Preparing for Level III while working?

Kingpin804

Just found out that I passed Level II today….it was a miserable half year of preparation - putting work, family and personal life on hold. This time, for Level III, I want to make my life less miserable by balancing my different roles in life.
The issue is, I am currently looking for a new job and most likely will be starting on some new position as I start reading for Level III. Bottom line is, I don’t want to pass Level III at the cost of losing my job. However, I expect myself to spend tons of time studying (as not being a genius…), which is going to take away my focus at work. What can I do to study well and work well? Has anyone had the same kind of experience and problems?
I also have no options to stop working as husband is pursuing his PhD and I have a mortgage to pay.
Thank you for your advice in advance. And best of luck for the Level III result!!

ayaz_mahmud369

Thanks for the advice monger187 and Veda. Lol for SuperiorReturn’s comments.
Good luck for the Lvl3 result!

NakedPuts00

Here was my strategy: Give up my lunch break every day entirely, and instead hide somewhere (NOT at my desk) to just read and study. I understand that not everyone can take an hour lunch, but I can, so there. Then every evening I spent one hour studying, usually between 7:00-8:00 or so. I made sure my wife was COMPLETELY on board with this before even considering signing up - this was a team process, and I could not have done it without her support. In the last month or so I bumped up the total time per day to 3 hours, so I fit in an extra hour somewhere, either at work or at home in the evening. The last week was sheer hell - I was up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning every night. As far as readings, I went through one CFAI reading at a time, going first through the Schweser book, slowly, and taking full notes, then reading - more causually - the CFA text to help the material sink in and cover any details I may have missed with Schweser. I got an early start (first readings in November or so, but got serious around January 1) and finished this about 6 weeks before exam time, and spent the last 6 weeks reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading my notes, going back through sections I didn’t understand well, doing end of chapter questions, and starting some practice tests. The last week was for memorization of a few formulas/lists, and more practice tests. Emphasize AM section, as this is completely different from what we got used to with levels 1 and 2. Going from single question to vignette is a small step, going from vignette to structured response is a HUGE leap. Get ready for it. I hope this helps. Check back here on 8/16 or so to find out whether or not you should completely disregard all of it.

giorgio10

Once again like others I am not sure if this strategy works or not. I used the CFAI books totally. Started in September and read thirty pages each day (do it with a highlighter!) . There were totally 2500 pages and I was able to finish my first read by December. This leaves you a lot of time to go at it the second time and do practice tests.
On exam day the material is too vast to rember and despite doing all the practice test the actual exam was not easy bfor me ut I know if I do not pass It will be easy the next time around. If you take a disciplined approach at least you are confident that you have covered the material. If you take a chance and ignore some material then you are taking a chance and going in knowing that you left out some portion of the material.

brainsX

worry about getting a job first.
and when you have a job worry more about the job than CFA
the CFA is stupid and gay anyways

KungFuPanda

thank you monger187. what time during a day did you use for studying? i can imagine the difficulties of juggling family, work and study at the same time…..especially you had kids!

transferpricing

Well, I could tell you what I did, but just like everyone else on here, I really have no idea whether it worked or not. My experience with level 3 is that you can’t half-a$$ it - you have to spend a ton of time on the readings, and you have to really, fully understand things on a pretty deep level in order to work through the questions they throw at you. Very few questions where you read it and say: “Hey I remember a question just like this on Practice Test X, all I have to do is redo that problem with the new numbers.” I guess what I’m saying is that if you think you’ll be getting your life back this year, think again. That said, this past year my wife and I had a new baby (2 weeks before the test), sold and bought a house, and I took on greater responsibilities at work, and I still made it through with at least a fighting chance with (some of) my sanity still intact.

CPATrader

Why don’t you wait until you actually have a new job or until about 6 months before the exam before starting to worry about this?