Starting Prep

[thedarkknight88]

To those out there who have started studying. I moved into a new city last month and have not had any time to study. I have to begin studying immediately and am kind of tensed with the curriculum. I have also heard that the topics are dry compared to level 2 and require a lot of retention skills.
I know with the right effort Level 3 should be possible. But wanted a guidance to prepare better, since im workin, i would have around an hour to hour and a half on weekdays and possibly 10-12 hours on a combined basis on weekends. So that should make. How should I break my preparation/revision keeping the next 4 months in mind. Which subjects would be the best ones to start with. I typically leave ethics for the last month and use tests to get acquainted to the common types of questions.
Please guide.
Sincerely,
TDK88

 

[Arif Irfanullah]

Dear Dark Knight,
Find below the schedule I’m following with my Level III group. I’m essentially following the sequence in the curriculum except doing Ethics at the end… along the lines of what you are thinking.
You can follow my sequence but obviously you only have half the time (compared to what I have on my schedule).
Make sure you do the curriculum examples and practice problems. Try to be done with the course by early May so you have at least 3 week to do a lot of practice problems.
Also, take a look at the CFA Institute mock exam to get a sense for how you should respond to the essay questions.
You can email me if you have further questions.

Study Session
Planned Dates
Quiz 3. Behavioral Finance 3-Nov to 10-Nov
17-Dec
4. Private Wealth Management 13-Nov to 28-Nov 5. Portfolio Management for Individual Investors 1-Dec to 8-Dec 6. Capital Market Expectations in Portfolio Management 11-Dec to 15-Dec
14-Jan
7. Economic Concepts for Asset Valuation 18-Dec to 22-Dec 8. Asset Allocation 5-Jan to 12-Jan 9. Management of Passive and Active Fixed Income Portfolios 19-Jan to 26-Jan
4-Feb
10. Portfolio Management of Global Bonds and Fixed Income Derivatives 29-Jan to 2-Feb 11. Equity Portfolio Management 5-Feb to 9-Feb
25-Feb
12. Equity Portfolio Management 12-Feb to 19-Feb 13. Alternative Investments for Portfolio Management 23-Feb to 2-Mar
25-Mar
14. Risk Management 5-Mar to 12-Mar 15. Risk Management Applications of Derivatives 16-Mar to 23-Mar 16. Execution of Portfolio Decisions; Monitoring and Rebalancing 26-Mar to 2-Apr
29-Apr
17. Performance Attribution and Evaluation 6-Apr to 13-Apr 18. Global Investment Performance Standards 16-Apr to 23-Apr 2. Ethics and Professional Standards in Practice 27-Apr to 30-Apr Practice, Practice, Practice 1-May to 31-May