Congratulations to those who passed level 3!
To all those who passed level 3 of the CFA® exam, congratulations! I am very happy for you!
But please spare a thought for me, because I was not so lucky!
It would be great if some of you successful guys could give me some ideas about the kind of lifestyles you led up until the successful day. I believe I have a reasonable brain but my may have a problem in studying efficiently or organizing myself. Particularly:
1) How were you able to combine a busy working day and long hours with exam preparation?
- Did you for example get up very very early to put in 2-3 hours study each morning? Or study late at night?
- How did you family feel about you using so much free time for the exam?
2) How did you prepare for the essay questions? I seem to have found difficulty finding enough such questions to practice in the first place - is this just my impression? What sources did you use?
- How did you generally prepare for tackling this style of question?
Well, take care everyone, and happy champagne drinking! I think it will be just Cola Cola for me this year!
I studied twice as much as recommended. I would get up between 3:30 and 4:00am to get in a few hours before work. Sometimes, I would study a bit during lunch at work but I never felt totally comfortable doing that. Towards the end, I would study at night as well. And of course I studied on weekends. Make sure you read the text books and/or notes more than once. Don't waste your time doing the same questions over and over again.
HI Series7examtutor - thanks for writing.
So...how much did you actually sleep?
If you were constantly getting limited sleep, did that not affect your work performance?
There are people in history like Napoleon who were fine with 3-4 hours, but I personally need 6 to function.
I wonder if there is something I can do about it...
I passed Level 3 first time this year.
To answer your questions:
1) I work in Research and left at 6pm most days to cram in studying and my boss was fairly happy about me doing that as exam passes are looked upon favourably by the Partners of our firm.
My family thought I was crazy. Most of my friends thought I was insane. I went out socially like three times between February and the exam date. I occasionally went out for lunches with friends to catch up but just got my head down. I had to miss half my lacrosse season due to classes clashing with big matches which was a killer for my waist line. I did not commit to silly hours as learning for me post 10pm is not productive and wipes out freshness for the next day.
I took structured CFA classes (from 7City) every Saturday for 10 weeks straight in a city three hours away by train so I had the train journey down, the structured class then the train journey back of enforced study. I then consolidated the Saturday class on the Sunday.
7City lets you access their web portal on an iPad and I also got the CFA books on there so I carried my text books everywhere I went so any downtime I could read some chapters.
2) With regards to your essay related question, the course tutors really helped by every Saturday doing past exam questions and questions they had made up for the class. We also did mid course tests marked by ex CFA examiners critiquing our answers and form.
Two weeks before the exam, I also did a 2 day intensive revisions course where for 9 hours a day solid you literally do essay questions and go through how to answer it with a tutor.
On top of that, I just used the EoC questions, past papers and the question bank provided by 7City. I guess the key thing was no Schweser books as you really have to know the stuff and CFA books are the curriculum for a reason.
In general, the courses available (7City, Kaplan, BPP) make a massive difference to my understanding having done levels 1 and 2 without it and then had them for level 3.
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