Are you talking about Daren Miller?
Marc was awesome with that. I couldn’t have remembered the formula for the life of me
For me IFT was the best and I had taken couple of very expensive courses including famous bootcamp. IFT has everything from long videos to summary videos and much more. Icing on the cake was past exam solution videos in which IFT taught how much to write which really helped a lot. The pricing was incredibly low as compared to other providers with much less coverage. IFT did not do through the presentation slides but he actually solved almost every Blue Box. I must say if i pass, it would be because of IFT.
I agree 100%. That’s why I said that if you buy his notes, it’s actually THE best substitution for reading the curriculum
I would like to second this. I feel IFT (+curriculum of course) prepared me well for the exam. I also used gostudy, but only to complement my summary notes.
This was the first time I did not rely (besides PM practice mocks) on Schweser. Let`s see how it all turned out.
The IFT packages are pure gold to be honest. If I fail it was simply because I got lazy and didnt cover a couple niche areas that came up and haunted me big time on the day.
IFT videos and the crash course are phenomenal value for the money. He also has videos covering every previous exam back to 2010. They are completely invaluable.
His video lectures walk through the curriculum and blue boxes.
I found out he speaks very slowly, but there is a feature there to watch it on 1.5 or 2x which was my default setting - and still very easy to understand.
The only section I was not a fan was his options videos. He uses alot of the CFA terminology and formulas such as X-S etc. It can be hard to follow along and he should re-do those to make them more intuitive for users - such as Mark Meldrum who explains them all via some amazing graphs and tricks.
I, for one, as a marker, was disappointed with the IFT practice exams.
I had two primary complaints:
- The marks allocated to some of the questions were unreasonable when compared to the actual CFA exams. For example, there were questions for which the candidates were supposed to supply three answers, which were allotted 4 or 5 marks, and I was supposed to allot 1⅓ or 1⅔ marks per answer. That’s silly; the marks on the real exam are all whole numbers.
- Some of the questions were generic, do-you-recall-junk-from-the-curriculum, questions, wholly unrelated to the information provided in the vignette.
Unfortunately I agree here. This was the only area IFT dropped the ball in my opinion. And what is even stranger is that for L2, I thought their mocks were among the best out there and hugely helped me clear that level. For 3, they left a lot to be desired. However, I wouldn’t take that as a reason not to use IFT, as their actual teaching videos are still amongst the best out there.
I agree with the options segment like I mentioned in my earlier post. I’ve never seen Mark Meldrum’s lecture, but I felt like David Hetherington’s was absolutely amazing.
I always hated derivatives, but now I’m to a point where I can do it in my sleep!
I had the pleasure of working with David Hetherington at Stalla, then, again, briefly, at Schweser.
David’s a great instructor.
+1 here. Attended David’s weekly lectures for Level 3 this year and thought they were terrific.
Mark Meldrum quite clearly knows his stuff inside out, but I can’t stand his video slides and find that his videos tend to ramble a lot. I think that’s why many people like David Hetherington and IFT, they slice straight through to the point.
Absolutely agree with your observation about Options.
Retaker here, band 8 last year. Completely bombed CAPE and Alts and missed so many of the potholes that are on the exam (read the entire question carefully, the titles of tables, labels etc…).
My company paid for Kaplan this year. A new coworker came on board with CFA (2016) and told me after his friend got band 10 he was too scared of that and went with both Kaplan and LevelUp. He said hands down go with LevelUp/Marc… so I took the plunge and paid out of pocket.
The difference is amazing.Here’s why:
- Past exam book. Every RELEVANT exam question going back to 2000 categorized by subject (for mental filing). This thing is massive and the best tool for the AM session.
- IPS workshop. The IPS calc is a curve ball every year but you learn how to systematically attack for max points in min time.
- Slide book - he covers all the details in the color coded slide book. Red = give answer in CFA lingo, Green = tested before, Blue = not yet tested. The last week it’s so much easier to flip to the slide book page for say - the rules of immunizing a portfolio of multiple liabilities - than tracking down those 3 rules in the book. A great way to review the entire curriculum
- Going through the curriculum and slide book with Marc he will point out:
- Likely exam questions based on the past
- Likely exam questions based on “perfect storms” where curriculum subjects overlap
- Stuff that is tucked away in the white text they haven’t tested yet but THEY WILL so be ready
- Going through the curriculum and slide book with Marc he will point out:
- Last but not least Marc himself. I emailed him so many times and he responds back to you with an answer. The guy taught Swiss bankers CFA level 3 (the Swiss take banking pretty seriously) and has been specializing in level 3 for 20 something years. He knows anything and everything about:
- grading
- how to answer IPS/ Behavioral /Individual / Institutional to make sure you get max points
- how the exam writers think, etc, etc, etc
- He teaches out of the actual material and motivates your butt to work hard and earn those 3 letters. Invaluable.
Seemed like an obvious choice based on the guy’s experience.
Glad I did. I was so much better prepared than last year and hands down my score is higher because of the LevelUp prep - and that is what you pay for.
I agree…the stuff that I saw from him was absolutely worth it. I had some of his lectures back when he was with schweser. All the topics that were current from back then, I looked at his video first and then did IFT. Marc gives a lot of tips and tricks that you don’t get with other instructors. IFT was good because after looking at the lectures, you could be confident that you got 95% of the curriculum from the videos alone, including most of the testable blue boxes. I got his lecture notes for the fixed income chapters and they were a perfect substitute for reading the curriculum.
LevelUp was just a little out of my budget, otherwise I would definitely go with him.
I took a Kaplan class last year and didn’t enjoy it much (failed Band 9). It was from 6-9pm after work, which was tough to focus listening to a lecture after a full work day. They didn’t really teach how to take the AM, they just went over the material.
This year I used Level Up and thought it was beneficial. Marc highlighted the right areas of the material and used the CFA curriculum, no cutting corners. I didn’t do the bootcamp, but thought the materials provided were enough. I’d definitely recommend Marc. bA ton of people love Meldrum so he’d be a great option too. The only provider I’m hesitant to recommend would be IFT only due to their Level 3 relevancy sheet. They marked most Fixed Income sections irrelevant this year and I thought some sections actually were relevant.
I don’t know IFT because I used Schweser, but I agree with you on this point. Not only on Fixed Income, but also other topics where marked as irrelevant but they were!
Recent Level 2 taker here and already thinking ahead to Level 3 - seems like Level Up sounds compelling. I used Schweser for Level 1 and 2 and felt well prepared both times, but Level 3 sounds like a whole different type of test. One thing I like about Schweser is that I can get through the material in about 1/2 - 2/3 of the time and don’t feel like I missed much by not reading the actual curriculum. I’ve seen people have used Schweser for 1 and 2 but not for 3. I have a full time job, my wife has a full time job, and we will have 2 kids under 2.5, so for me what’s most important in Level 3 provider is 1) is it effective and 2) is it efficient given my time constraints. Cost is less of an issue since my employer will pick up most or all of the tab. Sounds like Kaplan + LevelUp may be the way to go?
I’ve only had the chance to see some videos of Schweser’s David Heatherington for revision instead of reading through the books and I really found him very helpful. Highly recommended for retakers.
Second time L3 taker (Band 8 last year). I used Schweser for every level. For L3, I feel like you need to do everything Schweser offers (read the notes, EOC questions, video lessons and weekly online or in person class, plus all 6 mocks) to really be prepared. Additionally, when I went through my review after the initial read through, I had to refer a lot to the CFA curriculum. There were a few topics that Schweser didn’t cover at all, or barely covered that luckily I saw come up on some CFAI topic tests and I reviewed in the CFA curriculum. I don’t think you can pass just reading the Schweser notes and doing mocks. What I like about their notes is they’re a lot more concise than the CFA text and much easier to read, but obviously that means some areas are covered less, or not at all. Also, I really feel like its necessary to do all 6 of their mocks. They can be infuriating because the wording of the questions and vignettes can be so bad (including a lot of typos) but if you do, and review, all of them, you end up covering basically all of the material all over again. I wasn’t a huge fan of the people they have doing video lessons aside from David Heatherington, but he does at least 3/4 of the videos so it’s not that bad.