dece2011

My study plan at level one was very similar to yours. I was very slow and thorough going through the material (no finance background) and I took notes of the schweser material and did all of the end of chapter problems. Although note taking takes forever it served 2 great purposes: helped tremendously in retention and prevented me from falling asleep Putting it down on paper in your own words reinforces the concepts in my head other techniques (ie highlighting text) does not work as well for me. I also would print practice chapter exams from the QBank upon completion of a chapter and another after a SS. Obviously, by the end I would not do all of this but since it was closer to test date it was not as crucial since I had less time to forget the material I was going over. I only had a week to review, but it was amazing how just skimming the material I’d covered 2 months prior made it “all come back to me”.
I think study habits are personal and you have to find what will work best for you. The confidence you have on test day knowing that you put in the time and effort are priceless.
–edit: also, I think this method really paid off for level 2 bc I *understood* the concepts that are the building blocks that level 2 builds on. Level 1 is more “gameable” where you might get away w/ memorizing a lot of concepts and doing tons of practice problems and get away with it. This will backfire at level 2 though.