Don’t pay for a retab, it’s a waste of time and money - it was a multiple choice exam.
Is it time to throw in the towel? It depends on how much time you have:
I don’t have a finance degree, I took sciences in university.
I failed Level 1 twice. I failed Level 2 three times.
I am currently stuck on level 3 and I am retaking the exam. Why do I continue? Because I have time.
I am young enough to be continuing with the CFA program without it affecting too much of my family life and plan to work for another 30 years so the long time commitment of the program is still a lot shorter than my working life. I like investments and these are the hardest exams I have ever taken in my life, it challenges me to try harder. I won’t be the star analyst or portfolio manager, but there are other areas of interest I can do such as compliance, performance or risk analysis. Maybe even one of those useless high fee investment advisors, retail investors seem to still gravitate to, I know I can do a better job than most of them.
If I had to do all over again, I would have used the CFA textbooks [exhibits, examples in volumes and end of chapter readings (EOC)]+ Schweser videos [(I can listen or repeat the videos on my schedule whenever I am the most alert), stay away from the Qbank] for levels 1 and 2, then some type of tutor/seminar to help with the morning session for level 3, along with lots of practice morning exams.
I also have made the mistake of taking too much time off or trying to cram. I am a slow learner and get stressed easily near the exam date, the last two weeks before the exam would not help me learn anything new, that time should be used to learn how to complete questions as fast as you can within the 3 hour time limit.
I found taking long weekends (3 - 4 day weekends) instead of the full week off from work and starting earlier than later worked better for me, don’t listen to everyone on analystforum, not everyone is going to pass the exam by studying 2 months before the big day.
Before continuing with the program ask yourself:
-
How many YEARS am I willing to spend in this program? even if you pass this year, you still have at least 2 more years of harder levels, where you may need to take the exam more than once to pass each level; _ the earliest you will finish is 2019, with the more likely scenario being 2020 or 2021. _
-
Will I get a job in the investment field? you have to get the proper work experience and you need 4 years of that to use those 3 letters after your name, also a lot of people were attracted to the program because of the money they _ may _ make in the industry: first, not everyone will make that much money; second some areas of the industry have very long hours so when you average out the number of hours a person work to what they make, it may have been cheaper to be in another industry; last, if you like finance but don’t really need a graduate level education in investments maybe a CPA would be a better and less time consuming option
-
Am I willing to give up more time away from family and friends? the CFA program takes a lot of time away from family and friends, if you are successful and complete the program then the sacrifice was worth it, if not, there were other things you could have being doing with that time you will never get back
_ If you are still willing to go through with the program _ I would not worry about the money you are burning through now, you should be able to recoup your losses and then some in the future. But you do need to create a better study schedule to get the number of hours you need in to pass the exam, without relying on studying longer hours near the end to help you pass the exam.
PS whenever I did pass, I usually felt like I knew most of the exam e.g.greater than 70% of the exam or 6 out of 7 or 7 out of 7 for a section, at minimum 5 out of 7 for a section. You can pass by failing certain topics but they can’t be topics that are worth a lot on the exam.
Best of Luck,