My experience/suggestions for those going for 2012 Level III those, white, experience

koba

Everyone studies differently so I hope whatever I wrote below can help someone or at least make you a bit less nervous for 2012.

Took level I & II back in 2002/2003 and passed on first try. almost exclusively on Schweser materials.
Took level III in 2010 and failed, band 10. mainly schweser also. Tried again and passed with what I thought was decent margin of safety. see below for details. no class room or videos or boot camps...just books and practices. only did few practice exams, no mocks.

For level I&II as well as my 2010 level III, I started in late February and early march; for my 2nd go around on Level III, I started in Mid/late January. comaring to 2010, AM got a bit easier and pm got a bit tougher. I finished AM with 10min left, almost non-stop; finished PM with probalby 45 minutes. Write your essay answers as simple as possible, sometimes probalby few words would be sufficient.

1. If you are band 10, the retabulation is almost 99.99% not going to change the results.
2. I didn't spend lots of time on practice exams or mocks under timed condition; I only spend enough time to do them so I calibrated myself to the speed that's required to finish the exam.
3. On my second go around for level III, I read CFAI's book on some of the concepts I thought are not clearly expressed in Schweser but I don't think that helped. But I did most CFAI's exercies/example.
4. Practice basic concepts/problems over and over... my thinking is: exam like this is really test of board body of knowledge so dont' scare yourself to death about cash/carry or reverse cash carry.... if you can nail the basice stuff, you are pretty much there and then spend your left over time on the more exotic stuff.

Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70%
1 Portfolio Management - Individual 15 - - *
2 Portfolio Management - Individual 23 - * -
3 Portfolio Management - Institutional 26 - * -
4 Economics 23 - * -
5 Portfolio Management - Asset Allocation 20 * - -
6 Fixed Income Investments 19 - - *
7 Equity Investments 22 - * -
8 Portfolio Management - Risk Management 16 - - *
9 Portfolio Management – Performance Eval. 16 - * -

Item Set Q# Topic Max Pts <=50% 51%-70% >70%
- Alternative Investments 18 - * -
- Economics 18 * - -
- Equity Investments 18 * - -
- Ethical & Professional Standards 36 - - *
- Fixed Income Investments 36 - - *
- Portfolio Management - Execution 18 * - -
- Portfolio Management - Individual 18 - - *
- Portfolio Management - Risk Management 18 - - *

lunarfollies

Judge Smails Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are one of the very few who did well on the
> first morning section. I'm curious what you
> attribute this to. I found the question to be
> extremely ambiguous

Did you pass this year?

I also scored very well on the morning section. I found the 2011 exam morning wasn't ambigious at all. the IPS stuff wasn't too bad either.

I actually found the PM much more tricky and lots of traps. the AM section is good because they don't trap you with answers.

smuggycfa

Judege Smails,

Everyone's test taking/prep technics are different; For example, I didn't touch Ethics and GIPS till one week prior to the exam. I sort of took it easy the last week prior...worked out and everything. Watched TV the night before with couple of beers. In terms of my AM results are better...I really don't know. What I did was to rerun all the previous years AM session the week prior and specifically worked on calibrating my answers and ways of thinking to what I thought CFAI would be looking for; I have had trouble judge a IPS client with ability to take risks and spent lots of time on that topic..etc. I now remember there were some questions are indeed very vague but the only thing you can do during the exam is to do your best and move on and not let that question rock your boat...

yospaghetti

Used CFAI texts whenever needed but made sure to cover everything in Schweser first. Reviewing Schweser notes & Secret Sauce helped me keep overall currirulum fresh in mind while CFAI texts provided some details as needed.

CFAI EOC and examples were huge help in Level 2 & 3. I never used QBank for Level 2 or 3.

CFAI mock and old exams for Level 3 essay plus schweser practice exams were very helpful.

thommo77

I did level I an II by studying only Schweser, and passed all at first attempt. However to me, Schweser alone for level III is not enough. This is the third time that I took level III, used the CFAI books and EOC + Schweser (exam book 1 only). It was a bit overkill, but I passed by a pretty good margin.

Zesty

CFAI EOC and examples... redo them as many as you can ... memorize them if you could. I can't remember anything from qbank (wasted 2 weeks) that actually helped in the actual exam. The examples on FI section I read the day before the exam totally came up in AM. Thought I was lucky.