Hello everyone - I never heard of CFA until about 2 months ago, but I’m planning on taking Level 1 in December. Any recommendations on review programs? It seems to be either Stalla or Kaplan…are they basically the same? I just passed the CPA exam too and understand this is considerably harder. Can anyone give a good comparison of the level of difficulty to expect? I’m 4 years removed from college and am pretty rusty in math. Thanks! PS - I had this under Lev 1 discussion, but it’s probably more appropriate here.
I think you will be fine using either. Level 1 is very similar to a core accounting college curriculum with a few additional financial concepts thrown in. While Level 1 is probably slightly more in depth than the CPA, a lot of the topics cross over between the exams. If you are comfortable with the FAR and BEC portions of the CPA exam, you definitely have a good basis and shouldn’t have trouble picking up the rest of what is on L1.
level 1>any CPA exam
If you have decent exposure to the equity and corp fin topics then L1 should be relatively easy for you. Since you should be very strong on a very large portion of the test, even if you are rusty on the math, you will have time to focus (FSA shouldnt be much of an issue I assume). Even without that I agree with above post, if you are comfortable with BEC and FAR you are still way ahead. I think either review course should work.
Thanks, what about 2009 materials? There can’t be that many changes from year to year.
If you looked at what changed from year to year you could then use the CFAI text that you now get with the exam sign up for any of the new parts. Otherwise, I would assume the old material is sufficient. For me, if I was very strong on certain material, I would read it from CFAI (L2, since didnt have those at L1) then for the areas I wasnt as strong I would read it from the review provider. And Ethics I just preferred to do straigh from CFAI.