Advice from this year's CFA LII takers?

[WolfOfTryon]

1.Be willing to put in the time. I’ve never understood people’s obsession with trying to find the absolute minimum (e.g. 300 hours) required to pass the exam. The reality is that the “minimum” is going to be different for each individual. If you’re going to sacrifice 300 hours of your life to be a borderline pass, why not sacrifice an additional 100 hours so that you can dramatically increase your chances of passing? Also, you’re going to have to be willing to sacrifice a big portion of your life, whether it be family, friends or gym. If you’re not truly willing to do that, don’t bother IMO.
2. The most difficult part for me was retention. Many will probably disagree with this and its unique to each person, but my biggest regret with L1 was having started studying so early (began in July for December 2015). Come review time in November, I barely recalled any of that material and found myself essentially learning it all over again for the first time. With Level 2, I started in mid-February and went full throttle until the exam. When I started reviewing, the material was still very fresh on my mind.
3. Schweser is good for condensing the material, but that’s about it. Read thoroughly through the notes and mark them up, making notes in the margins. The Schweser EOCs are an absolute joke. Burn those and instead look over the Blue Boxes (especially the multiple choice formatted ones). Do the CFAI EOCs. I can’t stress that enough. It is stupid to not do the practice questions written by the same people who are writing the exam. Also, IMO don’t bother with the L2 qbank - most aren’t in the vignette form.
4. Keep record of everything. I printed all the EOCs and answers and organized them by topic. For each question that I missed or any other questions that captured an important concept, I highlighted them as well as highlight portions of the answers so I knew the exact places I would return to come review time.
5. Use the Schweser Quicksheet. I printed it out and then added formulas not already included along with small notes and page numbers corresponding with the material. MEMORIZE the formulas. Seriously, you have to having these down cold and all formulas in the curriculum are all fair game. The week prior to the exam, I spent hours mindlessly writing out the formulas (I call it the rainman method), and if I didn’t undersand what a variable represented, I would go back and review it.
6. Don’t let the vignette format intimidate you. For the most part, they correspond sequentially with the questions and you’ll see this in the CFAI EOCs.
7. My biggest piece of advice is NEVER PUNT a topic, which tends to be the case with the 5-10% topics. If you get stuck with two vignettes on a topic you skipped, you’re pretty much screwed.
8. Review. Do the topic tests! I did all the topic tests and similar to my CFAI EOCs, I printed all of them highlighting concepts I struggled with. My last week I went through every TT problem I missed and made sure I could work them out. Many will disagree with this, but I absoltuely hated the Schweser mocks. They lacked a lot of the complexity included in CFA questions (i.e. TTs,EOCs,BBs) and have a different feel that isn’t representative of what you’ll see on the exam. When it was all said and done, I probably did all the EOCs atleast twice and the topic tests 1.5x along with a few other CFAI official mocks. I got >70% on everything and I’m confident this will work for others.

 

[Grand_canyon]

A good number of Analyst Forum commenters tend to be all-this-or-that-provider or all CFAI. My goal was to read the CFAI material as much as possible and use the Schweser material for when I got behind (due to job or other unavoidable issues in life) or when I needed a slightly different explanation. My tip would then be to really map out your weeks by chapter goals once you set your starting date and your ending date so that you truly have a grasp of knowing if you are getting behind or not.
The most difficult scheduling issue for me from L1 to L2 was realizing that while I could get through 8 to 12 pages per hour (depending on subject) for the CFAI L1 material, I could only manage 4 to 6 pages per hour of the CFAI L2 material. Also, EOCs took much longer (for me anyway) as well.
For L2, the misleading thing for me was that several of the books/topics on their own felt pretty easy, and I tended to under-allot the amount of time it would take to review them at the end (and how difficult it is to recall even the simplest of concepts when you throw all of it into a blender). So, I would definitely advise planning on more review time at the end than you gave L1.
I wholeheartedly agree with WolfOfTryon’s point 7 to not punt. First, one “allowance” will lead you to more willingly give yourself more “allowances” to punt. Second, I did “punt” until about two weeks before the exam when I realized that you need every single point you can possibly give yourself. So, I spent several nights “un”-punting those topics in a panic - but the last-minute effort really helped me to decisively pass and not risk a “Band 9” or “10” result.
Depending on how you handled L1, you might not need to change for this next point. Don’t leave too many things until the end - like flashcards. If at all possible, make them as you go along. [Side note: One guy above says that flashcards are over-rated, but I think that’s really knowing your own style of learning. My retention was much better because I hand-wrote my flashcards, but obviously this guy didn’t need that method. Different strokes for different folks.] Doing the questions as you go along and then using something like Q-bank will help keep the material somewhat retained before the big review push. I made the mistake of doing the CFAI online Topic Tests at the end, and it was a bit overwhelming. I won’t make that mistake with L3.

 

[Grand_canyon]

Oh, just one other thought. If you flip through the FRA section and don’t like what you see, I would advise thinking about the John Harris accounting workshop for L2. It’s pretty inexpensive and really makes that topic hurt a lot less.