What should he do? Fail twice with curriculum addition, anything, difficulty, him

wildrose

A colleague of mine has failed level 1 in Jun 2008 with band 7 and Jun 2009 with band 9. He is one of the smartest guy in the company. However, look like he has underestimated the difficulty of the CFA exam. He thought that he does not need anything in addition to the curriculum.

He will be taking the exam for a third time in Dec 2009. What do you suggest him to do? Go for Schweser or Stalla or stick to the curriculum?

sgupta0827

I highly recommend Qbank. Rereading the material gets boring, but actually doing the Qs shows you where you really need to work. Plus, I think alot of the posters who did pass used supplemental study materials.

jim8z3

If he failed last time with a band 9 on his second try he may be able to use only the CFA books since he has probably gone through them 4 or 5 times by now. Qbank or Passmaster will definately be a big plus to get over the hump.

I hope your collegue will recognize the benefit of using the study guides in additin to the CFA books since he could be sitting for L3 now instead of sitting for L1 for the third time.

Jolyn

Qbank are very usefull... in the L1, you have to be like a machine reading the question and knowing quickly in what manner you have to answer or which formula to use. (only 1.5 min/question)

I failed with band 8 in December and then prepare me for June by reading once again the schweser books. But I think the more important think is to do the maximum of questions from Qbank. Doing that, I sometimes found the same kind of questions in the real exam and was more confortable in June.

My advise for level 1 is, know as good as possible every LOS (by using flashcard) and do a maxium of Qbank questions, Sample exam and Mocks exams.

With band 9, he is very close to pass !

JoeyDVivre

I dont know what he is missing really. I passed level 1 with curriculum alone (the year they introduced it), level 2 with curriculum alone, and am waiting for level 3 with curriculm alone as well. Just used to take the CFA samples.

He shuld probably change if the curriculum isnt working for him, pple are different.

leadcfa

How many mocks did he do when he was preparing for the second try? In this type of exams, just like GMAT, the things like time management and other multi-answer test tricks are more important than knowing the material. Of course one should know some material, but just doing Qbank and several real exam simulations would do for the fist level. I even substituted reading for videos, and did not touch the Curriculum. Test techniques are important now, if he knows the Curriculum already. Check the local CFA society for exam simulations

FVPV

He should be able to pass Level 1 with just the CFAI books.

However, Stalla does a pretty good job for FSA (for Level1 atleast). If Peter Olinto is doing the CDs for FSA, and that is the only area your friend needs, he will pass. Olinto got me to > 70 for Level 1 FSA and I have NO accounting background.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 09:50AM by bos_IT_guy.

RobertA

Umekichi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> He did not do any mock/sample except the free
> ones. He did most poorly in FSA and Fixed Income.
> I agree with you that drilling question with qbank
> and passmaster is very important.
> I think his face a dilemma that having only 4
> months left, he could either read the curriculum
> once (which he has read previously) or read the
> study guide twice (which is totally new to him).
> He can only spare 1 hour during weekday and 5
> hours during weekend. If money is not a big
> concern, what would you suggest him to do in his
> limited time?


I'd advise him to do more mock exams (e.g. Schweser books 6,7), then review them with CFAI text, especially the weak spots. QBank would be extrememly useful for him as well. He needs to do more practice and drill the questions rather than re-read material through another third party source. Once he's getting >75% on the mocks, he should be good to go.

waldziuchna

The Curriculum is enough. Worked for me!

kamara5

First of all, can you put your results from both exams. That may help in giving better advice.

Now that you (sorry your friend) have gone through this twice with CFA books, I would advise you to use Schweser notes. It has fewer pages and, therefore, focussed; I know it covers about 95% of the CFA books, but I do not think you will fail because of this issue alone. I think the CFA books does not work for everybody. It has a lot of material and is difficult to bring it all together without notes.