Prep Provider Choice

[archived_user]

Time to beat this dead horse!
I’ve seen reviews on here for Kaplan, IFT, Wiley, MM, etc. for the various levels, but most reviews tend to be generalized and people at work have disputed some of the information posted in the program recaps on AF. For L1 it didn’t seem to matter who you studied with as the material was relatively straightforward (compared to some of the topics I’ve seen in the L2 & L3 curriculum), but I’ve heard that certain prep providers don’t do as good a job for L2 & L3 as they did for L1.
Having just taken the L2 exam, who was your provider and how well do you feel they prepped you for exam day? Based on the relative difference in complexity between the L1 and L2 curriculums, did you feel it was worth it to take a class or were the printed materials from your provider sufficient?

 

[archived_user]

I took L1 without using any prep providers (at the time I was working as an auditor, I had very limited knowledge about finance).
When I got to L2 last year, I changed job and started working in finance. My supervisor told me that I needed to use prep providers because there were more difficult concepts in L2. I went with Schweser Essential + on demand videos (aka entirely online), they did an okay job preparing me for the exam. However, I do not think it was enough to acquire in-depth knowledge on everything in the curriculum. So, when I was confused about something, I asked/searched on this forum.
The most important part, to me at least, is that a single prep provider IS NOT ENOUGH. I ended up doing mocks from Konvexity, Schweser, IFT, FinQuiz, and CFAI. You learn a lot from doing various mocks and asking/searching for answers on this forum.
I sat for L3 this year and followed the same strategy, except that I discovered how great MM mocks are.