Thoughts on the Schweser 3 Day Review

[Don Quixote]

Yesterday I went to the first day of the Schweser Level I 3 Day Review. I don’t want to name the city or the instructor. Needless to say, I’m not there today. For those of you that aren’t familiar, before the course starts they send you three books. Schweser’s Secret Sauce, Review Workshop Mind Maps, and Review Workshop Questions. The Secret Sauce is actually pretty solid. It’s an ultra condensed version of the curriculum, kind of like a book version of fashcards, good for a quick review. The Mind Maps book is an even more condensed version, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.
Now, I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I signed up. I know it’s too much material to really cover in three days, but by the twelfth email from Schweser telling me it’s not too late to sign up I was worn down enough and thought, “gee, I guess it can’t hurt.” Anyway, so flipping through the Mind Maps book before the class, I’m thinking to myself that this book will kind of serve as the guide, the instructor will elaborate and go a bit deeper into some topics, I’ll take some notes, get some practice questions in. If I feel stronger about at least three topics afterwards, it’ll definitely be worth the $597.35.
No. Absolutely not. We started with QM and moved from there to FRA. The entire day: go through maybe 20-30 slides. Do some problems on our own. Go over answers (not work through a problem). Repeat. And when I say go through slides, I don’t mean the instructor would get to the slide and have a discussion about it. I mean he would read the slide verbatim and go to the next one. Aside from working through a few problems, the only things I wrote in my notebook are a few of the instructors one off lines. ”RTFQ: Read The Full Question” ”questions pound nails in” ”If you’re a baseball fan.. The CFA doesn’t throw any heat… but it definitely throws a lot of junk.”
I don’t know, maybe this methof is effective for some people. But for me, the whole day provided me with negative utility. I could have gotten a lot more done had I stayed home and continued to study on my own. I just wanted to come on here and put this up so maybe I can save someone $600 in the future. Save your money and just flip through a section then do some questions.
Does anyone else have any thoughts?

 

[bfry]

What study package did you get from them? Mine included the online 3-day review and I sat through the entire thing. I would say the above points are pretty accurate - would I pay an additional $600 for something like that, probably not. I did think it was valuable though, but really just from the standpoint that it just beat the dead horse again. The instructor that did the online course was very good and did give the fair warning that it was going to be more questions based and not really a “full review” of the material. He also did a better job delving into the slides a bit more than what you indicated above.
I think the valuable thing was the actual review question book they gave out for this. These questions seemed to be a bit more challanging than the usual ones that you find in their practice exams, Qbank, etc. We also didnt even go through but about 1/3 of the questions in that book so it does leave some additional practice material for the coming weeks.
In all would I pay $600 for this - probably not. However the difference in the package that includes the online review and the package just below it is like $300 and the only difference is really this online 3-day review. Would I pay a more reasonable $300 for it - probably. I feel at that price it is a better deal.