Prices of third party material

[mkcfa2013]

Hi all
I will be doing my CFA level 1 exam in June 2013. I haven’t purchased any of the third party materials from the likes of Schweser and Elan yet. I am very surprised that the prices are so high and sometimes even more than the course itself (for the full packages) Any thoughts on why this is, are there cheaper alternatives and would it be worth buying? I tried the Elan trial notes and I did find them beneficial when it came to calculations of formulas, but would the CFA material not be sufficient? I would be interested on anyones thoughts.
Thanks

 

[Alladin]

Ofcourse the cfa material is sufficient if you are willing to read from them ! As far as i am concerned, third party materials are more appropriate for people who either don’t have the time to plough through the cfai material or are willing and able to pay money for summary versions of the material. At the end of the day, the blue box and EOC questions of the cfai books are crucial for the exams,so reading them in context with the source material is kinda sensible to me.
Since candidates have passed these exams using only cfai materials,only third party materials or a combination of the above, it really comes down to a matter of taste. For me , I simply cannot justify paying for third party materials. If i have a question about some part of the curriculum i come on AF and ask others. If i need a shortened version of cfa material, i make my own notes. If the cfa source material does not makes sense. I go to wikipedia.
But if you can afford it…i guess there is nothing wrong with 3rd party materials.This is especially true if :
[a] you do not come from a business/econ/fin background whatsoever
are very busy at work or otherwise have little time for the detailed cfai expositions of the material.
[c] need to get your hands on as many practice problems as possible to boost your confidence and or understanding of the material.
[d] you fall asleep from reading the first paragraph of the cfai books the way you would from Joyce’s Ulysses

 

[cleverCFA]

Schweser notes are awesome for level 1. The jury is still out on whether they will work for me for L2 but many people seem to think so and have done all levels using 3rd party stuff.
If you can afford, I highly highly recommend them. Save yourself a lot of time and effort and buy the notes. Also, the practice exams you get are critical in my opinion.
If you can’t afford them, perhaps you can try to get some of this year’s material from Ebay from someone who might sell their material used. You’ll just need to make sure to check that the LOSs haven’t changed too much, though they should remain pretty similar if not identical.