How important are the BB (blue box) examples in the CFAI curriculum? Wondering if after I’m done with Schweser readings and CFAI curriculum EOC questions, if I should go straight into topic tests and then mocks or if its worth spending the time to do all the BB examples. Seems like there are tons of them and could spend at least a month (20 hour weeks) doing them.
Thanks for any input for those who have done BB’s in the past or currently going through them.
It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you do the BB’s in the text (now grey boxes).
A lot of the stuff in the exam is often a right off repeat of some concepts from the BBs and you might miss out on them if you do not solve them. Believe me, it will be time well spent and could make the difference between a pass and a fail.
and I would recommend you do them before you do the CFAI EOC questions.
Also would recommend you read the passages before and after the BB itself - questions are often asked from the “white” material that is around these BBs themselves.
Agreed, I’d treat them like EOC questions - mandatory.
Much as I hate to agree with Voldemort . . . do them.
All of them.
At least twice.
Wow, thanks to all for all the definitive answers. Seems like they are indeed a must. Will definitely schedule time to tackle those before doing the CFAI EOCs.
Plan to finish schweser readings and schweser EOC’s by end of January. Then tackle all BBs, EOCs & topic tests from Feb - End of april. Then mocks all of May.
My Level II strategy was centered around Blue Boxes. I listened to Schweser videos and then went to Blue Boxes. I took notes on literally every single Blue Box*, even if I just wrote something like “just like last example” or “no questions, just a note about xyz”. And I rewrote my notes at a later date.
I only read text to the extent I needed it to do Blue Boxes, which is some cases was quite a bit (a couple Fixed Income readings for example). I did limited EOC. I did exactly one topic test. But I knew the Blue boxes. Then five weeks out I began mocks (did four).
Easy pass, and by that I mean that after the morning session I knew I was passing. I pretty much celebrated during lunch.
* I skipped some in Portfolio (not interested in topic) and Derivatives (ran out of time). I have a binder and a half of BB notes, organized by reading.
As a side note, in the “How to Use the CFA Curriculum” section it pretty much tells you that they pull a lot of exam questions from the Blue Boxes. With LI, I either didn’t read this or it somehow didn’t click with me. I caught it before beginning LII and it informed my study approach.
Question for the more experienced candidates and the charterholders here; how often did you struggle to answer the blue box questions when studying towards Levels I and II? I sometimes know the answer after reading through the text, but at other times I have to read the solution because I would never have guessed the answer.
Nothing wrong with that, especially if it’s the first time you’ve gone through the reading. That’s why it was advised to do them twice.
It doesn’t actually matter how many questions you get wrong until exam day. Getting stuff wrong and reviewing the solution is a big part of studying for these exams. Obviously as you get closer to exam day you’ll want to be in better shape in being able to answer things correctly on your own but for 5+ months out, you’re fine.
jasdv, in my case, I used the BB as a study tool, not a testing tool. I don’t recall exactly but I think I could generally not answer the BBs on first read.
I have actually mapped ALL blue box examples to a Word file and added hyperlinks to each one to navigate directly to the browser version of Vitalsource Bookshelf using my smartphone. That way I can click a random example every day when in toilet, when awaiting food, before bed etc, and ABSOLUTELY shake it to pieces. Remember the names of people and companies if necessary.