So i just recently passed Level 1 in June of this year, and I plan on taking Level 2 in June 2013. After talking with many people who either have their charter or have passed Level 2, they have said that this can be the hardest level to complete.
Having said that I was thinking I would get a head start on the L2 material. My thinking is I would rather put in the extra time now, rather then fail and have to take the test again (and probably end up spending more time studying.)
The question is would starting sometime in September be too aggressive? Would i still be able to retain the information come June of next year? I want to give it a thorough read through now with detailed notes, get the schweser notes and read through them starting in Dec., take a NYSSA class, and then go over weak areas in CFAI material, and take plenty of mock exams. Im passing this biatchh first time!
Im studying from the CFAI books now and will be done with Ethics, QM, Econ and FRA by the time schweser books come, i will continue to study from the schweser books then.
The question here is how long do you think you need to achieve the 300 hours? I did this: 5 times a week with 2 hour study sessions + 4 weeks for reviewing and practice exams + 1 week vacation (c’mon, everybody needs a break) gives you 35 weeks = 245 days. The exam is on June 1st so I need to start sudying on October 6th to get a good 300 hours of studying + reviewing. This seems to me a good study pace…
BTW I think September is too early. I think you need to set a good pace of studying but if you start right now i believe by january you will start to have nightmares with the girl from the Schweser books cover.
The problem for me is I’m under the impression Level 2 is more quantative. The above sounds like a great method to study if there is a lot of conceptual stuff – but if there is a ton of memorization, it seems trying to memorize things 245 days before the test is not efficienct. I may just start early and not worry about memorization too much right now, rather understand thing conceptually. But without looking at the material, I don’t know if this is a good strategy or not. I’m almost over my sickness, but now have a hurricane to deal with! lol
300 hours is not nearly enough. Last year I was close to ~500 and failed in band 10. The material is vast - I would have failed miserably with only putting in 300 hours.
Maybe you are right but personally I believe that after 200 hours your study sessions begins to show decreasing marginal returns, I mean, time spent sutdying x accumulated knowledge is not a linear function. Perhaps if you studied 300 hours you would fail Band 10 as well.
All in all two points here (i) I’m starting to freak out earlier this time and (ii) the only person that can tell you how much hours of study you need is you.
Agree with the above - I was surprised with L1 at how much information I retained from study 6m before the exam. It’s all there, just needs the trigger (revision) to bring it out I found.
