Maybe the Blue Dragon breathes ice.
if you had to choose between retaking l2 or l3 which one would you choose?
Ohhhhh man, I’d say level III just cuz you’re so close to finishing, but it is such a crap shoot with the 10 essay questions.
Well, in another thread, I just posted a scathing attack on most of the Level 3 curriculum. Level 3 doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m more of a Level 2 guy, personally.
I think you might want to let others come to a conclusion about whether your attack is “scathing” or not. It’s not normally the sort of thing one says about one’s own arguments.
^ that was a scathing review of GM’s comment.
SLOW FRIDAY AT MY OFFICE. LONG POST AHEAD.
Charterholder here. I’d say you’re stressing too much…probably.
The exam is a tough exam, no doubt, but it’s not realistic to say:
WHOA NOW, BUDDY. The exam is tough, and it’s really time consuming, but it’s not a meth addiction or a crippling disease. It’s a tough, rigorous exam that requires a lot of focused time (let’s say 250 - 400 hours for the majority of people) to pass. The number of hours you need, where you choose to get these hours from, how spread out they are, how pleasant they are, and how the rest of your life is going will determine what your life looks like. You have control over some of these things, though not all.
I studied a hell of a lot for all levels, had a full time job (about 45-50 hrs/wk), and had a girlfriend and friends who I certainly wasn’t going to stop seeing because of the exam. I basically studied like 15-20 hours per week, over 5-6 days, for a little over 4 months prior to each exam date. 20 hours a week SUCKS, without a doubt, but if you’re focused and scheduled, you can get it done and keep this schedule up without killing yourself.
Mon - Friday: Minimum of 3 days / wk, leave work and go to the library. Study for 1.5-3 hours. Leave when the library closed, don’t study after that. Minimum of two days per week, get up 90 minutes early, drink coffee and study before morning routine. This left a few weeknights per week free for gym or just relaxing.
Saturday / Sunday: Spend most of daylight hours studying, but at a slower pace. Bullshit with roommate, clean the apartment between lessons, cook myself breakfast and lunch, etc. Typically would spend 10AM through 6PM in this kinda “slower paced” studying mode and I’d get 5-7 hours of studying in.
Did this schedule suck? Well, it wasn’t fun to get up at 5:30 on some days, and coming home at 9PM after a full day of work and 2 hours of studying was tiring. But it left my nights free, and I could have relatively normal weekend nights where I went to bars, saw movies with friends, took GF to dinner, etc.
Was this schedule sustainable? Yeah. I did it for all three exams, though for level 1, I didn’t need to do the 5:30 AM early rises since that exam required slightly fewer hours for me.
What’d you study with? Schweser materials almost entirely. I watched 100% of the videos, did probably 90% of the practice exams, did probably 70% of the CFAI end of chapter questions, did hundreds of Qbank questions endlessly, and took a minimum of 3 mocks for all levels (typically did all six or however many Schweser gave me).
How’d you do on the exams and pre-tests? Passed all levels on first attempts, was typically scoring somewhere between like…70-85 on my Schweser mocks, depending on the level.
TL:DR: Have a plan, give yourself a schedule, and allow sufficient time to execute on it. Keep track of your hours and make sure you’re on course for where you need to be. Don’t sacrifice your whole life. Leave yourself some time to do the crap you enjoy doing.
I do appreciate your suggestions and ways you followed for your success in all the levels of CFA exam. I believe studying with full level of enjoyment which are the energizer to reach the destination.
Rookies.
Blue dragons breathe lightning. Red dragons breathe fire. See, all those hours studying the D&D Monster Manual when I was 12 totally paid off.
And the picture does represent the exams accurately.
I’m gonna disagree with you on this one. When I read the Dragonlance saga books when I was but a wee lad, I specifically remember the Blue Dragon breathing Ice.
EDIT–but the Wikipedia entry says lightning. And we all know that Wikipedia is the ultimate source for all things at all times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_dragon_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons
No need to look it up.
Blue - lightning
Red - fire
Green - poisonous gas
Black - acid
White - frost / ice
Like I said, rookies. Of course, I can’t easily recall the breath weapons of the good dragons (gold, silver, bronze, brass, etc.) And speaking of Dragonlance, when I was in the 7th grade I really wanted to meet Silvara in the flesh… total HCB. Ha ha ha.
^ the dragon, elf, or human version?
@supersadface – Your perspective is vastly different from Greenman. Girlfriend vs. wife – you can’t even compare. Throw some kids into the mix - a whole different ball game.
@greenman – I don’t know if it’s normal but I can definitely relate. I have the same anxieties you do and just the thought of having to do this again next year makes me want to vomit.
Ha. The version on p. 200 of my copy of Volume 2, “Dragons of Winter Night.” Still remember the page number. Yeah, I was 12 at the time.
It gets worse at Level 3.
At Level 2, you know you still have at least one more year to go, whether you pass or fail. But at Level 3, you know that if you pass, you’re done. That amplifies the pressure quite a bit.
Bump
I recently completed the CA (Canada) program which I think is likely comparable in difficulty to CFA level 2/3, over the year and a half that it took to do the program I probably put in somewhere around 2000 hours of study. I would definitely resonate some of your sentiments respective to the time committment required to succeed on an exam of that difficulty, and some of the consequences as a result. My girlfriend and I ended up breaking up largely because I had to put studying before her - for someone who doesn’t really understand the committment we’ve made it’s very challenging for them to then understand how it ranks in our life priorities (realistically needs to be #1).
I manage stress very well so I didn’t find that I ate shittier food or went to the gym any less, but with the added time constraints you’re constantly living with it definitely becomes much more challenging to stay disciplined. I also didn’t find that I drank any more to reduce stress, I was able to keep it pretty cool throughout.
I would resonate that time-off is next to zero, you quite literally have to spend almost all your time outside of work studying. I also agree on your point on vacation/studying, I ended up taking about 3 weeks of vaca to just study for the UFE and it’s pretty miserable.
I didn’t find that my job performance suffered, if you focus on compartmentalizing your committments then I think you can effectively mitigate this from happening. There are only 24 hours in a day, if you know that you’re putting in a 100% effort in whatever it is you’re doing and you’re managing your time effectively then there’s no point in stressing about it.
I would say to anyone that is struggling mentally/emotionally that I’ve found the best way to stay calm and confident is to start early. Obviously not approproate advice for this year’s June writers, but going forward I would try to keep it in mind. I started studying for level 1 the last week of September (before even getting my CA exam results back), and as a result have had a very low-stress, effecitve, and productive study schedule to date. I’m planning on doing this for L2 and L3 and am confident that doing so will allow me to be in the same position at this time next year and the year after.
just my 0.02
How are you coping with the L1 this year?
Are you able to apply your background in accounting?
And what makes you want to take CFA?
Just curious, hope you don’t mind!
Of course not!
L1 is going well - I work in audit with a big 4 accounting firm so I knew I wouldn’t have much time to study from January-March, to make up for that I started very early. Having an accounting background has made level 1 pretty straightforward through book 4; I didn’t have to spend any time on the NRV section of the first book, only spent 10 hours on FRA and only a few hours on capital budgeting. I don’t expect to have the same leverage for the more finance-specific topics, however.
There’s a few reasons why I took the CFA; the most important being that I really enjoy finance and really like being challenged - I was planning on majoring in finance until I made a last minute decision to pursue accounting. Secondly, it gives me a good opportunity to leverage the designation with my current job, and would provide an opportunity to move to the finance industry in the future.
If the exam process was easy, then everyone could do it and it wouldn’t be worth anything.
These exams are supposed to be hard so they can separate the men from the boys.