SpyAli

Don’t pay attention to what other people used.  Focus on getting the material in your head.

CFA4Techie

I spent around 125-150 if I remember correctly. I was still in school at the time so relatively little of the material was brand new. As for how I kept track, I just jotted down the hours I spent every day just as a way to keep me accountable and when I started to see 2-3 days in a row with 0s next to them I needed to get back in gear.
I started to keep track of hours for L2 but it turned into a mess because I studied erratic hours at work, at night, etc. so I stopped trying.
To echo what other people said though, #s spent is not a good thing to benchmark yourself with. People read faster than others, different levels of pre-existing knowledge, etc. I think I was toward the lower end since I do read pretty quickly and had a high level of existing knowledge.

parott

2 months 250 hrs
Read schweser’s book twice
solved schweser mocks

luckygiftvn

Just under 200 hours (somewhere between 190 and 199) for level 1.
I just write down my starting time on a piece of paper and when i stop studying to go pee or do something else I write the stopping time. Main reason to monitor it, as someone else also remarked, to keep myself accountable. Instead of thinking “I did a lot this week” I had the actual numbers and in many cases I always thought i had done more than I actually did.
Study method: read schweser and make notes. Then go to QBank and do problems. Right before the exam I just went over the notes and formulas till i couldnt see them anymore.
Btw, level 2 took me about 240 hours and level 3 about 300 hours (level 3 took so much time because I had the schweser videos which take forever to watch).

bdavi77962

350hrs. Maybe too much. But I wanted to make sure I passed.

IAmNeil

i would be giving cfa l1 in december 2013,as i have cleared 2 levels of frm i would just read through uncomman portions like fra/equity/economics and it should take approx 50 hours ….then i will practice scheweser question bank pro daily giving mock exams……and i think this should be enough!!!!!
how much to study is a very subjective question but some one with no exposure to finance should atleast study for 200 hrs and then practice mock exams/question bank as much as they can……

random_walker47

Overstudy as much as you can.

thommo77

I probably put in 200-250 hours in 8 or so weeks before the exam. I studied way too much and the exam way much easier than I thought it would be. Level II is a different story, and doing them back to back is starting to kill me.

jcole21

Level 1 is a walk in the park.  L2 is different.

bulosehi

I didn’t really track hours studied, I gave myself 8 months as I don’t like to cram, just done as many questions as I could … I recommend overstudying, too expensive and time consuming to fail.
I opted out from doing it back to back as I again want to give myself the 8 months.
Good luck.