Hello fellow CFA® candidate monkeys,
What a great way to start the week, right? Our admission tickets to the exam are now available! We now officially have the pleasure of spending a perfectly fine Saturday in a large room full of people who, moments previously, were frantically scanning Schweser's quicksheet in a last ditch effort to prepare. In all honesty, I'm less than enthusiastic about it. Like many of you, I'll be sitting for level 2 a mere 24 days from now, and like many more of you, I'm starting to panic. Granted, this isn't unusual or unique, but I've found that whenever I bring this up with other CFA® candidates, I hear, without fail, this immeasurably stupid bit of advice:
Just study FRA and Equity and you'll be fine.
I don't know who started this absurd notion that you can study two sections and pass level 2, but it's incredibly misguided. This year, FRA will occupy between 15%-25% of the exam, and Equity will occupy between 20%-30%. Assuming you get 100% on both FRA and Equity, and 33% of the remaining questions (read: guess), you'll pass the exam a mere 11% of the time. Those are very bad odds and this is not a very good strategy.
Now, just because the "only study FRA & Equity" strategy is a stupid one (emphasis on "only" - you should definitely spend a lot of time on both), that doesn't mean that it cannot be vastly improved with some slight tweaks. What I'm proposing is that along with studying FRA and Equity, you should also be identifying and mastering "highly testable material". What makes material "highly testable" you might be wondering, well, obviously it's subjective but from where I'm sitting, the following seems likely to show up:
- Binomial Trees: These seem to be used in several instances, namely in fixed income and derivatives. In fixed income, this is a major tool to value option-free bonds as well as puttable and callable bonds. For derivatives, you'll see binomial trees while valuing call/put options and caps/floors. While the exact mechanics of the two will differ, the approach is similar.
- Regression Outputs: Quantitative methods isn't worth very much on the exam, only 5%-10%, but a regression's output can be applied everywhere, including the heavily weighted equity section. While it may not be worth a ton of your time to study the hell out of quantitative methods, mastering what a regression's output tells you seems worth your time.
- Corporate Finance & Equity Overlaps (Really, All Overlaps): I've noticed that there's some spillover of concepts from equity into corporate finance, some with a small twist. For example, market value added (MVA) is a concept that's touched upon in equity, but is looked at in further depth in corporate finance. It seems likely, to me at least, that a concept that shows up in two topics will be tested at least once during test time.
Since I've never taken level 2 before, I really have no idea on what exactly will be on the exam, but to me, these seem like good guesses. What do you other level 2 candidates think? See anything worth adding? How about for the other levels, see anything that you'd consider to be "high testable material"?
tl;dr - Couldn't master everything in the level 2 curriculum, so it's time to start figuring out the best things to master in the time remaining. This crap is hard.
Email definitely ruined my week!
First time Level 1 candidate here. Have 1 mock exam under my belt so far but planning on doing my second one this weekend. other than that I've been going through Elan's 11th hour guide focusing on Equity, Fixed Income, Econ, and FRA while consistently doing come Ethics on the side. Hoping to get 4 more mocks in before exam day.
Good post. Sitting Level 1 for the first time in June!
I feel the same way about Level 2. It's difficult. Starting to work through a booklet with practice problems that are structured in the format of questions on the test and it has NOT been going well. Gotta rachet up the intensity for these next 4 weeks! I plan on doing 7 practice exams...
Great post, sitting for level two in June myself. I'm trying to review all areas and focus on the ones I'm having the most trouble. Pretty much blacked out every weekend in May, good luck to everyone doing the same.
OP, I'm in the same boat with respect to L2. I think you can toss econ and hit ethics hard the day, or 2 days, before. Sadly everything else we need to know - from what i make of it you took L1 in Dec so on the bright side we will have a summer w/o cfa in our minds.
Actually I took it last June and obsessed about my score constantly. But this summer, I have a new and better plan: every time I start obsessing about my score, I'll drink some whisky. It's a bulletproof plan.
Don't panic and get enough rest before the exam. Shit even if you are sleepless before the exam you may still pass it, like my case...
Couldnt even get a wink of sleep the night before.
L1 is way easier than everyone anticipates.
Always good to hear, even if its a lie, so was the cake and we all worked hard towards it.
Would the same be said by the ~65% of ppl who failed in Dec, lol.
Level 1, first time in June. I think I've taken four tests and averaging one more a week - Using Kaplan Q Bank and most recently got >80 but I hear that those tests are easier than the actual exam. Anyone know whether this is the case?
AUGH I HOPE NOT.
Same... I haven't taken the CFA provided one yet, figure that will be the real test. Plan to Saturday
I did 2000+ problems in Qbank for Level 1. I would say if you only use the medium and hard questions as a part of your generated test, it is a better approximation of the test questions. Some of the easy questions on Qbank were way too easy and if you've done enough mock exams, you can clearly tell that this is the case. Some people are even more conservative and say only hard questions, but I wouldn't go that far personally.
I took 120 questions on Intermediate / Hard dificulty and got a 72, 81 with easy questions. Based off that I am really hoping the test is not just made up of the 'hard' ones.
Agreed though, I got some of the easiest questions wrong simply because I figured 'no way they could really be asking this', overthinking, and putting in the wrong answer
What is the pass mark?
Actual pass mark is a big giant secret, but CFAI says that if you hit 70% you're golden.
So I guess the pass mark is around 40%- 50%?
I found Schweser representative. You guys are in for a shock come level 2 though!
No kidding, I thought I was such a badass when I crushed level 1. As it turns out, yeah, not so much.
I'm finding 3 worse. It's dull as hell.... Essays are gonna separate the men from the boys!
I thought I read a long time ago that pass was 70% of the highest score in that region (e.g., NorthAm), so theoretically it could be 70% assuming someone got a perfect score.
I've passed all 3 levels. Here's my general advice: 1) Schweser was golden - the way they distill, explain & the question banks...I don't think I'd be able to pass the tests using just the textbooks; 2) do lots of practice problems, but don't just do it to know your score; some of my best learning was by following along & understanding the explanations of all the ones I got wrong; 3) I wouldn't recommend skipping any sections or giving any sections short thrift - you need all the points you can get; 4) pacing: ideally you'll have been consistently studied the same amount every week for 6 months and have had enough time to go through the whole curriculum and do at least 2-3 practice exams. If you do that you'll really learn it, retain it and be confident going into the tests... but, if you're like most people (including me), with a few weeks to go you still have 20-40% of your studying to go and you start saying "oh shit..." That's when you start cramming. In the case of level 2, I had very little confidence with one week to go, took that whole week off of work, studied every waking moment, pulled multiple all-nighters (100+ hours total studying that week) and ended up passing... trust me, you don't want to subject yourself to that (I feel kinda lucky that it worked) 5) don't take things for granted - after passing levels 1 & 2 on the first tries and everyone telling me that level 3 was the easiest of the 3, I got overconfident & slacked off my studying. It ended up taking me 3 tries to pass level 3.
Man I have no idea how you could face re-sitting level 3....
Anyone have any experience with Elan? They're relatively new but I heard comparable to Schweser.
http://www.leveragedsellout.com/2008/07/chartered-financial-banalyst/
Awesome.
my goal is to consistently be 80%+ on FRA and equity, and 60%+ on everything else. I don't feel like running the math (if even possible given the uncertain weights) but I'd say that's a pass at a 95% confidence interval. l2 btw
Closer to 64%, somewhere between 64-68%.
http://www.analystforum.com/article/cfa/5-things-learnt-from-cfa-june-l…
^^ Data from June 2012 test
Kind of off topic but is each level of the CFA cumulative or is it different content on each one?
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