But who are able to devote 400+ hours? this is a challenge by itself … in PHD , usually you dont fail … you keep researching a topic under the supervision of a professor till you finish your thesis comfortably … at least you dont live the stress of CFA examinations which is a burden as well
50 years program and we have ONLY about 96,000 charterholders around the world … if it is easy to obtain bcoz it is easy as you claimed, then the 96,000 should have been 960,000 !
Your logic is pretty far off on a number of levels…
What kind of PhD are you talking about? A PhD in physics is going to be much more difficult than a PhD in English. A PhD in Applied Math from Courant is going to be much more difficult than one from a small school in Iowa.
Just comparing raw CFA holders to raw PhD holders is completely misrepresenting the issue. Not that this kind of comparison has any relevance to the actual point here, but if you insist on making the comparison you should normalize the data to be on the same level.
Have you been in a PhD program? I can only speak for the sciences and they are extremely challenging. Just because you get in does not guarantee you leave with your PhD. A very large number of candidates realize it is not for them and leave with their MS.
I found a couple threads discussing the CFA exams in comparison to the actuarial exams. The consensus seemed to be that the actuarial exams are much more difficult (I’m not promoting this thought, just recalling it. I haven’t taken the CFA exams.). If this is an accepted positon, then you are definitely out of touch with what it takes to get a PhD. As someone who was in both a PhD program and an actuary, the actuarial exams are a joke compared to the PhD program.
Overall, no one will deny the CFA exams are difficult. As someone earlier pointed out, the main challenge is studying on top of a full-time job. But to say getting your CFA is more difficult than getting a PhD is completely misguided.
i agree with you. the CFA program was designed to be for the working professional. That’s what makes it very hard. when you combine it with the big curriculum.
And yes actuary exams are definitely more difficult
I am difinetley talking about a Phd in finance. I saw my friend taking it in 3.5 years and how smoothly it went without even half of the stress encountred with level 2 exam.
I raised this point here because alot is comparing CFA to MBA which I found it overly unfair.
So again, as for a Finance Phd, and talking mainly about Obtainability, CFA is harder to obtain. A finance Phd guy researching one topic under the supervision of a professor will not fail in most cases. While charterholders, many of them, fail level 2 and three quite often and some of them faild level 1 even before they earn the charter.
A question: what would you say when some charterholders spent about 6 years to obtain it?
I still think that is a ridiculous statement. Plenty of people burnout of Finance PhD programs.
To answer your question - I have nothing to say about some charterholders spending six years to get there.
A question to you: More people fail out of high school than fail CFA exams every year; therefore, getting a high school diploma is more difficult than getting a CFA. Do you agree?
It’s a ridiculous statement, of course, but I’m just using your approach to compare the difficulty of two achievements. I know several co-workers who are either CFAs or have passed all three of the CFA exams, did so completely outside of work hours, and passed the exams on their first attempt. Does that mean the program is easy? Absolutely not, it simply means some people did not find it challenging (just like some people find it more challenging).
Here are two links to papers coming out of Wharton’s Finance department. This is PhD level research. Of course, this isn’t a representation of all PhD finance research, but that just makes my point more sound.
Are there people out there who got their PhD in Finance with less work than some CFA charterholders? Probably. Does that mean getting a PhD in Finance is easier than getting a CFA charter? Absolutely not.
Your question is just awful. When I say in my Q they spent 6 years, it was meant 6 years “with hard work” and yet failed. A high school is uncomparable even by concept.
You need to understand the fact that for CFA, you might be spending hudrends and thousands of hours with hard work, yet fail. Unlike researching for your thesis on PHD program where you can get off your laptop on the beach crossing your legs and drinking your coffee while doing so. CFA is a diffrent game. You cram like hell for months and you could fail in 6 hours. In a PHD, once stuck on your regression formula, you simply call your statistics professor who will solve your problem simply in his office hours. You don’t have this on CFA, where once you are stuck, you can just call your proctor.
I agree with you that some of charterholders finish the program from their first attempt, well this is rare. But if your “several” coworkers did so, there are “thousands” who failed for three and four times in level 2 and 3. And guess what, they failed with hard work.
You rarely fail a PHD program. You probably fail once or twice to obtain a CFA charter and the CFAI website speaks this out with: It took charterholeders an average of four years to gain their charter for a program that could be done in 2 years.
The CFA does not require you to do original research (if anything, original thought hurts you on the exam, it’s designed to be about performing rote types of analyses commonly performed by investment analysts and portfolio managers). One of the reasons Ph.D. folk sometimes have difficulty on the CFA exam is that they know enough that they can talk themselves out of the correct answer because of additional knowedge that they obtained in their studies (experienced analysts also have this problem sometimes). Overthinking also interferes with time management, so in some ways it helps to be newer to the material, because you don’t have so many alternative ways of looking at things.
The hard part of a Ph.D. program is creating, defining, and testing new knowledge in the field. That’s defniitely harder than doing the CFA exam, hands down.
Getting a dissertation defense committee to actually read your stuff and agree to meet on a common day at a common time is also harder than CFA prep.
A Ph.D. finance student is usually finished with all the kinds of knowledge in the CFA program by the time he or she takes their comprehensive examinations (sometimes an oral examination as well). That’s usually at the end of 2 years or possibly 3. The material is frequently more in-depth than the stuff on the CFA exam, certainly the quantitative stuff tends to be. It may not cover some of the things like ethics or investor policy statements.
The CFA is designed to be done while you are holding down a job. That means that you have to find free time to study, which is difficlut, but you are not usually a poor student while you are doing it.
They are both difficult processes, but to say “the CFA is harder because you do it in 3 years instead of 6” is just amazingly bad analysis.
Trying to convince Nightmare that the CFA isn’t more difficult than getting a PhD is futile. He/she has made up their mind regardless of any evidence or logic you may present to them. Regardless, good post.
I agree with everything except the 2nd to last paragraph. These days, there are a lot of students taking it. I believe ~25% - 30% candidates are students.
Starting with your last sentence which appeared to be quoting me. Well, I didn’t say this or implied so. I was simply saying that Obtaining the CFA charter is more difficult since you may fail even if you crammed like hell unlike Phds who don’t usually fail.
I know what Phd guys do. And what you said regarding that they go through all CFA materials with more depth is completely nonsense and inaccurate, unless you are talking about very few universities in the world which should be consiedered outliers. I don’t know any Phd program that requires you to master 16 or 17 books.
In addition, Phd guys have main focus is on their thesis not on each and every investment tool as in the CFA charterholder. I know people who received their Phds without reading one word about derivatives or fixed income yet they are called now Doctors.
Moreover, the level of stress that you encounter during you CFA studies is more likely to add to its difficulty which we don’t see it with most of Phd guys who’ve got enough time to make their research.
Finally, that was my point of view and you have yours.
It is not you who decide whether my opinion is logical or not. My supportive data was from CFAI, while I don’t see your 2 papers contribution is something radical to change my logic.
Nothing personal, but this is my opinion, if you don’t accept it it is your call, but don’t claim the logic is yours and no logic behind my opinion just because one or few posts here had your same arguement.
Perhaps, though even this is debatable. I’ll agree that of people who start a Ph.D. Program, a higher rate finish it than finish the CFA. What you are forgetting is that lots of people fail even to get in to a Ph.D. program. As far as I know, no one who is a college graduate, has $1000 and has who not engaged in securities fraud has ever been rejected from CFA candidacy.
The amount of work required to prepare for one of these levels is approximately two semesters, possibly three, worth of study over the course of a year. The masters portion of most Ph.D. studies requires about 3-4 courses per semester and if you are studying something like regression techniques, you are going to go into a ton more depth than the CFA. Maybe someone did a Ph.D withoutnstudying derivatives, but if they did study derivatives, they are going to have a ton mor depth than is required for the exam. If they didnt, then they may not have derivatives, but they have something else, and that part (corp fin, econ, stats, optimization, whatever) is going to be much deeper.
By the way, when you are prepping for the exam, you can go talk to a teacher or a study partner or someone to get help on materials, so what’s your point. In a dissertation defense, you don’t get to go ask for help, it is true, but committees pass most defenses because defenses do not get scheduled unless there is a high chance of passing, the advisor or committee simply says “you are not ready.”
i don’t get what your point is in this comparison anyway. Both the Ph.D. and the CFA are difficult, but they are designed for different things, so it is perfectly understandable that the difficulties are not 100% comparable and you can find plent of contexts where one aspect is more challenging than the other. Comprehensive examinations are very similar to the CFA exam experience. True, you only have to do them once if you pass, but you don’t have to write and defend a thesis afterwards.
What you mentioned in your replies is related to highly reputable universities with hard Phd programs which don’t represent the population of Phd holders. But trust me, I know people with Phd, teaching in universities, don’t know how to analyse a financial statment because they had only a thesis to follow and defend. Well, this is not the case for all. But still extremes are up and down and they are down more than the up of reputable universities. Yet , in the market, they are called Doctors…everywhere.
However, a CFA charter is a CFA charter. No reputable and non-reputable.
I am not comparing in a way to say CFA charterholders are better than Phds. I am saying, on average, CFA charter it is more difficult to obtain.
In other words: There is one and only one CFA program. However, there millions of Finance Phd programs all over the world.
Wouldn’t the PHD have had exposure to financial statements in their undergrad/Masters? Wouldn’t they be teaching areas they were an expert in? No one can be an expert in everything.
The CFA is very broad and while it is a leg up on nothing, what you are going to do with it will rely heavily on your work experience. No one is going to take a trader that finished CFA and automatically bump them up to Portfolio Manager. Just like no one is going to have a PHD that specialized in regression analysis teach Financial Statements. Just like no one is going to have an automotive engineer jump into analyzing oil and gas wells. Just like no one is going to want a real estate lawyer defending them on murder charges.
People who I know in the industry commonly look at the CFA charter as something very impressive. IMO an employer would look at least as favorably on that as a PhD from someplace, with the exception being from Harvard/Oxford/etc. A PhD would be more useful if you want to get into academia.
Totally agree. Have a few doctors in the family. Medical school is one tough slog no matter how smart you are. Plus becoming a doctor doesn’t end with graduating with your MD. On to residencies!
I might have studied more during concentrated periods than a med student but it wasn’t a year-round challenge.
Maybe another way to look at it is that the CFA material isn’t so tough (when you actually have books and materials available) but the tests are unpredictable and for the most part awful.
On the other hand, all the deep knowledge you have to ingest during med school is astronomical but it’s less about testing and more about practical and clinical application of that knowledge.