Question for those who relied exclusively/primarily on third-party study guides

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S2000magician

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Was there anything on Saturday’s exam that you had never seen in your studying?
Don’t say what – recall that you’re not allowed to discuss the specifics of the exam – just whether or not there were ideas, phrases, or what-have-you that you didn’t encounter in your studying.
Feel free to identify the prep provider if you’re so disposed.
Thanks.
 
Hmm, good question. There is something I am thinking about that comes to mind, but truth be told it could be that maybe they simply just didn’t drill down into it, and thus I never gave it enough attention. I’ll check and get back to you.
Oh, and I studied with Kaplan
 
Some stuff in Fixed Income in the afternoon. Studied with Scheweser
 
S2000magician,
First off I would like to sincerely thank you for all your time and assistance on this forum and in constructing your website. I relied heavily on your prior posts and your website material throughout the study process. Your website was the 1st thing I recommended to all my friends who asked for study tips. I don’t know how, but someday I would like to send you a token of appreciation for my gratitude.
My studying consisted of reading Schweser 2013 (my buddy sold me the books so they were the previous version) first and not doing any problems along the way. I then jumped straight to the reading CFA chapter summaries and working all the CFA EOC’s. When I felt there were gaps in what the CFA book objectives were at the beginning of the chapter, I read more in depth in those areas. I would guess I ended up reading about half the CFA material and read 100% of the Schweser material. The areas I ended up reading 100% in the CFA books were Fixed Income, FRA, Economics, and PM. The topics I felt I wouldn’t have been adequately prepared had I not read the CFA books were FI, Econ, and PM strictly because those aren’t as intuitive to me and all the details just aren’t there in the condensed 3rd party material (especially sine I had an older version).
Thinking back on the exam, I don’t immediately recall any topics that I wouldn’t have been introduced to at a high level in Schweser; however, had I not worked the EOC’s (at minimum), I would have missed out on a lot of methods and tricks that showed up on the exam. I found a lot of the problems required multiple steps and knowing a simple formula in itself would have made it difficult to solve them had I not known more details on the logic behind the derivation. For L1, I ONLY worked Schweser problems. I did all 4,000+ of them. When I took the CFA mock the week before the test, I panicked because there was a huge gap in the level of difficulty. For L1, I found that I was extremely stressed during the test and had to rely on guess and check and trying to back into answers based on the answer choices, whereas for L2 it was a much more relaxed exam because I felt I had at least seen it all before. I could be wrong, but I attribute this solely to the choice of material studied this time around.
I know time is a huge constraint to most contestants, but I highly recommend using the 3rd party material as an introduction rather than an all-inclusive study guide. They do a really good job of making some of the dry, complicated stuff more straightforward; however, they lack the details needed in some areas to be able to wrap your head around all the elements needed to answer some of the more tricky questions.
Best Regards.
 
Hi,
There is an item set in the afternoon that required things I’m pretty sure were not in the Kaplan.
It asked for calculations where Kaplan stayed on theory only.
 
I studied with Elan and was able to work on all the topics I think, including the PM item sets.
 
Mace wrote:
I studied with Elan and was able to work on all the topics I think, including the PM item sets.
Click to expand...
Yeah! Wiley Elan is much better than Schweser for Level II, IMHO. I studied with Schweser at the first place but found them not as helpful as that of Level I and I stopped. Calculations in Schweser notes are mostly simple and don’t reflect well the curriculum’s style. I like the professor’s notes, though.
 
I used only 2015 Schweser material and I thought it covered pretty much everything. I had 1 theory question where I started laughing to myself as I had never seen any of the terms before…but besides that I think I had a fair shot.
 
I think I started laughing on exactly the same question as I had never seen any of the terms before and for some reason they just seemed to come from completely out of the blue.
 
I studied with Schweser for Level I. There were huge sections in the material I just couldn’t grasp - like derivatives which were beyond me, and which also impacted my understanding of other readings such as fixed income. I spent a lot of time going back to the CFAI reading to make sense of it. After going through Qbank a couple of times, sadly I couldn’t do most of the EOCs. That said, I felt confident about my performance on the Level I exam.
This time around and I studied w/ Wiley, and got much more out of the readings. I didn’t refer to the CFAI material. The progressive nature of the Wiley questions really helped when I started to do EOCs. I did all of the EOCs at least twice, and a good number of the BBs.
There were a couple of terms I didn’t understand in the exam, and 1 in the AM Schweser mock related to currency quoting conventions. I could have spent more time revising alternative investments. I felt unprepared to tackle AI on the exam. Maybe it was adequately covered, maybe it wasn’t. I haven’t been inquisitive enough to double check my notes.
 
I agree on the currency quoting, they almost passed a quick one on me. I see currency quotes all day every day so that served me well.
 
I used schweser last year and Elan this year, I thought Elan did a better job of going deeper into the topics with more complicated examples.
 
I studied with Schweser, reading the chapters then watching the accompanying videos if there was one. I also watched the weekly videos where they did a pretty comprehensive review of every topic. I was asked a similar question form a friend and I put it this way: Imagine the entire CFA curriculum as a piece of white paper. I can say Schweser prepared me pretty well for a lot of the center of the paper, but not so much the corners, which is where I felt a good handful (6 or 7) of questions seemed to be coming from.
There was one in particular where I remembered the word I didn’t recognize and when I looked it up in the CFAI curriculum after the exam it was literally mentioned once.
I am not really sure how testing one idea mentioned once in the curriculum (and not at all in Schweser) is supposed to help me in my career as an analyst.
 
I used Schweser last year (when I was not successful) and switched to the CFAI materials exclusively this year. I felt much more comfortable during this year’s exam and did not have any item sets that I totally blanked on (I remember blanking on two or three item sets last year).
 
I studied both and thought that you definitely missed questions studying straight from schweser. I know both material (both schweser and CFA) Fairly well and thought majority of questions came from things you’ve seen in EOCs and Blue Boxes… schweser was good in regards to Equity, FRA, part of AI part of Fixed Income, part of corp, part of derivs, and part of Econ but that is all. I know this for a fact for questions I saw on the exam would have had your hair being pulled because if you relied solely on schweser there was a good amount that was challenging and a 50/50 shot at answering.
 
ok, here is one from the CFA mock exam so I better delete it…
 
I used Scheweser too and “that” section which is quite evident above bombed me. I still feel I can offset it as I literally bombed some other sections.
Btw, I guessed one option for all 6 of that item set. Someone who has solved it remember anything about which option appeared the most? :D
 
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