I just spent my senior year of college studying for level one of the CFA, which I passed in May (whoop whoop). I interned at a BB in private banking during my junior year, took the FTO at the end of the summer, and believed I had time on my hands senior year, so I thought why not? And boy did it take all of my time... bye bye senior year.
The opportunity cost of the time and money could not be understated. 450+ hours of studying, 5,500+ practice questions, and seven mock exams. I sacrificed nearly every weekend to study and felt pressure to be studying when I chose to have fun with my friends, family, and frat. Also, it tremendously reduced my availability to expand my network, develop new technical skills, exercise, and enjoy hobbies. It fucking sucked almost all the time, but I believed it would be worth the payoff.
Now that I have passed, I can have more of an honest look at it, to which I think that passing L1 is wildly undervalued. My firm has not committed to paying me an additional bonus, nor does it offer a salary increase for coming in with L1... or even reimburse me for the registration fee for L2. Charter holders respect the hustle and work ethic it demands because they experienced it themselves, but the Street generally doesn't seem to value it nearly to the degree that acquiring the CFA demands.
Does any CFA, or candidate have some insight, advice, or experience to share on how to leverage or monetize this achievement?
Yeah I know, passing L1 is far from the full-fledged Charter, but fuck me if it wasn't a challenge.
CFA is valuable in AM / ER / upstream allocation / IR. Outside of those core things, your time is better spent elsewhere
I cannot believe you spent your sr. year studying for the CFA. You never get your college years back, much less your senior year. Kids these days (as someone who's under 30) sacrifice way too much while in school for real world crap...sad to see. Thought it was bad when I was in school but seems it's way worse now
Del
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