Making the best out of Curriculum

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Hello guys, I cleared level 1 just recently (June 2016) and will be appearing for level 2 in 2017.
Many of you who have cleared level 2 have stressed on using curriculum for studies. I would like to know how to use curriculum considering the following two constraints-
1. Voluminous nature of books.
2. Time constraint assuming you are working somewhere.
Some have also suggested making personal notes while studying from curriculum which can be used during the last crucial period before exams. But again taking notes takes up pretty much of your time.
Pls guide what was your approach to tackle this issue.
 
It’s August 2016. Till exam in June 2017 you have a plenty of time to read entire curriculum, practicing a lot and making your own notes (the best timing for this thing is during practicing). Better prepare yourself for hard work and sacrifice a lot of free hours, no shortcuts here.
 
There are a gazillion posts on here about this exact topic mate.
You have the 3rd party (with EOC/BB etc) camp in one corner & the curriculum only camp in the other corner. Both with success stories, both with failure stories.
Take your pick!! If you need more info, skim through a few of the many many posts about this.
Don’t half-arse it & you’ll be sweet.
 
Plan Plan Plan. How much do you work? If the answer is 80-90 hours a week, then start studying earlier give yourself 7-8 months instead of 5-6 months to study for the exam. Plan to finish the material 4-6 weeks before the exam to give yourself time to review the material. Additionally, you should plan to take 1-2 weeks off before the exam as a last blitz to cement your foundation before the exam. Save your vacation or talk to your boss and roll some hours.
The way I would tackle the material —> Look at the sections. What do i feel most comfortable with from level 1. Add those topics up and assess where I stand in my portfolio of topics? Does it cover 65-80% of the exam. If not where am I going to get those extra points? After make sure you are a master of those topics that cover 65-80% of the exam while being able to fundamentally answer the easier to medium level questions from the other 20% of the material.
In terms of studying the material i would go through all the Schwezer readings (take notes) —> Do the Schwezer Concept Checkers + a small amount of Q bank questions —> CFAI end of section questions —> Assess (if i don’t feel comfortable go into the CFAI readings and drill problems)
 
I took several spiral notebooks worth of notes and, by the time I finished reading the Kaplan books (I didn’t read CFAI books), I only had time to do topic tests and mocks. I literally have 4 or 5 notebooks full of notes I never once looked at. Was that poor planning? Possibly.
There are two ways to study for the exam: (1) the academic approach, and (2) the “I-want-to-pass-the-exam” approach. Choose wisely.
 
str8up81 wrote:
There are two ways to study for the exam: (1) the academic approach, and (2) the “I-want-to-pass-the-exam” approach. Choose wisely.
Click to expand...
Advantages and weaknesses of each?
 
Depends on how much time you have. Personally, I am firmly in the “schweser covers everything you need to comfortably pass” but you definitely need to do the CFAI curriculum end of chapter practice questions over and over. If you have to read the CFAI curriculum, I would follow the same basic method- read the chapter, do the EOC’s and go back if you’re unable to answer any.
 
Flashback wrote:
str8up81 wrote:
There are two ways to study for the exam: (1) the academic approach, and (2) the “I-want-to-pass-the-exam” approach. Choose wisely.
Click to expand...
Advantages and weaknesses of each?
Click to expand...
I believe the advantages of the academic approach include a candidate or charterholder being more adept at each topic, but one risks becoming the jack of all trades, master of none. How many of the topics will each person put into practice in the real world? Each person is different, of course, but I can tell you that FRA will never be used in my day-to-day job. Same goes for Quantitative Methods. For those types of topics, it may behoove someone to learn just what is needed to pass. There’s so much material, you can lose sight of the forest from the trees and devote tons of time learning something that isn’t readily tested.
An advantage of studying to pass is that by doing mock after mock and topic test after topic test, you start to see patterns in what types of questions are asked. This helps familiarize candidates for what they may expect on the exam. The disadvantage is that the exam isn’t the real world, and a lack of understanding outside how the exam format can put someone at a loss in real world settings.
 
There is also “the savage uses the bow and arrow” approach. It’s literally a learning exercise by the system of error and hits, no matter of concept behind. I am skeptic if it should work on L3.
 
str8up81 wrote:
I took several spiral notebooks worth of notes and, by the time I finished reading the Kaplan books (I didn’t read CFAI books), I only had time to do topic tests and mocks. I literally have 4 or 5 notebooks full of notes I never once looked at. Was that poor planning? Possibly.
There are two ways to study for the exam: (1) the academic approach, and (2) the “I-want-to-pass-the-exam” approach. Choose wisely.
Click to expand...
I did this, only with the official curriculum, and I also didn’t refer to my old notes (not very often).
My reason for writing out my own notes is due to the way in which I learn and remember concepts. It wasn’t foolproof, as I didn’t magically develop a photographic memory of every reading, but at the time I took my notes, I focused on trying to write out the parts of the reading which correspond to each individual LOC.
This way I forced myself to take time to understand what CFA Institute wanted me to learn and recall during the exam, which was invaluable in distilling the massive curriculum down to something more manageable.
When you pay for third party materials such as Kaplan, you are implicitly relying on the authors to have done exactly the same thing, but I don’t believe that I can retain information as easily this way.
 
The good news is that I compared the depth of the stack of my 2016 CFAI books to the depth of my 2017 books, and it seems about 700 pages less!!
 
CEO10K-DAY wrote:
The good news is that I compared the depth of the stack of my 2016 CFAI books to the depth of my 2017 books, and it seems about 700 pages less!!
Click to expand...
hopefully they didn’t decrease the font size?
 
Thank you for sharing your views guys, this helps.
 
You can always use a study provider as your primary source, and refer back to curriculum if something is not covered adequately. Remember to do blue box examples, EOCs, topic tests and mocks from CFAI and you will be fine.
 
I don’t read the cirriculum, so I don’t know what could be the right strategy for that. But I read the Schweser notes, and I realize that you probably need about 1 and a half month for the first reading round, and about 1 month for second round to know clearly what they are talking about. So it took at least 2 and a half month for the reading. Then I spend another half month for the mock. I only have 3 months, so that is all I did.
 
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