Anybody Take L1 in Dec and L2 in June? successful, months

sabaruch

If so, I assume you got your pass results for L1 in late Jan leaving you with 4 months to prepare for L2 in June. Is this enough time? Were you successful?

5566

i did it, and passed both. I was successful, yet miserable and burned out. I guess its cool to be gearing up for L3 when 1 year ago at this time i hadn't even started studying L1 yet...just beware...you will be miserable.

How demanding is your job? whats your family situation (married? children?)

alot of that should go into your decision in estimating how much time you have.

I got through all schweser notes pretty much by the end of march. That left me april & may to do final review

WarrenB1

I did it and I passed both. I also had to go through the harrowing experience of not getting the email the whole of yesterday. Here is my scenario :

I have a demanding job. Doing my MBA part time. I am married and have kids. I passed L1 with 70% in all sections. I passed L2 with 70% in all but FRA and AI. In AI, I scored less than 50%.

In addition, I read through the entire CFAI text only. No Schweiser or any additional notes. I went through living hell and would NOT recommend it.

genuinecfa

Respek to those who passed the 34% Dec L1 and 39% Jun L2!!

I took L1 in Dec and just passed L2. I have an MBA and my job is a generalist investment consultant to institutional clients. In addition I was a math major and I am kind of an actuary (don't ask). So I had a solid background in some of the material and rough familiarity with most of it. I put in a solid month of studying from the beginning of May to the test.

I dug into Schweser Qbank and did a lot of problems. I didn't use texts, but relied on the explanations following questions in Qbank. It took some discipline to not try and get every question right, and just guess if I didn't know the answer. You know, you always want to get the right answer even if you have to think about it a little harder--but it slows you down.

I think this type of preparation is quite minimal and I would not rely on it. I think it helped to be a bit lucky on this exam. (thank you thank you)

It can be done but it depends on your background, how quickly you pick up things, and how disciplined you are (how much suffering can you take?) In my case I leaned heavily on the first two, and killed myself for about a month. cheers

yalo

Yes plenty of time. This is on top of working full time and being a full time MBA student.

chaojimali

Did the same. My busy season at work in January/February left me with really only March, April, and May to study. I passed L2 with >70 in all but ethics, but who really cares about ethics.

firat

I began preparing for L2 in mid January, before the results for L1 were announced as I was pretty sure of passing. I did not find it very stressful until the last 4 weeks... It can definitely be done if one is regular at it...

If you are passionate about what you are reading, it won't leave you "miserable"... I enjoyed the L2 curriculum, especially alternative investments and equity valuation...

Pegasus2008

Thanks for the input.

It appears I should have time to do this if many of you are doing it while working full time and finishing your MBA. Being married with no kids and a flexible job in financial planning leaves me with time (mostly on the weekends) to study. It's a matter of giving up a lot of this upcoming football season, cycling, and playing golf on the weekends.

I can imagine it's mentally tough, having gone through 18 weeks at 17 hours a week studying for the CFP exam I'm aware of the study demands and I figure it will be as draining, probably more so, but it seems worth it to knock the whole thing out in less time.

kkn006

I signed up for a login to this forum specifically to reply to your question. My answer? No, there is not enough time, especially if you actually wait for the results from L1 first. You basically have 3 months to get through 6 months worth of studying, and one month to review/take practice exams, etc. Can it be done? Looks like it, from the comments above. But I did not feel prepared going into the exam after only 4 months of studying.

19831985

BMurtaugh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I signed up for a login to this forum specifically
> to reply to your question. My answer? No, there is
> not enough time, especially if you actually wait
> for the results from L1 first. You basically have
> 3 months to get through 6 months worth of
> studying, and one month to review/take practice
> exams, etc. Can it be done? Looks like it, from
> the comments above. But I did not feel prepared
> going into the exam after only 4 months of
> studying.

I did the "Short Turnaround" too and passed L2, I would highly advise against it, the process sucked. Like the above poster I started to study for L2 prior to my L1 results. I feel for me if I had not done than I would have never passed.

I think to do 2 exams in 6 months while giving yourself a chance to pass the most important thing to do is look yourself in the mirror and do a real self assessment to figure out how much time you need to pass the exam. Notice most of the people that did it state they have MBA's in Finance etc.

Some people can pass in 175 hours some like me take 500. What you don't want to do is be the guy that studied about 180 hours and band 10 failed because they did <50 % on Ethics. The price of the few extra hours is 1 year + all the extra hours to pass the second time plus the $$ that the CFA hits you for.

It does save time but it sucks while you do it.