My L3 Experience him, job, experience, patience, anything

TheMBAGlover

Overcoming, my inertia and writing my L3 experience for anyone who has patience to read through

Study span: From 15-Dec-2010 with 2 weeks break in early Feb

Distractions: Changed to quite a demanding job (in terms of boss and time) in December increasing my workday to approx. 11 hours every day, and baby born just before Level-2 in April-2010. Baby was a distraction cause I wanted to spend time with him more than anything else.

Material: Schweser books, schweser question bank, secret sauce and CFAI EoC questions in revision. From doing EoC questions, I can say that coverage of schweser in terms of content is fine. There was only one chapter in FI (contained structured products) that were not covered in Schweser. However, it was quite cryptic that it had/has very little chance to come or at least not in a big way.

Problems faced with material: The questions in schweser are not representative of actual exam question, sadly even the CFAI EoC questions are way way off from real exam (if you their answers it looks like you have to write 10 pages of text for everything). Schweser, L3 videos were a waste of time and I barely used it (unlike L2, where frequent viewing helped me remember the concept)

Study routine: On weeknights I sat on average for 2-hours and weekends average 4 hours till April. And increased quite a bit in May hitting 10 hours daily for last 2 weeks. However, I am talking only of my sitting time, initially effective hours were closer to 50-60% due to concentration. Effectiveness increased to closer to 100% only in the last 2-3 weeks when I was studying in a library.

The way I proceeded
1. Read the Schweser books till mid April
2. Revised by going through question bank first LOS by LOS and then randomly selecting 30-50 questions for test (they were quite simple ones but helped me remember the concept), secret sauce from 20-April to 10-May (approx.). These two steps I did for both L1 & L2 and it worked great for me
3. Started going through AM papers from 2010 to 2003 (with 2010 first and going back). This is what really really helped me in this level, cause I was earlier thinking I have to rote-learn every definitions and they will ask me definitions e.g. define this behavioral trait, however, questions were application based e.g. what behavior the person in vignette is showing and what is his likely action due to his bias. Really made my answers small (though I did not get good numbers in AM section so there must be a gap somewhere in my learning) and removed my fear of exam quite a bit
4. From full schweser tests, I mainly did PM tests and (did 1-2 AM test also but they were nothing like what was in actual previous years AM tests)

To summarize I did 8 AM tests from previous years, 2 AM test from Schweser (but they were nothing like what was in previous years AM tests, so I wouldn't recommend), 5 PM tests from schweser, 3-4 PM like sample test from CFAI of previous years and current year. The tests are what helped in all 3 levels (I could have read text 5 times and failed, but answering questions developed intuition for answers)

Pen/Pencil: I wrote AM entirely in pencil (trust me there will be lots of thread/chat about all of it)

Overcoming Fear: I feared how will I rote-learn so much. How it overcame was the practice of AM questions. I realized it is easier than it looks. For example you have to know advantages/disadvantages, however, if book lists 5 you have to know only 2 or 3. If books lists 2 then you have to list 1. Similarly, the questions from private investor has a fixed answer template for return objective, willingness/ability to take fear. However, I did become a bit too relaxed while writing the exam and missed 1-2 part of last 3 questions (so keep some fear )

Note about Analyst forum: Avoid getting addicted to this forum (luckily I came to know about it only after L2). Reason being lots and lots of people asked questions like what are you doing, how are you studying now, how much course have you covered, are you preparing like this or that i.e. lot of questions were what others are doing instead of focusing on their own studies. From mid may onwards people started asking more and more relevant study related questions to clear their doubt and some people were really good at explaining them (thanks to them). Also I was behind the curve most of the time so before May if people asked about some question it was quite irrelevant from where I had reached in my studies (never spent more than a few minutes here and avoided opening any link which was not related to clarifying some study material doubt).

Success Attribution: Understanding wife (who called herself CFA widow), some luck (my marksheet looks so bad this time compared to L1, L2 that I think I barely managed it), consistenly sitting on almost everday of the week however ineffective my hours were ( for me idea was not to lose touch any how)

End Note: I apologize if I appear arrogant somewhere but take what you find useful and ignore other parts as rubbish

Hope it helps! All the best

stockjaguar

Nice writeup and congrats on passing.

So, the Schweser Practice Exams, especially the AMs, are not worth it? I am thinking about buying them as a supplement to the CFAI practice exams. Just want to see if they are worth it. Thanks

mdfb79

Thank you ! Appreciate it and congrats to your pass and reinstating your wife's status

SFoyil

I personally thought schweser exams were a huge help. More practice exams=>more repitition. The beauty of practice exams is that they get you to think about the concepts while you aren't focused on doing that particular reading (i.e. it's always easy to do EOCs on derivatives after you've just read the section on derivatives).

I was lucky enough to pass straight through these exams and found that doing as many practice exams as possible was the key. You can do the EOCs as many times as you want, but until you put your knowledge to the exams you can't really prove that you truly understand the concept.

My advice is to do as many practice exams as possible (schweser, stalla, cfa mock/AMs, etc), but understandably everyone learns differently..

BelalM

My L3 experience:

Started Nov 2010, studied my ass off till June. Schweser & CFAI. 8 practice exams. Fail band 10. Starting in October this year. Confidence is shattered.

Chartered Failure Analyst. -- I fail then analyze it online with other people who fail



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:22PM by montanidate.