Schweser only for all three levels

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Anyone use only Schweser and pass all three levels? I didn’t bother cracking the CFAI material for level 1 or 2, thinking about using the same strategy for level 3. Wondering if this is something people do.
 
You should at the very least do the end of chapter CFAI questions.
 
I used Schweser, never even opened the CFAI textbooks, and passed with flying colors. As long as you have some supplementary practice questions (Schweser again, is a good source), you should be fine.
 
I used…
…CFA books for about 50% and last years Schweser books for the other 50% for level 1
…Wiley and some EOC questions from the CFAI books for level 2
…Schweser and some EOC questions from the CFAI books for level 3
For all three levels I also used the CFAI books as a reference when something from Schweser or Wiley was unclear for me. I passed all three levels at first try.
I think it would work to only use Schweser for all three levels.
 
I used Wiley for L2 and decided to use Schweser for L3, because Wiley had some drawbacks:
* At least for L2 in 2015 they absolutely didn’t stick to their time tables. The release dates were postponed regularly and the whole material was available quite late. For L3 I didn’t want to take that risk again and wanted to be sure when the material is available.
* There was no printed version available until February if I remember correctly. So I had to print out the material in order to work with it. The price for the printed books was only 25 USD, but they wanted to have 150 USD for the shipping to Europe. Since I already paid some money to print out hundreds of pages I decided not to pay 175 USD for the printed version.
* You have to be aware that the study books don’t contain any questions or exercises. If you want to have questions/exercises you have to buy a seperate book. The price for both was ok, but you have to be aware of it.
Because of all this I wanted to be on the safe side and purchased Schweser for L3 (and I was absolutely happy with the Schweser material). But it wasn’t all bad with Wiley. The quality of the material was very good and I liked the way they summarized the material. I also bought the “11th hour guide” for L2 (which is comparable to Schweser’s Secret Sauce) which was also very good and gave a very good summary of the all readings.
To sum it up: Wiley’s quality was very good, but you couldn’t rely on them. If this has changed I think Wiley could be worth a try for L3. If not, I would recommend Schweser.
 
Alex74 wrote:
I used Wiley for L2 and decided to use Schweser for L3, because Wiley had some drawbacks:
* At least for L2 in 2015 they absolutely didn’t stick to their time tables. The release dates were postponed regularly and the whole material was available quite late. For L3 I didn’t want to take that risk again and wanted to be sure when the material is available.
* There was no printed version available until February if I remember correctly. So I had to print out the material in order to work with it. The price for the printed books was only 25 USD, but they wanted to have 150 USD for the shipping to Europe. Since I already paid some money to print out hundreds of pages I decided not to pay 175 USD for the printed version.
* You have to be aware that the study books don’t contain any questions or exercises. If you want to have questions/exercises you have to buy a seperate book. The price for both was ok, but you have to be aware of it.
Because of all this I wanted to be on the safe side and purchased Schweser for L3 (and I was absolutely happy with the Schweser material). But it wasn’t all bad with Wiley. The quality of the material was very good and I liked the way they summarized the material. I also bought the “11th hour guide” for L2 (which is comparable to Schweser’s Secret Sauce) which was also very good and gave a very good summary of the all readings.
To sum it up: Wiley’s quality was very good, but you couldn’t rely on them. If this has changed I think Wiley could be worth a try for L3. If not, I would recommend Schweser.
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Thank you very much for the detailed insight, Alex74!
 
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