I used
LevelUp online videos and Bootcamp. The good: I thought the online videos and accompanying slide book were well done and very helpful. The slide book is one of the best study tools I’ve seen across the three levels and the videos are excellent. The bad/needs improvement: The Bootcamp was not what I would call a CFA Bootcamp at all, it’s more like death by PowerPoint with a surprisingly small amount of interaction (almost none outside of IPS). Except for the IPS review, he basically just reads through the slides for four days during the Bootcamp, insults other providers/brags (taking away from time that could be teaching the material), and tells you how much hard work you must do before the exam. I get it, it’s 4 days to cover the entire curriculum so you basically must fly through the material (e.g. read through the slides), but that doesn’t make it helpful or a good use of time, in my opinion. That said, the IPS review is excellent.
I think
LevelUp would be better off modeling the rest of the review session/Bootcamp off the IPS review – cover a handful of highly testable topics in depth and actually work problems. I think this is much “stickier” learning versus passively listening to someone read through PowerPoint Slides. I think
Schweser may do this at their 3 and 5-day
Bootcamps but I didn’t attend one, so I am not sure. You can’t do it all in 4 days and when you try to its too watered down and turns into the instructor reading from the slide deck with almost no interaction (aka death by PowerPoint).
I was also very surprised at the near constant self-promotion and
Schweser/Mark Meldrum put-downs at the Bootcamp. Beyond just wasting class/study time (which is bad enough during crunch time) it came across as unprofessional to me. Aside from the IPS workshop and book of old exams sorted by topic, the bootcamp wasn’t a good use of my time – I can read the slide deck on my own since that’s basically what he does. Maybe other folks learn best by passively listening to 4 days of someone reading from PowerPoint for hours on end, but not me.
That said, I passed as a first timer and its largely because of his videos and slide deck are great for learning the curriculum – you see the big picture and also understand the minutiae (which is tested).
Also, if you do
LevelUp, I’d make sure you save a couple months (yes at least 8 weeks) at the end for mock exams. My suggestions are CFAI (obviously),
Schweser has a couple good ones – the downloadable/electronic ones where you can input your scores online after you take the paper test – and some lousy ones (the ones in their book of practice tests), and Mark Meldrum’s exams were top notch, I highly recommend those.
Everyone has his/her preferences, and these are my observations.