Dear all,
After passing level 3 this year I wanted to
- thank everybody for the support in this forum on the last years and
- give a short overview about my approach on clearing the three levels.
Maybe somebody might find this summary interesting or even use it as a starting point for their own journey to clearing the exams. For reference only, I cleared level 3 in top 5%. This approach has worked worked perfectly for me but others might work as well and might even be better.
tldr:
- Plan sufficient time for each level (250-350, 400, 450 hours). Investing more time will be worth it by avoiding redoing the exam and the full hours.
- On a learning day, before doing ANYTHING ELSE after getting up go to your book and start reading. This will make the day so much easier because you started. Then, after 20 minutes or whatsoever go showering and have breakfast. Leave the house to learn in the library or in a cafe later so that you will not stay home the entire day.
- Approach learning in four consecutive phases
- Read Schweser three times
- Spend about 1/3 of your learning time for practicing examples and mocks
- Use CFA material only for looking up unclear points (only necessary for level 2-3)
- Using Schweser as main source for all three levels has worked perfectly fine for me
- Buy a second calculator for the ease of mind on exam days
- Have a tracking system to compare your progress with time left. Otherwise you will totally lose track of your progress. I have uploaded my own excel sheet here.
My background:
- I have studied mathematics with no business related courses but finishing my studies with distinction. When I started studying for the CFA exam I did not know what a cash flow was. So I started with no knowledge base but in general I would say I am a somewhat clever guy and have a robust approach to learning in general. I now work in the deal advisory department of a big4 company.
Learning time:
- Your chance of passing the exam is by far most strongly correlated by the amount of time you invest in preparation. CFA content is not complicated but extensive. I sincerely advise to invest as much time as possible. All time invested additionally will significantly reduce your chances of needing to take the same level again. Investing one additional week or 50 hours will reduce the chances of having to invest additional 300 hours next year substantially. Assume 20% and calculating the trade-off in hours seems like a very good deal to me.
- Depending on your background, level 1 can be cleared with significantly less than the 350 hours. For me this was not achievable since I started learning for level 1 with close to zero knowledge about business.
- Working in consulting I was lucky to have the chance to take about 7-8 weeks fully off work for preparing for the exams. For level 3 however I was at a point in my career where this became more complicated than beforehand
- You can realistically study about 8 hours per day in the sense needed above. Remember that every hour counts and doing one day with 6 hours would mean averaging it back by putting in a 10 hours day which is doable but will noticably slow you down on the next day.
- Plan in some buffer: days where you are sick, have a wedding your girlfriend insists you need to be attending etc.
Learning material:
- Schweser in general is sufficient for passing all three levels comfortably.
- For level 1 I only used the Schweser material, for level 2 and 3 I also had the printed CFA books which I used for a) looking up unclear points and b) in level 3 especially went through all EoC questions once
- Schweser might not cover all material in depth. But in all three levels I had only about one question per level in the actual exam that could definitively not be answered from the Schweser material. This is a totally fine trade-off for reducing the amount of pages by half…
- Schweser for level 3 is not as good as for level 1 and 2 but still fully sufficient
- Exception: Standards of Practice Handbook printed from the pdf and used as a regular sixth book along with the others for learning
- Mocks / Q-bank
- CFA online mock exams, topic tests and q-bank are must haves
- Schweser q-bank I used only for level 1 and 2
- Schweser mock exams I used for all three levels
- Others
- For level 1 investopedia.com was also a good source to gain general understanding
- Analystforum for understanding, CFA reddit for the memes
Learning approach:
- On a learning day, before doing ANYTHING ELSE after getting up go to your book and start reading. This will make the day so much easier because you started. Then, after 20 minutes or whatsoever go showering and start breakfast
- Go to your local library to study, staying home all day made me quite depressed after time
- I had the following approach consisting of four phases which worked well for me. First three phases consists of reading the Schweser books three times.
-
First phase of reading Schweser focused on high-level understanding. Move on when you are not getting something since most things will become clear after reading the entire chapter or by reading it again a second time.
1. This first phase can be done in the time before fully entering the learning phase. -
Second phase of reading Schweser focused on fully understanding the material and calculating all examples in the text and all Schweser end of chapter questions. Also start memorizing, for me it was very helpful to write flash cards (I did however never have the time to use the flash cards for learning afterwards).
1. I mixed phase 1 and 2 in the sense that I started re-reading a Schweser book again before moving on to the next book, so that the phases were per book. Otherwise I had the anxiety that I would forget everything when returning to the book after the full reviw. -
Third and last Schweser phase should be focused on memorizing. In this context also look up open questions in the CFA books, post some questions here in the forum. In level 3 do the end of chapter questions from the CFA books (partially I also did this for level 2).
1. In level 1 I pretty much skipped this phase and went straight to phase 4 from phase 2. -
Fourth and last phase should make up close to one third of your time and should be invested in doing the following:
1. Schweser Q-Bank for level 1/2 (for level 3 it was no use for me)
2. Schweser mock exams (having both exam books was a good choice for me)
3. CFA mock exams
4. Old CFA (mock) exams as available (i.e. Level 3) - Use flags such as these for marking pages in the learning material, for instance like unclear point or lists you need to memorize.
- Also use text markers to highlight important topics. Using text markers helped me a lot to stay focused on the pages instead of falling to sleep.
- Review the forum on a regular basis. Many questions I had after reading the Schweser material were specifically adressed by other people in the forum.
- Do NOT focus on tiny details. I did this regularly for ease of mind but it probably was never ever worth the time invested!
- The scope and time needed for doing these phases will grow from level 1 to 3. For level 1 you will be much quicker in understanding, possibly even not needing a full third review phase. For level 3 however I needed notiably more mocks to get comfortable.
Tracking:
- You will need some tracking device to track your progress against time left and force you to stick to your schedule. I have attached my tracking file which has dominated my life for the last three years herefor what it’s worth.
Some tips for the exam day:
- Bring your travel passport and check the fucking expiring date
- Bring a second calculator, it will cost about 30 bucks and is such a ease of mind!
- Eat sufficiently in the midday break, for level 1 and also 2 I was really struggling to concentrate in the afternoon session due to hunger. I found dextro energy helpful in the afternoon sessions to fight this
- Do not dring more coffee than you are used to, I did and again was really struggling to concentrate in the morning sessions…
- Manage your time well on the exam, practice this beforehand
- Invest some money in a good hotel close to exam centre to have a good night sleep
That’s about it, hope this might be of help for somebody, all the best for your journey!
Best, Thomas