@DiehardValueInvestor: How exactly is being “in the industry” helpful? Its not like there is a general “industry” job that gives you knowledge of every section of the CFA examination. I would assume it would help for whatever specialized part of finance you work in, like if you deal with bonds, you’d do well on the fixed income questions and so on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll know what the hell you’re doing in the equities section, does it?
^ Compared to someone not in the industry at all, working in finance helps. Especially if you are in ER or AM.
Yes, no one will admit that it takes them 4 or 5 times to pass L1.
I will lie and say they failed L1 once.
In olden times when you could only sit the exams once a year at the end of May/start of June, you used to have to get permission from CFAI (or AIMR as it was then) to stay in the program after a certain number of years (7? 8? I forget).
It could be worse. I don’t know if they still do it, but for chartered accountancy in the UK, you had to pass all the exams within a certain number of years or you had to start from the beginning again. `Time-barred’ was the expression they used. Someone I used to know who worked for a medium-sized UK accountancy firm was taking his final chartered accountancy exams for the final time and thought he’d failed so he got a job as company secretary at one of the firm’s clients and quit the firm. After he’d left, he found out that he’d actually passed.