Ansar Ahmad ACCA
New member
- Jun 18, 2026
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Hi Guys,
I am a member of ACCA (21 years old). Its been almost 2 years since I have passed ACCA’s exams. For those who don’t know, ACCA is a Chartered Certificate in Accounting from a body in UK (of the same name). I currently reside in Dubai and work full-time. I have been thinking to register with CFA for the last one year but everytime I start reading the Ethics section in Part 1, it bores me to death. So this time I decided to get over Part 1 as quickly as possible.
My question is from the fellows who have already attempted CFA Level 1 and have attempted ACCA or any other professional accounting exam as well.
I haven’t yet read any book in curriculum but I am planning to start-off and follow a rigourous schedule until the exam. Frankly, throughout ACCA I have only studied 10-15 days thouroughly for all the exams (3 exams each six months), and I have easily passed them.
So is it possible to approach the CFA exams the same way, I know that the curriculum books are pretty fat but I wanna know about the difficulty level of the exam.
In a nutshell, is it possible I start now and attempt the exam reasonably in December? How much effort did it take you for Level 1.. I know it varies, but still a ballpark figure can be given.
I would really appreciate your taking time to provide a useful opinion.
PS: I have done all the ACCA exams on self-study and I will adopt the same approach for CFA.
I am a member of ACCA (21 years old). Its been almost 2 years since I have passed ACCA’s exams. For those who don’t know, ACCA is a Chartered Certificate in Accounting from a body in UK (of the same name). I currently reside in Dubai and work full-time. I have been thinking to register with CFA for the last one year but everytime I start reading the Ethics section in Part 1, it bores me to death. So this time I decided to get over Part 1 as quickly as possible.
My question is from the fellows who have already attempted CFA Level 1 and have attempted ACCA or any other professional accounting exam as well.
I haven’t yet read any book in curriculum but I am planning to start-off and follow a rigourous schedule until the exam. Frankly, throughout ACCA I have only studied 10-15 days thouroughly for all the exams (3 exams each six months), and I have easily passed them.
So is it possible to approach the CFA exams the same way, I know that the curriculum books are pretty fat but I wanna know about the difficulty level of the exam.
In a nutshell, is it possible I start now and attempt the exam reasonably in December? How much effort did it take you for Level 1.. I know it varies, but still a ballpark figure can be given.
I would really appreciate your taking time to provide a useful opinion.
PS: I have done all the ACCA exams on self-study and I will adopt the same approach for CFA.
some topics are similar to CFA and it will be much easier for you to pass the exam. Taking into account that you work full time and have a short time frame for exam prep I would suggest that you take TimePrep iPhone/iPad app for study structuring and planning. You can enter your study plan, study preferences and free time slots in an usual week and develop a study plan. Even better, you can reschedule study sessions or the entire study plan in case you miss some sessions. It will give you feedback how much you have to study and what you have to do to complete the study proces on time in this short and probbably bussy time frame.