How to study for Level 1? like, Investment, background, products

sweetgirl

Hi Gents,

This is first time I am enrolling CFA lvl 1 program. When it comes to my background, I have bachelor in business administration (international economy as major) and Master in Business administration (finance as major). I graduated for 3 years ago and working as a sales manager at a Bank with focus selling products to Hedge funds, Mutual Funds, Investment Banks and Broker dealers.

I would like to have some advice from you all. When you start to study, how do you study/what is your study technique?

I do not know but I have just started by reading assignments 1, 2, 3 etc, take a look at LOS before starting. When study session is done, I go trough the Practice problems and if the score is low better up my weaknesses and so on.

What du you think about that. The only problem is that I have Schweser Study notes too and I am just confused which one to use. The Curriculum books are just too much compared with study notes which I hope covers everything.

Please advice; I need your competence on this one.

Thank you.

BR,

Otabek

JoeyDVivre

Well, I was thinking go through the Ethics first, then Quant and FRA or Economics. Those are my weaknesses.

What do you think about that?

And Should I just focus on curriculum readings and drop the Schweser notes. Because it is tough go through both.

agulani

While each candidate has their own ideal method for studying, a common technique I have adopted is as follows.

First, set out a game plan of which topics you will be covering and when. I'd advise you to focus on your stronger sections first to "get them out of the way," (each section still requires some attention) and keep Ethics for last. Make sure you give yourself about 2 weeks-1 month to focus on your weak topics, work through the Q-Bank, and take a ton of practice/mock exams before the exam date.

Once you've laid your schedule out, I'd then recommend read the chapter (in the Schweser books), do the EOC questions (Schweser & CFAI books), and watch the class/video, etc. As someone said in a previous post, "this really drives home the concepts," (sorry I can't give you your due recognition).

For example, I worked through FSA first because I recently graduated with a BS in Finance and feel fairly comfortable with the material. I was tempted to then move onto CF, PM, EI, and FI, but figured I'd be better off reviewing the Quant material before venturing onwards.

Good luck with the studying - persistence is key.