Seems to be a lot of people asking “If I do XYZ or ABC” will I pass level 2, so thought I’d give my thoughts on how to pass without committing a silly amount of hours to study:
Step 1 - Cover the cirriculum in any manner you want, be it CFAI Books, third party books or third party videos. Different people learn in different ways, so do what’s right for you - NOT what’s right for a study partner or Internet forum member.
Step 2 - Cover the CFAI EoC summary and attempt the EOC questions. If you find yourself struggling in certain area then hit more questions from another source if you can, however it’s important at this point to think about exam weighting. FRA and Equity are the biggest topics and nailing them should be a focus. These are followed by Ethics, AltInv, CorpFin and Derivatives. In combination these 6 topics are likely to form ~80% of the marks, so if you can score high on these and hit the low hanging fruit in the other topics you’ll get what you need to pass. (One extra tip I’d give is to ignore any EoC that isn’t a multiple choice Q as the time spent just isn’t efficient - higher marginal returns elsewhere)
Step 3 - Get a Formula sheet from a prep provider if you don’t already have one, personally I used Schweser, and study it before every paper you take. This may seem long to do and you will hate the sight of it within a week, but by exam day you’ll near enough have it memorised and knowing the formulae is vital to passing
Step 4 - Mocks, mocks and more mocks. The level 2 test is very different to level 1 in that anything can come up in detail. At level 1 you can probably guess half the questions you’ll end up with and you’ll see them over and over in mocks. In level 2 they can pick a tiny topic and that’s an entire item set. The more mocks you cover the more chance you have of being sat in the exam, turning the page and realising “sweet, this item set is just like the one I did last week”. Don’t aim for a number and then relax, just do as many as you can. Getting used to focussing for 3hrs straight makes a big difference on exam day.
Most importantly don’t panic. If you keep scoring poorly in a topic close to the test you’ll be tempted to review it in depth but this will be throwing good time after bad - everyone has weaker topics. You’re better off doing a whole test and learning 5 things in 5 topics than killing yourself to get an extra couple of marks in a single topic.
Step 1 - Cover the cirriculum in any manner you want, be it CFAI Books, third party books or third party videos. Different people learn in different ways, so do what’s right for you - NOT what’s right for a study partner or Internet forum member.
Step 2 - Cover the CFAI EoC summary and attempt the EOC questions. If you find yourself struggling in certain area then hit more questions from another source if you can, however it’s important at this point to think about exam weighting. FRA and Equity are the biggest topics and nailing them should be a focus. These are followed by Ethics, AltInv, CorpFin and Derivatives. In combination these 6 topics are likely to form ~80% of the marks, so if you can score high on these and hit the low hanging fruit in the other topics you’ll get what you need to pass. (One extra tip I’d give is to ignore any EoC that isn’t a multiple choice Q as the time spent just isn’t efficient - higher marginal returns elsewhere)
Step 3 - Get a Formula sheet from a prep provider if you don’t already have one, personally I used Schweser, and study it before every paper you take. This may seem long to do and you will hate the sight of it within a week, but by exam day you’ll near enough have it memorised and knowing the formulae is vital to passing
Step 4 - Mocks, mocks and more mocks. The level 2 test is very different to level 1 in that anything can come up in detail. At level 1 you can probably guess half the questions you’ll end up with and you’ll see them over and over in mocks. In level 2 they can pick a tiny topic and that’s an entire item set. The more mocks you cover the more chance you have of being sat in the exam, turning the page and realising “sweet, this item set is just like the one I did last week”. Don’t aim for a number and then relax, just do as many as you can. Getting used to focussing for 3hrs straight makes a big difference on exam day.
Most importantly don’t panic. If you keep scoring poorly in a topic close to the test you’ll be tempted to review it in depth but this will be throwing good time after bad - everyone has weaker topics. You’re better off doing a whole test and learning 5 things in 5 topics than killing yourself to get an extra couple of marks in a single topic.
