Getting back up

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DannyB0y

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So although I consider myself an optimist, I am also a realist.
I know I failed that exam - just too many questions that I had to guess and too many questions that I personally feel Schweser did not prepare me adequately for, although I did all EOC qs in CFAI.
Going to go with straight CFAI next year, no messing around - you can’t go wrong if you go straight from the source, right? My question is what areas, topics, reading, concepts, major vignettes come out and do not ever go through radical changes year upon year? I want to regroup at this point in time and have some material to keep me ticking until the new curriculum/results come out, just to read for ‘fun’ on my way to work.
Thanks guys and good luck to those who nailed it.
 
I believe that if you go through Schweser completely with its 6mock practice exams, it covers more than 90% of the course in a better way than CFAI lengthy readings, if you wanna be 95% done then throw in EOC only from CFAI.
 
You’re motivated!
Fixed income was heavily revised last year so maybe there will be fewer updates next year? It’s also 10 -
20% of the Level 3 exam.
 
DannyBoi? Why dont you continuously do mock exams until 2016?
Go over your weakest areas and make sure you can score 100 on them?
I mean if I had 3 more months left, best is to practice mock exams and EOC.
 
The three most important areas for level 2 were probably valuation (valuing companies and securities), FRA (accounting) and ethics. I would know those cold and start reviewing gradually now if you’re pretty confident that you didn’t pass.
 
Not sure how long you studied for, which I believe makes a huge difference in your prep strategy, but I’ll give you my 2 cents on Schweser vs. CFAI.
I took Level I in December, studied strictly from Schweser and did pretty good (>70 on all areas; except for 3 where I was 50-70). When I decided to sign up for Level II in early February I heard all the horror stories about how much harder Level II was compared to Level I, so I had the same mindset as you - to study strictly from CFAI. I tried this approach for 3 months, spending a lot of time reading and practice problems however I got to May and realized I was forgetting everything. At that point I decided to swtich to Schweser and read the books as quickly as possible, taking the last week off before the test and reviewing only from Schweser.
Long story short, I’m not sure if I passed or not but I do know that Schweser gave me a better chance to pass compared to the Institute’s material by cutting some information out and “dumbing” other material down. To caveat, I did complete all EOC questions, CFAI website questions, and the mock exams; however I don’t necessarily prescribe to the idea that the Institute’s material is vastly superior. It depends on the type of learner/reader you are; I’d rather read 15-20 pages per chapter and chart/diagram things out vs. reading the 40-60 and hardly having time for notes.
 
Hi M_Mitchell,
Thanks for your insight, however I would pay attention to your first comment in the last paragraph. You’re not sure if you passed or not and therefore it’s impossible at this stage to tell how effective that strategy was in the grand scheme of things. I’d appreciate it if you came back on exam results day though and tell us all how you did and what sections you thought switching to schweser may have given you that extra step-up in order to be comfortable on exam day.
Best of luck!
 
I wrote level I last June and level II this June and I am very sure I passed. With that said, having more time to study compared to M_Mitchell (who wrote in December), I think is a huge advantage. Not sure if I would have passed with 4 months of study time and with 4 months, I probably would have gone Schewsers too. So, if M_Mitchell passed, it would be pretty impressive.
All that said, if you want to absolutely nail the exam and have sufficent time (ie. 300+ hours), I would say go to the CFAI book. My advice / process is the following.
1. Skim all the books once making key notes mainly for retention (I did this fairly quickly).I find that I do not retain as much if I just read the material.
2. Do not do any EOC questions until you have finished reading the entire section (ie. I did EOC after finishing the initial reading of all FRA). I think doing the EOC right after reading the chapter gives you a false sense of security on how well you know the material because it is fresh on your mind.
3. After doing miserably on the EOC questions, go back and review the sections that you have done poorly on while making detailed notes / reminder post-its and etc.
One thing to highlight here is that I did get a Qbank to help me stay fresh on previous topics while I continued on doing steps 1 to 3 for the other sections. (ie. if I got a day to myself on a Saturday, I would study Fixed Income for 8 hours with breaks, but after dinner, I would do 30 problems in FRA and Equity, then review the questions I got wrong.) I think this is important because it helps with retention and the exam forces you to switch back and forth on different sections.
4. Do 1 through 3 for all sections by the mid / end of April. From then on, re-do the EOCs, do the CFAI questions and mock as if your life depended on it. (if you can get a whole Saturday off, do an actual simulated mock for 6 hours). Obviously, review the sections that you have done poorly on. Also, Schewser mock was helpful.
As always, focus on Ethics, FRA and Equity.
 
Schweser Mocks would be the best tool to concur L1 & L2, just go through them several times !
 
DannyB0y wrote:
Hi M_Mitchell,
Thanks for your insight, however I would pay attention to your first comment in the last paragraph. You’re not sure if you passed or not and therefore it’s impossible at this stage to tell how effective that strategy was in the grand scheme of things. I’d appreciate it if you came back on exam results day though and tell us all how you did and what sections you thought switching to schweser may have given you that extra step-up in order to be comfortable on exam day.
Best of luck!
Click to expand...
No you’re absolutely right - not sure if I passed, or not. I’d be more than happy to come back share scores and possibly eat crow. However, no matter my ultimate score, I know there were sections that I picked up on quicker and easier in the Schweser material than CFAI and I felt comfortable when I saw the material on the actual exam. Good luck to you too!
 
I have heard some years the third party material prepares you well for the exam and I have also heard the third party material misses the boat completely!
I did 6 mock exams from Schweser and I thought I had pretty much seen most of the CFAI questions at least once in my preparation!
There were some gimme questions and I seriously thought to myself “CAN IT BE THIS SIMPLE?” I tried to figure out all the wrong answers too and it was so straight forward..
 
I do feel that the mock exams I did were more difficult than the actual exam, but you don’t ever really know until you get your results. Our opinion of the exam really means little ie we may think it was easy then end up failing lol. Not long before CFAI puts us out of our misery. Good luck everyone!
 
iamMichael wrote:
I have heard some years the third party material prepares you well for the exam and I have also heard the third party material misses the boat completely!
I did 6 mock exams from Schweser and I thought I had pretty much seen most of the CFAI questions at least once in my preparation!
There were some gimme questions and I seriously thought to myself “CAN IT BE THIS SIMPLE?” I tried to figure out all the wrong answers too and it was so straight forward..
Click to expand...
I agree, it is those questions that worry me, were they really that straightforward or was I missing something completely!? Ugh this has been a loooong wait to find out…
 
I would recommend mocks too. They seem to be the most beneficial, at least for me.
 
I think you all are overrating the importance of mock exams. In taking both the CFA and the CPA (which is, admittedly, much easier), I’ve never taken a mock exam. I get far more out of targeting those areas where I know that I’m weakest. Why waste my time studying FRA, where I already score well and additional studying may only result in marginal improvement, when I can study FI, where I do poorly and even just a little bit of studying will drastically improve my score? Think of it in terms of the law of diminishing returns. Continuing to pour resources (time, energy) into FRA makes no sense.
A mock exam, in my opinion, is really only useful if you struggle with the format of the exam (i.e. finishing on time) or have run out of other questions to do.
I just hope that my strategy worked. Fck taking L2 again. Seriously.
 
I agree to an extent. Towards the end I started using mocks as just extra practice questions, specifically on topics I struggled in rather than taking them start to finish in a timed environment. But I definitely did a few full ones, especially the official CFAI one. Like you said though, I can only do so many of those before I begin to lose the value of them.
I think that’s why I enjoyed and got so much use out of the online practice assessments provided by the CFAI this year. It was easy to just do a vignette, review your errors (or lucky guesses!) and then do another without feeling constricted by the full breadth of a mock.
 
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