Wiley or Schweser?

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Hi all candidates and charterholders,
I’m interested in your views on which supporting material to be signing up for. Wiley or Schweser for the L3 program.
I know there was some strong positive comments in using Wiley for L2 and some credit were noted on Peter’s videos and teaching styles. Frankly, this helped.
Am just torn between Wiley and Schweser now for L3. Let me know what you all think.
Thanks,
j
 
I find it tough to get good, high quality, objective feedback or advice for level III on forums. Anyone who passed Level III does not care to be here, because they passed. At least for level I and II you have candidates who passed those levels active on forums for good advice but for III anyone who is able to give good advice (they passed) has moved on to bigger things. I would not take advice from anyone in level I or II, obviously, and I would be skeptical of any level III repeater or candidate.
 
Stick with the CFA materials and work on practice questions, especially the morning section. I feel that Schweser is a bit lacking in detail
 
I read through Schweser twice and only opened the CFA books for the tricky sections. English is not my mother tongue and I am a slow reader. Most of the time was however spent practicing questions which is why I think using either Schweser or Wiley notes could be a time effective strategy. I passed L3 on my first attempt, however not by a huge margin.
I used Wiley for L2 and thought they were too late in releasing their stuff. But I liked them a lot more than Schweser.
 
Depends on how much time you have. If you start now and consistently study through May, CFAI material is your safest bet. I started in January so I used Schweser’s online on demand videos to learn the LOS and used the CFAI textbooks to practice questions. Having enough time to practice past exams and time management is key. Good luck.
 
Interesting suggestions. I am planning to definitely read through the whole CFAI curriculum, in fact, I’ve almost finished the first volume by now. The reason I am considering purchasing Gold Course from Wiley is their coaching on how to approach essay questions, because it is something you don’t really get from just reading the materials. Plus extra mocks.
Do you guys still think that it does not really worth it? And by being diligent in reading the CFAI books and practicing I can be well prepared for the exam?
 
I used Schweser for Level 1, Wiley for Level 2 (mainly for Basit & Peter), and decided to go back to Schweser for Level 3 just because this is only the 2nd or 3rd year of Wiley materials and don’t truly want to be a guinea pig. Plus neither Basit or Peter do any of the Level 3 videos.
 
I used Schweser notes for all 3 levels. Generally loved them, though I found there were a few typos/incomplete explanations at L3. There was one question on the actual exam that required a formula Schweser didn’t bother to mention (but was in the CFAI cirriculum of course). Despite this, I still think Schweser is better: let’s you spend less time reading and more time doing practice problems.
The Wiley L3 notes were super late and missing a ton of info. However, I am extremely glad I watched their videos. Darren Miller is the man. He does a great job teaching you how to construct responses for the morning exam.
 
I used Wiley for L2 and Schweser for L3.
Here are my thoughts. I really liked Wiley’s L2 material, but switched to Schweser for Level 3 due to some drawbacks that I encountered when I used Wiley:
* The most important point is (as some guys wrote before) that they didn’t stick to their timetable; the material came out quite late. This at least was the case for L2 2015.
* The printed version was available only a few months before the exam so that I had to print out the ebooks in order to work with the material properly. This was not that easy as there are restrictions about how many pages can be printed at a time. Furthermore formulas were printed not correctly.
* The printed version was quite cheap (I think it was something like 25 USD), but shipping costs for Europe were as high as 150 USD so that I didn’t buy the printed versions.
* The material (at least for L2 2015) didn’t contain any questions or concept checkers. I had to buy the questions seperately.
Because of all thess reasons (especially the problems with the delivery on time) I used Schweser for L3 and was quite happy with it. If Wiley was as a reliable as Schweser I might have considered to choose Wiley as I liked their stuff for L2 (especially the 11th hour guide - which was available as a printed book - was great).
With respect to the essay questions I honestly don’t see the point of paying for advise how to write it. At least for me it was sufficient to read the answers from Schweser’s practice exams and the CFA exams to get a clue how to tackle this. Therefore I’d suggest to have a look at practice exams and CFA exams and to check whether this is already sufficient for you. I think the main problem for most people is to keep the answers short and to manage the time. It’s possible to practice this by yourself - at least this worked for me. But I have to admit that this is very individual and can be different for you. My recommendation is: Give it a try. If you don’t get along with it you can buy some kind of premium package later on.
 
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