Retention of material material, remember, concepts, question, already

dirk01

Hi all,

Level I candidate here, and I have a question that I want to ask people who have already passed Level I. As I am going through the material, I am wondering how 2 months from now I am going to remember the details of what I studied today.

I have Elan Guides - I was thinking of using the 11th hour guide to try to remember the concepts. Will you please share strategies for how you approached this issue?

kkn006

Schweser's Qbank was good for this at Level 1. If you dont have access to that, you need to go back and redo problems from the previous sections as well as reread your notes on the previous sections.

In fact everyday I studied I reviewed some part of what I had learned in the past in the form of notes or questions. You need to make sure to review your notes from the beginning (Quant) at least on a weekly basis. You should be making note of which problems in your study material and CFAI EOC questions are giving you a hard time, and redo them every week until you understand them.

This is one of the most important parts to passing, just as important as powering through the material. I am convinced that you can get through all the material in 1 month if you do not do any problems, and 2 months if you do problems but do not review.

See if you can get your hands on Schweser Qbank, it is really helpful in pointing out your weaknesses. Best of luck and just keep going forward through the material but do not forget to review all your notes at least weekly! Even this is not enough and you need to be redoing problems from previous sections!

Otabek

I tend to have strong memory retention when I fully understand a concept but being a retaker, I knew that I'd have to get the first pass out of the way early and spend the rest of the time Feb - June grilling myself repeatedly on any topic. I think it's the only way.

ayodayo

I passed level I in June and wish I had written down all the important studying tips I learned along the way... The one thing I do remember is that you should do Econ last. Somehow I still got >70% of econ but I felt like econ really should have been a gimme. It's just memorizing pretty simple stuff.

Also, take the hypothesis testing reading(s) seriously... I skipped that reading for some reason and really regretted it on the exam when I realized that I forgot to actually go back and do the reading.

I've seen some people bash QBank before but I thought it was great. I did a lot of QBank practice tests and I found them pretty good. Make sure you do the mocks at the end as well... I found them to be very comparable to the real exam.

I used the 11th hour guide, it's great. However, I would certainly go through Schweser readings first... I don't think the 11th hour guide is really detailed enough to use that as your main source.

Good luck.

FinancialAnaly

skipE99 echoes my sentiment. You have to learn this stuff through your pencil and do lots of problems.

5566

Repetition is right - with a caveat, have a system in place. Do the entire curriculum once - use Schweser as an example. After finishing the first pass at the curriculum, go over it once more - you may have highlighted stuff, taken notes in the margin/note cards etc. This will also jog your memory. Surprisingly, you will find that the second review will take you 1/4 the time as the first one - it comes back! Then do the practice exams to get ready to attack your area of weakness, for a final push.