CFA® L1 this Saturday... I've taken the LSAT before, but building confidence for this beast is pretty damn hard even if you've majored in finance, accounting, or econ and put in 300 hours already. So, to help break up some study time, are there any great success/dumb luck stories from past candidates?
Trending Content - Asset Management Forum
Career Resources
Level 1 is basically the background check.
My roommate got his CFA 2 paid for by his bank and he already has a pretty solid banking gig so he didnt really care about passing. He started studying 1month in advance and studied for only 4 weekends. He failed every single practice exams with about 40-50%.
Yet, somehow he passed the CFA 2... no idea how this happened.
The fucking email was in my junk folder - I had created a "junk" folder in my inbox on top of the default junk folder. Took me more than 12 hours post results announcement to figure it out. The CFA doesn't make you any brighter as attested by my personal example
I know a guy who studied for a week for level 1 and passed. Then studied for a week for level 2 and passed.
Then he failed level 3 three times.
I know another guy who literally put in 1000 hours for level 2 and failed (he passed the next year). If you're wondering how he studied for 1000 hours - he had a gov't job - would study at his desk all day lol.
I passed all three on my first attempt without sleeping the night before.
No matter what I did, I could never fall asleep due to the anticipation.
Uh... L1 is basically a review of what you studied in your freshman and sophomore year. You shouldn’t need to study for hundreds of hours. If you study L1 for 300 hrs and fail, I’d say just give up CFA.
This post is honestly garbage. I studied for 120 hours and passed Level 1 by a wide margin. Being a Finance major I hadn't covered anything in Ethics or Alternative Investments as well as many parts within FR&A, Derivatives and Economics. The only reason I had everything covered in fixed income is because I took two fixed income electives one of which was Master's level. The content isn't what's studied freshman/sophomore year and is very detailed. Even if you had taken all the material in school it would take quite a while to relearn/commit to memory all that info.
It's perhaps the most comprehensive and rigorous course on finance studies out there, and a very well respected and reputable name, particularly in the fields of fixed income and asset/portfolio management. Many do tend to underestimate the rigour and sometimes go in gung ho, but it is certainly no joke :)
I will be sitting for LIII this summer, but opted to go for the once a year path rather than the back to back that allows you to jump one year in advance. I can say that Level 1 is one where you can comfortably pass if you have an accounting/finance background at the undergraduate level (going through the accounting EOC questions and really memorizing the ethics principles should get you largely home). I think I studied 150 hours over the course of the latter 3-4 months in advance of the exam. I felt good about passing when hitting supra 70% on all sections of the mock exams. In terms of funny stories, a friend of mine passed by cramming 150 hours in 4 weeks and miraculously passing :P. When I sat for the exam, someone was throwing a tirade because their cell phone went off (you have to hand it in or risk getting caught), and wouldn't leave the premises. Interesting stuff.
Level II was entirely different beast altogether, and was significantly more challenging. I found that the vignette structure of the questions made it difficult at first blush because you really had to parse out the relevant details from the readings and integrate multiple concepts to form the response. I spent a cumulative 300 hours in total I believe, though I think I stopped counting towards the end. I passed comfortably on my mock exams (I took 6 in total) and passed the exam, but it required doing multiple iterations rehashing the concepts and completing each end of chapter question.
It's not necessarily rocket science, nor is it impossible, but it definitely requires discipline and keeping up with the materials. It's quite easy to shirk off a weekend of 3-4 hours study each day to hang out with your friends, sleep in, or otherwise. It's further exacerbated when you work longer than normal hours. I do think that it's opened doors for me with respect to getting interviews I might not otherwise have, and it lends credibility and credence to your CV in that you are someone who is willing to put a significant amount of time independently to learn a comprehensive finance curriculum. As part of a consortium of tools, it helps you be a well rounded finance professional