Why is everybody freaking out about L2?

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Hello!
After having (unexpectedly) passed L1 this June, I registered for L2 as soon as possible and immediately started to study (also using Schweser & Wiley Material for 2015 from friends) since I did not have time enough IMO to prepare for L1 and did not want to feel insufficiently prepared for L2.
Thus far I have covered Quant, Economics, FRA completely and started Fixed Income & Corp Finance this week.
I haven’t found the material overly difficult I must say (not saying it is trivial - but it is not rocket science either). I did all the EOC exercises and the ones in the KS-material.
So the question to you veterans out there:
Why does everybody consider the L2-material so difficult? Why are ppl failing L2 so often / giving up (e.g. a friend of mine failed twice and won’t give it a 2nd try). Am I just not paying enough attention and take things too easily? Feeling underprepared for L1 during the exam was really horrible so this time I wanted to be sure to understand everything and anticipate possible questions from the material as good as possible.
It appears to me that it’s less the difficulty of the material to blame for this, but the ‘interconnectedness’ of the questions and the question format (vignettes insteasd of short questions).
Please let me know what you guys think and let me know where I am wrong- thx a lot!
 
Material is easy, amount of material is huge, exam is easy, mocks (cfai) are insanely hard.
 
I have actually been feeling the same exact way in my studies so far. My gut tells me the difficulty is going to come in 1) the format of the test 2) correctly timing sets in order to read and answer questions 3) since its half the questions as L1 you can’t get as many wrong.
 
Thx for your hints! The lower error tolerance also came to my mind.
I think e.g. the Schweser Vignettes are not so good IMO, the EOC-cases in the official material are much better.
 
Gurifissu wrote:
Material is easy, amount of material is huge, exam is easy, mocks (cfai) are insanely hard.
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I will back you on this before the flood of people tell OP that the exam is super hard, “you’ll see, bro, LOL”, and so on…When I was studying, there were very few topics where I felt like I needed a second pass due to difficulty (mainly, it was details that I thought might slip away). I didn’t find the CFAI mocks to be super hard, as in 10 out of 10 (I would say about 7/10), but I think the one mock I took was much more difficult than the actual exam. I found the CFAI online question sets to be very useful practice as well.
I also agree that the pseudo-interconnectedness of the questions made it quicker to power through the exam. I say “pseudo” because the questions depend only on the same vignette and not on one another (in any appreciable way, at least).
The forum is a good help resource, but take it with a grain of salt for what people tell you in terms of difficulty (including myself and Gurifissu). Difficulty is subjective (at the very least in some aspect), so it depends on a number of factors, including your background going into the exam preparation. I’m also a firm believer in mentality–you need to believe in yourself and trust your preparation. Cramming on test day isn’t likely to save you (not that it can’t), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it causes more harm than good…
If you feel good, keep plowing along. If you can score 80% and up (consistently) on the online CFAI assessments, then you’re likely in a very good position (but keep plowing ahead).
 
ezoo wrote:
I have actually been feeling the same exact way in my studies so far. My gut tells me the difficulty is going to come in 1) the format of the test 2) correctly timing sets in order to read and answer questions 3) since its half the questions as L1 you can’t get as many wrong.
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#1 practice, practice, practice– this format can be your friend.
#2 practice a couple methods on vignettes and see which method gives you the most comfort with the best performance
#3 don’t you mean there are half as many questions that you can answer correctly compared with L1?
 
Thx for the advice!
Other than w/L1 (which I clearly underestimated) I want to make sure that I grasp all the important topics of a Reading and take multiple sets of notes (LOS oriented, formulas, concepts). I think the EOC-questions give a pretty good hint at what they ask at an exam (in the sense of testable concepts).
This year I want to cover the topics I like least and the ones I am personally rather interested in (Equity, Portfolio Mgmt & Derivatives) together w/Ethics I’m not going to do this year. I mean, I’d still have 4 months for these & Ethics if I reserve two months for revision & practice and I assume I will be relatively more motivated studying the topics I kinda like. I just want to feel ‘safe’ & familiar w/the material so far instead of rushing through it like an armour batallion througn enemy lines^^.
Your hints definitely help and I will look here for more info if needed.
What I find is that ppl try to find “shortcuts” to pass the exams and I think this is always a bad gamble.
 
L2 exam difficulty mostly boils down to the large volume of the material that requires a certain level of mastery and the vignette exam format. As others have mentioned, the recipe for success is spending the necessary time to master the material and practicing the exam format. Focusing on mastering the heavier weighted topics is fine but not at the expense of being weak in other areas. Go into the exam expecting to be tested on anything and everything.
 
The most difficult thing about level 2 for me was how much it covered. Theres a ton of material and you never know what exactly they’re going to ask on the exam. I’d get comfortable with something and then forget it by time I came across a question a few weeks later because there was so much other stuff to cover in between. Its just hard to remember that much material.I actually never really figured out the quant section at all and guessed on pretty much every quant question on the exam. You seem to be in good shape starting this early and covering as much as you did. Just try not to burn yourself out. Its a very tough exam but not impossible. I passed on my first attempt but it was close.
 
Master the material you think will be important, then go master the material you think won’t be asked even better. Avoid all strategy advice from 3rd party prep providers unless the advice is know everything
 
Yo Bobby I know your main foucs will be mocks but how much weight are you putting on CFAI material besides BB and EOC? Last year I studied for 4 months with Wiley and didn’t think I had a good grasp of the overall picture so I plan to use more CFAI material.
 
knight90 wrote:
The most difficult thing about level 2 for me was how much it covered. Theres a ton of material and you never know what exactly they’re going to ask on the exam. I’d get comfortable with something and then forget it by time I came across a question a few weeks later because there was so much other stuff to cover in between. Its just hard to remember that much material.
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I second that. I don’t think understanding the materials is as difficult as trying to remember every single thing covered. Or even trying to remember what i studied a month ago.
In level 1, the amount of material covered is a lot as well, however they are less in depth. In level 2, they are more in depth but the amount of material covered is crazy too. (about 80% of level 1 but with 50% more depth?)
hence my biggest struggle is really trying to remember after i’ve understood the material.
If there’s any comfort, understanding it first, then remembering is the way to go. Once you understand, even if you don’t remember, when you go back to it, it’ll be easIER to pick up.
 
Yeah I’m with you on using CFAI more. What I’ve done is re-read all my notes from last year and the 11th hour guide, then I’ve gone through each CFAI reading and actually read the LOS’s to see which readings I’m weak on in terms of understanding. I’ve got a list of about 15 readings that I think I should read start to finish so I am going to work on those for the next month and a half, then I will get into BB’s and EOC’s, then last three months will be mocks. I’m going to buy the 6 schweser mocks for this year (last year I was working from older schweser mocks) and then I’ve got CFAI mocks from the last 5 years so between those 11 mocks I am hoping that is enough.
I can tell you from going through the CFAI readings and looking over the LOS’s there is still a good amount of things I feel I haven’t learned that all the third party prep providers overlook that I think would be valuable. I’ve never done well at econ and have always just accepted I would get 50% on it but this time around I am going to actually read the CFAI stuff, I’m going to read the new quant reading because there is a near 100% chance we see questions on the quant item set from that, I’ll read PM even though I looked at the LOS’s and the material is similar, just re-arranged with the exception of the portfolio management economics reading #55. That reading to me is a massive red flag, we need to know that one inside and out. Besides that I’ll read all of FRA again because I still am not getting over 70% in it. I’ll probably go straight into practice questions for equity, derivatives, corp fi, and alt investments. I don’t think I’ll get much out of reading that CFAI material based on what I already know.
So that was my long winded answer of yeah I plan on using the CFAI stuff more lol
 
Just signed up and am ready to take another bite at the apple after failing miserably this past June. Will read Schweser but do only the CFAI EOCs. 7 mocks starting in April. Happy studying to all…
 
When I took L2, I found the jump in difficulty was due to changes in exam format. The material itself wasn’t as difficult as I’ve come to expect from the forum, but getting used to vignette format took some time.
Sheer volume of content was pretty scary though.
 
Goblin wrote:
It’s really difficult with a full time job
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I agree with that.
10 hours a day at office (including 1 hour lunch) + 2 hours of transportation is just half of any day; and I’m not even talking about the energy left you got to study… Only weekends are not enough to pass this bi.tch.
 
Goblin wrote:
It’s really difficult with a full time job
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it is. but the progrm was designed for the working professional already in research/asset mgmt.
 
I think what makes this level hard is zero tolerance for any attempt to strategize the exam by focusing on heavy subjects.
  • The cost of playing this game could be devastating (yes, there are some exceptions). If you miss one LOS and whole vignette was built around that LOS you are potentially missing 5% from your score (versus less than 0.5% in level 1). Bottom line, you should be good (>75%) in all subjects. Remember that your preparation will sample very big number of problems (EOC, QBank, Samples, Mocks) and on average you might be in good shape (>70% in all subjects) but the real test (very small sample of curriculum subjects linked in vignette style) could easily deep into 30% of your weak areas.
  • Do not rely on success rate of random guessing (~33% on average for big enough sample). You can do that exercise after the actual exam to make you feel a little better but not before.
  • 2 Ethics vignettes (10% of your score) could cause a lot of trouble. And I am not talking about standards (99% of candidates will do just fine on these questions). Think about Research Objectivity Standards. Institute can create very nasty vignette based on 19 pages of ROS guidelines full of recommendations, requirements, compliance and enforcements. If you are not great memorizing staff like that then factor in your potential loss here as well. Thank god Soft Dollars are out nowadays. Don’t get too much stressed about ethics right now, just think how little error you can afford here.
  • Economics has tons of quantitative (e.g. parity relations) and qualitative material (e.g. growth theories). Some qualitative questions could be as subjective as ethics. Typical strategy for creating questions which can help separate the wolfs from the sheep is to give some info about the subject in question which makes that subject sound like A but in fact it is B based on other (sometimes implicit) facts presented (very common tactics in ethics). Vignette style is perfect for that.
  • FRA is everybody’s pain. The reward/effort ratio is one of the lowest and everyone will hammer it like crazy. No shortcut here.
  • Equities are quite mechanical for most part, but some qualitative topics like corporate governance are very testable material.
  • Swaps, especially interest rate currency swaps in ‘weird’ currencies.
  • The combination of computationally intensive questions where you have to gather all the inputs spread in vignette (sometimes verbose), tons of qualitative topics where you have to analyze not just remember, numerous miniscule bits of testable material spread throughout the curriculum, material not covered well or at all by third party providers makes this test very challenging.
  • Test taking strategy is very important here. Since price of error is doubled the most common mistake is not let go one question which you can do right if given more time. Stop loss is good risk management tool. Skip and come back later if have time is another option. Later option can be very successful since you can spot an error you made before. A lot of time the last vignette is the easiest one. Do not let computationally intensive question kill your pace, so you never get to the easy one. Skimming quickly through the booklet is one way to figure out what you will encounter and allocate your efforts accordingly. All this you will pick up during the practice phase, which is much bigger part of the stadying process at that level.
I agree that level 2 material is not a rocket science if you look at each subject individually. But you are not tested on one subject at a time. You are given a handpicked sample of the curriculum (some questions could be based on one line in CFAI book) to test your deep understanding of the material sometimes in the way you never saw it before (no matter how many mocks you did).
 
jpsi1 wrote:
I think what makes this level hard is zero tolerance for any attempt to strategize the exam by focusing on heavy subjects.
  • The cost of playing this game could be devastating (yes, there are some exceptions). If you miss one LOS and whole vignette was built around that LOS you are potentially missing 5% from your score (versus less than 0.5% in level 1). Bottom line, you should be good (>75%) in all subjects. Remember that your preparation will sample very big number of problems (EOC, QBank, Samples, Mocks) and on average you might be in good shape (>70% in all subjects) but the real test (very small sample of curriculum subjects linked in vignette style) could easily deep into 30% of your weak areas.
  • Do not rely on success rate of random guessing (~33% on average for big enough sample). You can do that exercise after the actual exam to make you feel a little better but not before.
  • 2 Ethics vignettes (10% of your score) could cause a lot of trouble. And I am not talking about standards (99% of candidates will do just fine on these questions). Think about Research Objectivity Standards. Institute can create very nasty vignette based on 19 pages of ROS guidelines full of recommendations, requirements, compliance and enforcements. If you are not great memorizing staff like that then factor in your potential loss here as well. Thank god Soft Dollars are out nowadays. Don’t get too much stressed about ethics right now, just think how little error you can afford here.
  • Economics has tons of quantitative (e.g. parity relations) and qualitative material (e.g. growth theories). Some qualitative questions could be as subjective as ethics. Typical strategy for creating questions which can help separate the wolfs from the sheep is to give some info about the subject in question which makes that subject sound like A but in fact it is B based on other (sometimes implicit) facts presented (very common tactics in ethics). Vignette style is perfect for that.
  • FRA is everybody’s pain. The reward/effort ratio is one of the lowest and everyone will hammer it like crazy. No shortcut here.
  • Equities are quite mechanical for most part, but some qualitative topics like corporate governance are very testable material.
  • Swaps, especially interest rate currency swaps in ‘weird’ currencies.
  • The combination of computationally intensive questions where you have to gather all the inputs spread in vignette (sometimes verbose), tons of qualitative topics where you have to analyze not just remember, numerous miniscule bits of testable material spread throughout the curriculum, material not covered well or at all by third party providers makes this test very challenging.
  • Test taking strategy is very important here. Since price of error is doubled the most common mistake is not let go one question which you can do right if given more time. Stop loss is good risk management tool. Skip and come back later if have time is another option. Later option can be very successful since you can spot an error you made before. A lot of time the last vignette is the easiest one. Do not let computationally intensive question kill your pace, so you never get to the easy one. Skimming quickly through the booklet is one way to figure out what you will encounter and allocate your efforts accordingly. All this you will pick up during the practice phase, which is much bigger part of the stadying process at that level.
I agree that level 2 material is not a rocket science if you look at each subject individually. But you are not tested on one subject at a time. You are given a handpicked sample of the curriculum (some questions could be based on one line in CFAI book) to test your deep understanding of the material sometimes in the way you never saw it before (no matter how many mocks you did).
Click to expand...
Good posting…Thanks jpsi1
 
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