People need to understand that the CFA was built for investment professionals that already have the job, not career transition folks looking to break into a heavily desired finance job from unrelated work experience. Once people accept this truth, then things become pretty clear cut
Thanks for the insight. As a CFA Boardmember, are you speaking on behalf of the official position of the organization? If so, is there any reference that you could point us to? I looked on the CFA website and, besides the obvious work experience requirement that we all know about, there is nothing that I could find that would indicate that the CFA program was intended for “investment professionals that already have the job”. In fact, the official material specifically references students who dont “already have the job”.
As a related question, why is it that CFAs and later-CFA candidates on this forum continually try to belittle and minimize others, including aspiring CFA candidates? It really does very little for the reputation of the CFA program for people to be acting like this. If you are truly a boardmember, do you believe your statement represents the organization or your position well? Would you stand behind such words on an non-anonymous basis?
Itera,
I will say it baldly. You are not a boardmember of the CFA Institute. If you were, you are violating Standard III(a) of the Board code of conduct by your unauthorized public statements in regard to the CFA program, which as you would know require approval by the Board. If you are not a boardmember, you are violating Standard VII(A) of the CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct by misrepresenting your status as a board member.
If you maintain that you are, in fact, a CFA boardmember, I challenge you to tell us who you are so that we can verify your credential. That way, we can know the truth. If you will not do so or make up an excuse as to why you will not, we will also know the truth.
Itera is a boardmember of Analystforum, not CFAI.
Some humble pie is in order.
For me or Itera?
I maintain and reiterate that his behavior is childish and unbecoming of a CFA charterholder, whether or not he is a boardmember.
Are you sure that itera’s not on the CFA Institute board?
I, for one, don’t know for sure one way or the other.
True, he well could be on the CFAI board.
But we know for sure he is a Boardmember on Analystforum.
I will eat some humble pie as well.
I wanna be on the CFAI board too! Why does Itera always get the good stuff. 
Word on the street is that BChad could also be on the board of CFAI.
He prowls.
maybe I’m on the Board, maybe I’m not, who knows.
maybe I’m actually on the board of CFA The Cat Fanciers’ Association
After all, this was the original “CFA” founded in 1906 before the finance thing started in 1947 (according to wiki)
[quote=“JSD_NYC”]
You are all over the place, bud. I can’t even figure out your angle or what you’re getting so defensive over. First it was because people were downplaying MBAs, now because they’re downplaying CFAs? Do you like racquetball? Well that sucks too.
The problem is thousands of students are trying to break into but they already know that their alumni couldn’t but they think they are different. Then other majority of asian students who wants to get a job in retail banking thinks that CFA will boost their resume and will help them to get interview.
When I wrote level 1 exam in Toronto, scene was scary, 95% asian students, mostly young students with no experience in any industry. All they know is BANK. I tried to communicate with the chick next to me. And she told me that she is writing this exam because she thinks it will help her to get job in bank and she had no industry experience whatsoever. I believe CFAI has been very successful in its marketing strategy.
^ oh I totally agree the marketing arm of CFAI is absolutely amazing. It has convinced hundreds of thousands of people to shell out thousands of dollars to take these tests. As it was during the gold rush, most people walked away with nothing, and you’re probably better off selling the shovels then you were digging for the gold itself
According to many people on this forum CFA is not the ticket to “BANK” and it is “for people already in the field.”
This tells me CFA is useless for the vast majority of people.
I guess it makes sense. Despite the bashing of CPA here (btw I am not CPA). CPA is in some sense…prestigious because you’d need the approval of a CPA to finalize audits, taxes, fin statements, whether it is for hedge funds, or personal, or business.
On the the other hand. What can a CFA charterholder do that non CFA holder cannot do. Oh cfa charterholder has more knowledge blah blah blah. Knowledge on how to calculate COGS using FIFO or use Dupont ROE? lol
[quote=“JSD_NYC”]
Careful, your arm wasn’t meant to bend backwards like that - may break something. The point is, how can you know that MBA goes “waaaaaay” beyond the CFA curriculum if you’ve only taken level 1? Based on this comment and a few others where you clearly are misreading/misunderstanding the situation (itera a CFA Boardmember =l), I’m thinking troll or overconfident moron.
top 10 MBA will beat CFA in my opinion. He himself went to top mba. Looking at my firm or other hedge funds we deal with I rarely see CFA for analysts and PMs. Most went to the usual route of good ugrad to IB then fantastic MBA program. Those without MBA have either spectacualr ugrad or very solid work exp with some luck or friends with the right people. Maybe it is a bit different in asset mgmt or private client side…
If this was in response to my post, then clearly you’ve completely misunderstood my point as well… If not, then thanks for your opinion?
I misunderstood your point.
All fair points. I should not have minimized the value of the CFA vis-a-vis an MBA, nor should I have been seen to be bragging about my credentials. I accept both and apologize. I will wait until Level III (or until I hopefully pass Level I for goodness sakes) to make those kind of comparisons.
It is true that I find the tone on the forum to be somewhat coarse and exclusionary, but in my defensiveness, I have clearly and unwisely insulted others in exactly the manner that I was looking to comment on. For what it matters (which is very little), I was trying to contribute to the discussion through bringing what I thought were disitinct experiences into the conversation, but have clearly overshot by a mile the actual insight I was trying to add.
So, mea very culpa. I will keep my comments focused on test subject matter from here forward.