work hours fluctuate between 50 - 80/week so there will be weeks when I won’t be able to study at all.
I am planning to start early September, here is my plan. Going to use CFAI text mainly. Review Schweser on occasion.
- Read all of CFAI material word for word and solve end of chapter problems. Assigning 1-week per study session, It will take me until beg of Jan to finish CFAI readings and EOC once.
- Next review is faster with 2 study sessions per week which will take me to beginning of March.
- For the month of March I will focus on weaker areas and attack question bank.
- April and May are set for practice exams, review EOC again and Schweser Question bank.
Take week off before exam for final review.
What do you guys think? I will be specially interested to hear from those who passed but other comments are welcome as well.
 
That was pretty much my exact schedule leading up to the test this past June. I also took notes while reading the CFA text. I moved and switched jobs in march so that threw me off a little, but besides that, your plan sounds flawless.
best,
TheChad
 
Looks like a great plan if you can avoid burnout so build in some downtime. Also, I produced an outline for each reading that focused on answering each LOS. I think there is a lot of good study advice out there but sometimes we overlook focusing on the actual LOS which is what we are responsible for. This worked for all 3 exams for me. Best of luck.
 
onelasttime,
Sounds like a thorough plan, however, is reading the CFAI text twice in its entirety a good use of your time?
Personally, and since you’re set to start early (I started in Oct ‘09), I found that writing out and answering each and every LOS comprehensively and each and every ECQ per chapter gave me the ‘edge’ to pass level 3 first time around - speed of review to my mind is of paramount importance.
Another tip would be to use MS Excel - open multiple tabs in your spreadsheet, one tab for each topic area, and just recall the concepts without looking at your written out LOS. Build on the MS Excel spreadsheet in the last 2 months before the test - the spreadsheet really saved me a tonne of time drilling what I knew cold and what I didn’t. Plus, by bringing my laptop to the exam hall, I was able to review any topic at will during the break between AM/PM. I wonder how much my spreadsheet could fetch on ebay? lol
Good luck
K
 
Good for you. Your persistence will payoff.
I failed last year but cleared it this year with big improvements in several areas.
Coming into the second attempt, I wanted to nail down the personal and institutional ips. Working eocs, past exams examples, examples from schweser early on helped a lot. I really think the am ips section is critical to passing this beast. I found schweser’s explanations in the exam book very beneficial. When exam day came I was ready to tackle these sections like it was second nature.
I read all cfai texts and did all eocs and honestly assesed my mastery of each los. I worked the eocs again and read through notes and highlighted areas to fill in the finer details. I gave myself a month to do practice exams. When finished, I read and reread guidelne answers to hammer the concepts home.
About a week out, I was able to review the majority of the curriculum in under two days and the pieces really began to fall on place.
On game day, I took a half ass stab on the am tax question but quickly moved on realizing I had very little chance of getting it right. I finished up with ten minutes to spare and put something down for partial credit. I think many people spent way too much time on this (similar to the wacc question from 2009) and were flustered for the rest of the day.
L3 was the toughest for me but I commited myself to putting in a ridiculous amount of time in order to pass it.
Best of luck! You can do it.
 
Thanks everyone for advice. I will certainly make use of it.
Question to Kakane: I have always hand written notes, but willing to give excel a try since I use it so much at work. Do you wrote down some general concepts in excel for each topic and then expand on it? I find it hard to recall concepts unless a question is asked.
I am guessing that’s a whole lot of excel tabs. If you don’t mind can you send me a sample at uclafemba at yahoo dot com
Thanks in advance.
Kakane Wrote:
——————————————————-
> onelasttime,
>
> Sounds like a thorough plan, however, is reading
> the CFAI text twice in its entirety a good use of
> your time?
> Personally, and since you’re set to start early (I
> started in Oct ‘09), I found that writing out and
> answering each and every LOS comprehensively and
> each and every ECQ per chapter gave me the ‘edge’
> to pass level 3 first time around - speed of
> review to my mind is of paramount importance.
>
> Another tip would be to use MS Excel - open
> multiple tabs in your spreadsheet, one tab for
> each topic area, and just recall the concepts
> without looking at your written out LOS. Build on
> the MS Excel spreadsheet in the last 2 months
> before the test - the spreadsheet really saved me
> a tonne of time drilling what I knew cold and what
> I didn’t. Plus, by bringing my laptop to the exam
> hall, I was able to review any topic at will
> during the break between AM/PM. I wonder how much
> my spreadsheet could fetch on ebay? lol
>
> Good luck
>
> K
 
I’m thinking about doing something like this. Last year I started out in late January and got burned out b/c I slacked off in Feb and March and didn’t really get serious until April.
I think I need to spread things out better so I have more time for review when April and May comes around.
 
I made up three powerpoints that had all 360-ish (I forget now) LOSs. I had the LOS on the top and the reading reference on the bottom. I typed my study notes onto the slide. For some LOSs I used multiple slides. I have what I did if you want it. Many slides were my own notes, but in a few cases I stole things out of Schweser verbatim if I liked it.
The other thing I did (much more helpful) was made up around a billion cue cards. The outer face of the card would have the name of a relationship/formula/list/concept and the other side would have the answer. I made these cards up as I studied, each time I identified something I wanted to commit to memory.
Periodically I would use these cards for review. I would shuffle them and then pick them up one by one, either write out the answer or mentally phrase it, and then flip the card over and check my answer. Obviously the number of cards grew to the point where it was unmanageable to review them all at once, so I started to sub-divide them into piles depending on the difficulty I had with them, and review the tougher ones more often.
 
Another good suggestion from amjf088. I would like to have the powerpoints, you can email them at uclafemba at yahoo dot com . If it doesn’t fit in an email let me know I can try google docs or something.
Thanks
 
onelasttime Wrote:
——————————————————-
> Thanks everyone for advice. I will certainly make
> use of it.
>
> Question to Kakane: I have always hand written
> notes, but willing to give excel a try since I use
> it so much at work. Do you wrote down some
> general concepts in excel for each topic and then
> expand on it? I find it hard to recall concepts
> unless a question is asked.
>
> I am guessing that’s a whole lot of excel tabs.
> If you don’t mind can you send me a sample at
> uclafemba at yahoo dot com
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
> Kakane Wrote:
> ————————————————–
> —–
> > onelasttime,
> >
> > Sounds like a thorough plan, however, is
> reading
> > the CFAI text twice in its entirety a good use
> of
> > your time?
> > Personally, and since you’re set to start early
> (I
> > started in Oct ‘09), I found that writing out
> and
> > answering each and every LOS comprehensively
> and
> > each and every ECQ per chapter gave me the
> ‘edge’
> > to pass level 3 first time around - speed of
> > review to my mind is of paramount importance.
> >
> > Another tip would be to use MS Excel - open
> > multiple tabs in your spreadsheet, one tab for
> > each topic area, and just recall the concepts
> > without looking at your written out LOS. Build
> on
> > the MS Excel spreadsheet in the last 2 months
> > before the test - the spreadsheet really saved
> me
> > a tonne of time drilling what I knew cold and
> what
> > I didn’t. Plus, by bringing my laptop to the
> exam
> > hall, I was able to review any topic at will
> > during the break between AM/PM. I wonder how
> much
> > my spreadsheet could fetch on ebay? lol
> >
> > Good luck
> >
> > K
Id love a copy fo this excel file too…not to get your notes, but to see the format… You could just send em say, on set of LOS or one small set of topics, etc if you don’t want to send the whole thing…Just trying to get a feel, it sounds like a method that could be useful, but i’m not conceptualizing it very well
 
Onelasttime:
I just emailed the powerpoints (all together). If it doesn’t get through in the next little while, post back here and I will send them through one at a time tomorrow morning.
Thanks!
 
on your 2nd time around, dont just review EOC, actually do them without any help until AFTER you have done the whole question. 2 weeks before the exam, that is when you REVIEW the parts of EOC you got wrong.
on my 3rd and final attempt, I fcused strictly on cfai texts. i had schweser notes, but i didnt touch their notes, i only did the end of chapter questions a few times.
 
Just don’t depend on Schweser..it almost killed me for L3. Do the EOC, review the numerous lists, do every IPS you can find for both individuals/institutions.
Reading the official texts and using Schweser to review the more testable points is probably the best policy…it was my plan after taking L3 and being 99% sure I failed. Thank god for that 1%.
 
GreenTomato Wrote:
——————————————————-
> Would someone mind emailing the powerpoints to me
> also?
>
> My email is [email protected]
>
> Thank you very much in advance!!
Done.
Let me know if they don’t show up.
 
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