What costly mistakes should be avoided in Level 3 preparation? result, should, avoided, mistakes

Micholien

Hello Experienced Level 3 Candidates !!! Best of luck for the result !!!

What costly mistakes should be avoided in Level 3 preparation?
Thanks in advance.

pawn

mcap11 Wrote:
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> spending too much time on an essay question in
> which you havent a clue how to answer.......MOVE
> ON!


exactly, answer the low hanging fruit first then go back to the difficult questions... there's nothing worse than NOT being able to answer an essay question you know cold because time ran out.

Andreas42

Time it when you do the past AM exams.

eoin

Expand on that please.

bell99 Wrote:
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> Schweser is a mistake. AVOID IT.

SpyAli

Schweser is a mistake. AVOID IT.

kingstongal

ohai Wrote:
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> I wish someone had told me to check for answer
> templates in L3 before writing down the answers on
> the blank pages. In the 2010 exam, many of the
> questions had writing space between the questions
> and the answer templates. So, I would write down
> all the answers only to find that I had written
> them in the wrong place.

THIS IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU CAN MAKE. Listen to my man Ohai on this one.

THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO KNEW THE MATERIAL COLD AND MAY FAIL FOR WRITING IN THE WRONG SPACE.

Hopefully CFAI takes the criticism of me and other people and puts the ACTUAL format of the exam into the prior years ams. That was difficult for me and cost me probably 10 minutes in the am.

MINUTES ARE PRECIOUS IN THE AM DON'T WASTE THEM
REWRITING OR BEING CONFUSED.

I'll be back regardless to results next may to harp on this.

_____________________________________________________
-My friend QQQbbe, we will never forget you.

Andreas42

What costly mistakes should be avoided in Level 3 preparation----

Well one obviously pops in to my mind...bombarding L3 candidates awaiting results in less than two weeks of getting L2 results. A very costly mistake indeed

hw0799

My lessons from level 3 are the following:

1) Really really budget time. I got killed on the essay section - make sure you at least make it through all the sections.

2) Don't skip anything. While you may have to focus on core areas (IE: Fixed Income, Asset Allocation), at least have read EVERYTHING at least once and make sure you understand the main concepts.

3) Do tons of problems/practice tests. And make sure you've simulated a real testing environment time wise for the essay portion. It will force you to read through the passages quickly and answer efficiently which will maximize your chances of passing.

I'm pissed because I felt decently prepared for the test, did well on the multiple choice, but because of my unfamiliarity with the essay section and inefficiency stemming from my lack of practice, I ended up answering half the essay questions VERY thoroughly but ran out of time and left 3 (or 4?) sections entirely BLANK. What a DUM-ASS.

Don't make the same mistake I did - the essay portion is completely different and needs to be practiced.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Friday, August 5, 2011 at 07:28PM by wangta01.

LorrinCFA

ask me again in 10 days...GULP

dmrktrading

SkipE99 Wrote:
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> Focusing too much on Schweser and ignoring CFAI
> Text. of course not many on this forum can really
> say anything for sure for another 11 days


So do you feel that it's even worth using Schweser at all for Level III? For Level I and Level II my strategy was to read all the CFAI books first then go through all of the Schweser books, but this time around the AM portion has me a bit worried. Do you think I'd be better off going through CFAI twice instead of CFAI once and Schweser once?