So your must prioritize studying over other obligations and responsibilities, and don’t let them get in your way
but there are only 24 days left…to be honest, i am thinking giving up…
i wish i can do that…it’s crazy busy at work every day…
what kind of job is it?
lol I was just busted by my manager for doing qbank questions. He msg’d me over the internal messenger saying "
mate… I know you’ve an exam coming up and it is an important exam but I need to focus more on work please." 
I work on the legal side in nvestment banking and get crazy busy because all the regulation is going on…I’ll be pretty lucky if I work less than 10 hrs on one day…
That’s a recipe for disaster.
You’re fucked, but don’t give up. Just do as good as you can, and take the exam. At least it’ll be experience to build on for next year.
It would be if I had a full time job, but that’s not the case here. I’m able to put in at least 6 hrs a day on the exam.
Last exam I tried memorizing everything from the start and it was just an impediment to getting through the material. You have to be able to understand the basic concepts first. As time passes you just forget stuff, even if you do the problems.
The problem with this exam is that you have to grasp a large scope of material, and the more you spend time getting bogged down with specifics in the beginning, the longer it takes to cover the material and that can be dangerous because that can leave less time for doing the mock exams which imho are the most critical part of preparation.
why would you implement a fuck work strategy? the entire point of writing the exam - improving your career prospects - will be hampered when your current co-workers/superiors give you negative references because you fucked off for two months at their expense.
Also, I was getting pissed when people would tell me the ‘oh, you’ll do fine’ lines. Then i realized it is a natural response; if the shoe was on the other foot, I’d probably say the same thing. Lol- imagine somebody telling you, “one month left and you’ve only studied FRA,QNT,EQY,DER?? you’re fucked!!”.
My point being, stop talking to people about the CFA exam…
This is my plan. I scored an 8/60 on the morning mock. I’ll let you know if I pass.
I don’t mean not doing any work at all and putting out this “fuck this” attitude. I mean minimum work. Plus TBH I don’t see any great paths for my current job, so yea, I don’t care.
I don’t mean not doing any work at all and putting out this “fuck this” attitude. I mean minimum work. Plus TBH I don’t see any great paths for my current job, so yea, I don’t care.
That’s like a math student saying, “I’m just going to attend all the lectures and wait until right before the final to do any homework.”
BTW, did you pass the last exam?
Anyway, it’s too late to change your strategy now, and you’re unwilling to, so there’s no need to try to convince you now…
how about… less time arguing with people… and more time studying. Sounds like a good plan to me
Yes I did pass the last exam (on the first try), and I did extremely well in all sections. I also have an MBA and already took classes in valuation which is a very good part of the level 2 exam. Things like calculating FCFF and FCFE are already well familiar to me, as are multiple regressions. That, combined with full time studying, is what makes it possible to adopt this strategy imho, and it was a strategy recommended to me by someone who passed levels 1 and 2 on the first try.
I’m a ‘top down’ type of guy when it comes to studying. My feeling is that its critical to go through the material and get a bird’s eye view of it first, then get down to the specifics of what you don’t understand - unless all of it is totally new to you. Doing problems early just slows you down from getting through the material on the first pass and since you don’t use the material (unless you’re already working in equity research) you simply forget most of it. When I did level 1 I did all the CFAI problems for FRA including the blue boxes. Two months later I was shocked at how little I remembered of what I studied.
This is not like b-school where you have midterms and projects that you have to be ready for, its more like law school where you have to dump everything on one exam. Nor is it a purely quantitative curriculum which requires lots of algebraic rearranging and proofs - there I’d agree that you’d be dead meat if you tried this approach because each class builds on the last one. The CFA isn’t exactly like that. You get sections of related but different material.
That gives you the luxury to try a different approach. To each their own of course.
I passed level one with only 2 weeks of studying and only reading 3 of the 5 Schweser books. I wasnt even going to take it but my wife convinced me to take it and unbelievably i passed. I also have a finance Mba and 2 years of ER and two of investment consulting though. I got <50 on derivatives ( didnt even read that book) 51-70 on 3 other sections and passed L1. I have 100 pages left in the last Schweser L2 book and am taking the two weeks off before the L2 exam and do zero EOC quetions while reading. I will do all mocks and questions the two weeks before and unlike L1 feel confident i will pass L2 bc f/it i am at least reading all the books ths time and to be honest w my work history L2 seems much easier to me.
L1 was all BS that zero ER analysts really use, L2 is different, i have seen or used 50% of the material at work in ER or investment consulting.
I was also amazed at how little the exam requires the formulas and computations the vast majority of the exam didnt even require a calculator and i think L2 will be even less use of a calculator and the formulas. It is a gamble but it worked on L1.
what school did you go to?
Hey Wendy, I saw you are a charterholder for a few licences. What benefits do those licences bring you so far? Especially the CFA…do you mind sharing your experience or opinion? Thanks!
I went to a top 20 school, but you learn most of L2 on the job in ER and Investment consulting, honestly, MBA is just for networking and recruiting purposes, the academics in most schools are completely detatched from the reality of the business world. Plus most MBA classes are pretty much an outright joke, they know why people are there and paying the outrageous tuition.
I always laughed when the CFA L1 books would say, “analysts use this or do it this way or sometimes this way” ZERO, NO analysts do 90% of the stuff the way CFA L1 says you do. 90% of analysts don’t do FCFF or FCFE, they just do FCF. Most of the CFA material is completely useless, it is just a test that you study for and like most stuff in school, after the CFA you won’t see 90% of it again. Passing the CFA just shows that you have a minimum level of finance knowledge and you were willing to work hard enough to pass it.
Unless the hiring manager has a CFA, then having a CFA does nothing for you in hiring, but if the hiring manager has a CFA then they definitely show preference for a CFA in hiring.