Study Material from CFA Institute because, purchase, material, thousands, only

glamorous

I don't personally know anyone who has studied only from the CFA Instiute study material.

Most people I know purchase 3rd party material, not because CFA Institute Study material is poor quality, but the fact is, the material is bulky, tedious and hence useless. Instead of making the material more releavant, useful and usable, the institute decided to force you to pay for the material and kill thousands of trees.

Does anyone else agree that the instiute should not mandate purchase of the material. (They don't make you purchase it, but increased the exam fee which includes material cost, hence they indirectly made you purchase it)

One of the arguments they present is, many students confuse the 3rd party material as official curriculum and don't know about the CFA Institute Official curriculum and material. That's a ridiculous point to make. If they really care, why not make their material available for download or accessible online for registered members.

My suggestion to CFA institute is, keep the purchase of material optional. That will reduce the fees by atleast $200 to $300. Save some trees. My study material is still fresh and unused. I bet nobody would pay more than $30 for all 5 books on ebay. It's that bad. I studied from Schewser material, and it rocks. Learn something from them. Its called art of precis writing.

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Don't worry, by making comments about CFA institute policies, you are not in any kind of ethical violations. I am pretty sure about that.

agulani

CFAI was useless, I'm going to purchase the Schweser notes in December I'm sure. They are so dry and boring, that it really is silly. I learned most of the stuff by taking practice tests leading up to the ()*)&&*^*& thing. It is a bit of a sham considering these books are marked up and give them a guaranteed profit. For Dec 09ers stick with Schweser notes. CFAI won't help you much.

invic

My CFAI books are in perfect condition and still in the box they came in. I may have flipped through the first book briefly (Ethics & Quant), but other than that, have not laid a finger on the rest.

Be careful about Level II though, I heard Schweser is not as adequate.

smartpants

Yeah, I learned solely from CFAI material.

To be honest, I think that I've learnt a lot of things, understood a great deal of stuff that I haven't known before.

But I struggled with the exam, as CFAI are too lengthy and hard to remember. Although I spent lot of time studying, now I have no expectation pass or not

Gonna retake the exam. Let's wait and see

pacmandefense

I studied 80% from CFAI material and 20% schweser, CFAI is far better then schweser. Every Question in the exam was from CFAI books. Notes cannot give you the understanding that book gives, but you must have QBank to retain the stuff in your mind. I gained lots of understanding from CFAI books, esp for FRA/Equity. I dont think I will forget that stuff now. Books are a good source and very comprehensive.

The only part I did not do from CFAI was quant, infact I did not do iquant at all apart from mocks and sample papers (got couple of degrees in math :|).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 03:02PM by gauri.

dmar

I think if you have the time CFAI is a far better alternative. For me I needed to get through the first pass of the curriculum quickly. Also I found CFAI sections on FRA & Ethics an absolute necessity. Without it I would have no idea what was going on in those sections. Sorry to say Schweser did a terrible job of FRA.....just ridiculous. With that said the quant section of FRA is just garbage, so it's a trade off.

Micholien

CFAI actually isn't that bad of a read. Its filled with additional items that you aren't responsible for also 1/4 of each book is made up of questions and answers in the back so all in all id say its not as bad as you think it is. The books def look intimidating though at first.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 05:05PM by chung.da.neu.

shootingstar

I am not good at cramming, and my brain just refuses to accept anything that it cannot understand. I liked reading CFAI books, it gave an overall picture of the topic. But I found QBank very useful, the questions helped in retaining the stuff learned from CFAI books.

And these readings were much simpler than the lengthy maths theorems which trust me, sometimes can require 10 cups of coffee(thats my max for one theorem). Since I did not rely on schweser notes for the exam, I do not know what I would have lost if I had only studied them. But I am pretty happy with my knowledge base of level one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 05:37PM by gauri.

disiz64

I primarily used third party prep material but found CFAI text to be a useful reference to clarify details. As you saw regarding that questions about HHI neither Stalla nor Schweser notes had enough detail to answer the question but CFAI text did...

Also, you can get over $200 for your Level 1 text on amazon right now.

johnnyBuz

Would suggest using Schweser QBank and mock exams, studying via practice questions is the way to go. I failed Dec 08, band 9 using CFAI only, confident i passed this time around using Schweser