Forewords
In taking CFA, there is no shortcut in passing it. You don’t have to be a first class honour in finance to pass it, all that matters is the level of effort that you prepared to pour yourself in it.
Personally, I sat for the 2015 June cycle exam, and passed it with 8As and 2Bs in Ethics and Fixed Income. Because I was having internship in Jan till March, I only started my CFA in 23rd March, which left me for just two months in preparation. Fortunate for me, I am a full time student, so my time is relatively flexible.
Study Materials
I self-studied the course without attending any classes. The only materials I used is the Kaplan Schweser notes. I never used the official CFAI text as I found it too bulky and crowded with information. I started my study with it and find my progress too painstakingly slow, then I resorted to Schweser notes. In my opinion, the CFAI material are written for academic purpose. The CFAI had the obligation to explain every details of the concept, whether or not it’s important for the exam. While the Schweser notes are obviously written for exam preparations. The text are concise and straight to the point, and there are also some little editor’s reminder on what to take note about during exams I found extremely relevant and crucial. (And nope, I am not working for Kaplan to promote their material)
I never attended any online classes, nor did I ever used the so called “Secret Sauce”. In terms of practice materials, I only did the review questions back of every LOS in the Kaplan notes as well as some past year CFAI mock exams. (Note there is no actual past year questions for CFA L1&2, past years are only available for L3 if I am not mistaken. CFAI will however releases a set of mock for AM and PM paper few weeks prior the actual exam.) I never did any questions on the question bank online because I would rather devote my time in practicing mock provided by CFAI. Hence strictly speaking, the only materials I had in my arsenal is the Kaplan notes plus some past year mocks.
Study Method
My approach to study is pretty straight forward. Read read and read until all formula, all concepts carves in my brain. In my case, I only had 10 weeks from the day I started studying to taking the paper.
It took me a good painstaking 6 weeks to study for the entire syllabus for the first time. At this time, all I did is to read through and understand every concepts in the syllabus. Make sure you REALLY DO UNDERSTAND all the concepts during this stage! If you don’t, make sure you spend your time to do it, because the last thing you want is to get paranoia at the late stage and hurt your own confidence because of those little concepts you don’t understand. For me I didn’t memorized anything at this stage.
A bit different from my peers, I did not jump straight to do tonnes of practice after finishing my syllabus. Instead, all I do was I took another 2 weeks to reread and review the whole syllabus again. Personally, I think it’s more important to be able to understand the complete concepts inside out rather than to “learn from mistakes”. By spamming question banks, you are only be able to learn from the mistakes you made, but it omits the concepts that you are not tested. Hence I would be more in favour to read more than practice.
The goal in this stage is to refresh and to strengthen your memory. Because after that 6 weeks of intensive studies, I tend to forget some of the key concepts I studies earlier. At this point of time, you are expected to be very familiar with the syllabus. For example, when I mention “Duration” you should be able to at least tell there’s such things as ModDur, Approximation method etc without referring to the book.
If you have been through the first stage, the second stage will pass through like a wind to you. It took me 6 weeks to study my syllabus at first but the review process took me only 2 weeks.
DO NOTES!! Making notes is simply one of the most important aspect I couldn’t emphasis more! Your notes can be a simple highlight on what’s important, explanation of the big chunk of words in the book in your own words, or a table to compare the differences. Just make sure you DO NOTES ALL THE WAY! It’s going to cost you some time for sure, but you are gonna appreciate it hell lot when you are doing your review. Also, doing notes makes you remember more as you are writing out what you just learnt. Just make sure you make note as you go.
Don’t worry about memorizing formulas. Formulas shouldn’t be memorized anyways, it should be “familiarized” with a right amount of practicing.
Practice Time!
My way of practice is going to be liked by many candidates out there because it is super cost effective! All I used was CFAI website’s topic review questions and CFAI past and current mock exams questions, which is both included already in your exam fees!
After the second review, I started my practice on the CFAI website’s topic review questions. Not sure about its official name, but it’s a set of questions you can find in CFAI’s candidate resource section that goes topic by topic.
My method is, do all the questions in the topic review over and over and over and over again! Because as you redo the same topic again, you will realize that some question tends to repeat itself and there will be new questions added in as well. So as you redo the same question again, you will be alert enough to fall for the same old trap. I took 1 whole week to redo all the questions until I think there’s little or no new questions anymore.
One week from the exam is where I finally start with my mock exams! My exam is on Saturday, I started off my mocks on the last Sunday before the exam. I start my mock with the oldest one I got. For example, my Sunday paper would be the 2011 mock and my last paper would be the latest 2015 June mock just released by the CFAI to us.
During the process, I sat down and time myself for every set I do. After that, I had an hour break and come back to do another set, to best mimic the actual exam day experiences. Trust me in this, you are going to be so exhausted at first when you started the 3hour-1hour-3hour intervals. I only do one set of mock each day (1AM and 1PM), with the rest of the day being used to review my mistakes.
Anyways, during the last 24 hours before the exam I stopped all my practices. Basically all I did was to give myself a break. The only thing I did was to read notes and make sure I memorized all my formulas.
One thing to note here is that quality of practice should be priotized over the quantity of practice. Personally, I emphasized the use of only CFAI materials because I think it’s a more true to real exam experience question. Also, the level of difficulty and trap in CFAI question are also somewhat challenging. I do not believe candidates should do 10000 questions to able to pass CFA L1. The right exposure to the right difficulty is more important than wasting your time spamming questions set by 3rd party.
Conclusion
So this is it, this is the way I did my CFA. Before I end there’s some advices that I want to share with you too! Firstly, do remember that the preparation for the CFA is not a sprint race but a marathon. You have to be really persistent and stern on your goal in order to pass it. Don’t be swayed by negative thoughts you came across your peers or in the forum. Sometimes there’s sacrifice you need to make too. Say goodbye to your weekends, public holidays, the outings with your buddies and live an extremely routine life. And also it’s important to have optimum sleep every day because it really is a long process in preparation, you won’t want yourself to be caught in sleep deprivation.
I figured out I should probably share the actual exam day experience with you too but it’s already 1600 words here and I feel bad for it. Sorry for the long post, I hope you find this useful, have fun with your exams! :3