i stared the first week of January and finished the material entirely (reading. Highlighting. Flashcards) on April 11th. I DID NOT put pen to paper at all during that time. I figured that finishing the material en entire 8 weeks before the exam would make this risky strategy ok. I didn’t even do the (very easy) end of chapter questions in schweiser. Now I am going through answering the EOC and challenge problems and I am realizing I didn’t retain anything. It’s as if I didn’t read and highlight anything at all. DID I do this wrong by not doing practice problems along the way???
this is the question I am more nervous about. Do I have to go back to re learn things from level one? For instance deferred tax assets is referenced on level two but the formula isn’t explicitly started. I guess what I’m asking is…are formulas and concepts from level one (that are not discussed AT ALL in the schweiser level two books) still FAIR GAME? Oh dear…
Not at all, just keep the L2 curriculum in your head. Obviously it is built up over the L1 concepts, but you have also other sources to clear little doubts (google, AF forum, investopedia, etc)
just going through now, trying to finish all concept checker questions and challenge problems before 5/4. If I do that then I think I’ll be in good shape because I’ll have an entire month of mocks.
Still worried about bout those little things from level one mentioned in passing though…this stuff is hard enough without having to worry about the level one formulas and concepts…
I think you’re at a slight disadvantage, but only slight. I’m working my way through Swaps for the second time (second full read, all blue boxes, all EOC), and for sure I would have been guessing on 2/3 of the Derivatives exam questions if I wrote it yesterday. Don’t recall anything from the winter.
However, it’s a lot faster, and making a lot more sense this pass. Pieces are clicking into place. Things since learned in other readings (FX, Fixed Income) are helping. One option is to focus on bagging big game: do two passes of Equity and FR. First pass: all Blue Box and EOC. Make a note of the 15%-20% of EOC (and possibly BB) that are super core. Once you’ve finished the first both, go back to the one you did first (i.e., have “forgotten a bit”) and do the second pass by reviewing all revision notes and hitting the “super set” of 15%-20% of EOCs. Even after that, could do a third pass of the 15%-20% for only the big 3 in FRA, and whatever is hard in Equity. That distributed learning / layering approach works wonders for me.
If you can take Equity/FRA off the table – for the most part – the equation is simpler. Plus, you’ll gain confidence from retaining material on two of the more difficult areas.