I failed Ethics in Level II. I gave it a read from the curriculum once and another time from Schweser. I practised a ton of questions, but it always felt like “guess work” in the end. The problem might be that I find it so boring that it saps all my motivation to study it.
So what is your study strategy for Ethics? Do you have any tips on how to overcome the section?
I study it the last week before the exam by skimming through the bullet points and doing CFAI EOCs.
It should be intuitive more than anything. Get into the moral framework of what the Ethical analyst should practice, then most of the questions should come easily, at least for MCQs. I mostly capitalized on the wordings, if they tried to make an analyst sound unethical, I’d look harder and try to find why he isn’t. And the same for the opposite. They are mostly testing you for specific moral dillemas, and they tend to get repetitive tbh.
Other than that, just study as you do with the rest of the topics I guess.
By bullet points, do you mean Schweser summaries, secret sauce, summaries in the CFA book?
Schweser notes wraps up the concepts in bullet points, and skim through the examples provided after each.
But again, that’s what I do, you might need extra work on that area. In which case, refer back to the CFAI material for codes you do not understand the intuition behind.
Just try solving as many problems as you can. This is what I do.
Without actually reading the CFAI section?
I use the same strategy.
I’m going to ask you the same question I asked baklava. Do you do that without reading the CFAI text?
I do read the CFAI text (and only the CFAI text as i work only with CFAI books), but only within the last 2 weeks prior to the exam
Solve different variation of ethic questions and understand the nuances. Focus more on answers provided. Why answer a is better than b etc.
In general, out of 12 questions in the exam, 4 will be easy, 4 will be medium and 4 will be tough. Try to crank out the easy ones, 2 medium and at least 1 tough (that should get you above 50% in ethics). Better than failing in it.
I struggled too with ethics, but with practice I got to near 70% level.
For the first time I have revised and solved Ethics questions as early as March. I used to check Ethics only before the exam but this time want to do better so did not want to leave it to the last minute. I think I have read the Schweser and then solved all the questions in Schweser, CFA original book and the CFA website as well. I think it is important to know which rule relates to which standard to properly understand what the question is asking and to give the correct answer. So one should revise the standards at least once.
I am just hoping this time around I get the questions right… I’d like to think I am ethical, but the CFA exams says otherwise as I am always missing those questions…
Me too. Questions seem so haphazard, no matter how much you study.
I figured instead of waiting until the final week this year (I failed Ethics last year), I’d get ahead of it sooner and I did a pretty deep dive the last few days through the entire CFAI book. Took my own notes on stuff I viewed as not obvious, had no issues with the EOCs at the end of Reading 2 (I mean I’ve seen these three times now)… but sure enough once I get to the vignettes I’m back to scoring in the 50s-60s.
God I hate Ethics. I overthink too much. Half the questions I get wrong I had right but crossed out and went with something else. Honestly I think the easiest time I ever had with Ethics was the very first time I looked at it in Level 1 because then I just went with what seemed like common sense.
Luckily I still have the topic tests to do to hopefully polish up on but this is getting sad. I got away with failing Ethics in L2 by doing well elsewhere but I really don’t want to risk that happening again, especially if I’m on the cut line.
I found nothing to be more useful than highlighting the most likely and least likely part of the question. Nothing more infuriating than answering the wrong question.
Attend church. The biggest holyiest church you can find.
After that, read the CFAI ethics readings a week before the exam, and do all the EOCs. That’s what I did…
Level 2 ethics fail here also. I really think it’s one topic area where they have the most discretion to be as difficult/ambiguous or as straight forward/intuitive as they would like. The level 2 exam last year seemed to follow the former, as many candidates can attest. At the end of the day, just go in having done lots and lots of practice Q’s and hope for the best. I wouldn’t stress about it too much.