SFoyil

Definitely a pretty apples and oranges comparison. Still would like to hear from people who have done both. I still don’t really get how most PHD programs work. I know guys who finished their PHD in physics by the time they were 23 and I know other, also very smart people, who are 30 and still working on their PHDs in English. It’s not such a clean cut route near as far as I can tell.
I wonder, a lot of you that are calling CFA similar to 2+3 year of undergrad, if you are coming from math, finance and econ backgrounds to begin with. If I studied finance in undergrad then I would probably find the curriculum pretty easy too because because this would mean that I already have four years of studying this stuff, obviously like it because I’ve decided to major in it, and am probably naturally talented at it vs other subjects.
One of my majors was Russian. I figure if you finance majors had to become fluent in Russian suddenly over the course of 3 years while working full-time you would consider it damn difficult and probably impossible.
I went to, from what I am told, an elite liberal arts school (rhymes with Bratwurst) and I did not find it very challenging. If you wanted to work your ass off and learn a lot you could. But if you wanted to coast you could as well. Not the case with the CFA. I worked way harder then I ever worked in undergrad and failed level 3 band 5 last spring.