Getting through L2 - CFA® Advice

For those of you who passed L1 of the CFA®- congratulations. Now that results have been out for a week, I thought I would share what worked for me in getting through L2. This is not meant to be a humble brag (I got that out of the way in the results forum), but rather just my two cents on getting through the next section of the exam--particularly since I didn't pass it the first time around.

Edit. This shit turned into a novel... that's what I get for procrastinating at work. TL;DR:This was my outline for studying for L2. Essentially use Schweser (but download your videos), skip the online class, start sometime in January or Feb, use QBank after reading the chapters, and do the official tests. The practice questions on the CFA®I Candidate Resource website are also clutch.

My background:
I graduated from a top-tier liberal arts college a few years ago with a business accounting degree. I thought accounting was a practical career choice so I joined a big 4 firm and got my CPA. After being miserable for a few years (stuck in that role for some personal reasons), I transitioned to a small investment management shop where I have been for the past 18 months. We have 250M - 500M AUM and are located in the Southeast / mid-Atlantic.

As for my CFA®: I passed L1 in Dec 2016, failed L2 in June 2016, and just got the good news that I am done with L2. I have used Schweser study materials for both exams, and intend to use them for L3. My company didn't pay for prep, so I tried to save money where I could.

Why I failed:
The obvious answer is lack of preparation. After coming off a successful L1, I was a bit overconfident and didn't put in the time I should have. I started studying around April while I was working 15 hour days. My wife and I were also packing the house to move during the 3 weeks leading up to the exam. I could make 1,000 excuses, but at the end of the day, I just didn't put in the time.

General Advice
I'll dig into all this a bit more, but in general:
1. Don't start Studying too early. It's hard to stay motivated and keep up momentum. You also just forget stuff.
2. Don't waste your money on the live online class. They are redundant.
3. You can skip reading the official materials, but keep them handy for practice problems.
4. Buying flashcards is useless. Don't do that, either.

Specifics
I signed-up for the "early" Schweser live on-line class that started in October. Huge mistake. The class literally used the same examples as the on-demand videos. Definitely not worth it. I also stuck with the class for about 2 weeks before I had other shit going on and no motivation to keep up.

Fast forward to February: I was much more diligent about my studying - but any of the quant I had done before (one of my weaker sections on L1) had been forgotten. I was starting from scratch.

Prep work:
1. Download "Chrome Video speed Controller." This will let you watch the videos at 1.4 or 1.5x, which is crucial to being able to sit through these (if you watch them online).
2. Use an excel calendar to schedule out your weeks. I didn't have a "daily study guide" but a general framework was helpful to stay on track. Mine was as simple as putting "Ch. 8-10" on March 4 to indicate I wanted to be done those chapter by that date. You want to be through the material by mid-end April.
3. Download all your videos and video note PDFs- you can watch the videos on the go, and if you fail, you don't want to pay for the class again. Once they are downloaded, I watched in VLC player (but any player in which you can adjust the play-back speed works).
(To Download: navigate to the page on which Shweser plays a video. hit ctrl+shift+i. Go to the network tab. scroll until you see the biggest file (it will be continually loading as the video buffers). right click the title of that file and open it in a new window. The new window will be all black and just have the video playing in the middle. Copy that URL and paste it into clipconverter.cc. you can now download your vid. There are alternative methods, but this one worked for me.)

Chapter cycles:
I like structure, so each "chapter" on my calendar had multiple steps to be counted as complete.
1. Read the chapter.
2. Watch the related videos (see above) and take notes on the outline Schweser provides.
3. Use Q bank to test concepts. I required that I got an 80 or better on a 20 question quiz (not broken down by LOS) to move on to the next chapter.
5. Go through and write down what you got wrong. I did this in red pen in a notebook.
4. Create flash cards: optional. I found it helpful to hit the key formulas and ideas. buying flashcards is a waste of money, and using someone else's won't help you learn it.
5. Rip out the last few pages-the chapter review, or chapter summary, or whatever Schweser calls it - and hole punch this bad boy. When you do this for all 50-whatever chapters you will essentially be left with the "Secret Sauce" -- no need to buy it.

Once I finished all the chapters for a topic area (i.e. quant) - I'd go back and review the chapter summaries (now all nice and put together) and then answer the official CFA®I questions. I did the one explicitly called-out by Schweser, and maybe a few others in particularly tough areas.

You should aim to be through all of the material by mid-end of April. From here you can do 1-2 practice exams from Schweser per week, and do the official CFA®I exams 3 weeks out, and the other one 1-2 weeks out. I think I did 3 full length Schweser practice exams and then cherry-picked ethics + sections I was weak on from the remaining full length tests. After an exam, I would spend some time going through the question sets on the CFA® website in the test-take resources section in areas where I needed work.

Don't put too much stock in bench-marking your results--focus on getting in reps. I was scoring in the mid 50s to high 60s the week of the exam, and was freaking out, but I passed with no problem.

Take away:
Is the exam worth it? If you are in equity or fixed income management, I think it is. I don't have an MBA and don't intend on getting one, so for me its perfect. As @IlliniProgrammer" will point out, its not as useful for quants. Not my wheelhouse, so I don't know. I will say that it is not a silver bullet to get into AM, though.

Hours? I probably put in right about 300 hours when it was all said an done. My wife was awesome and took care of everything while I was studying (payback for what I did while she took the bar) but that made it much more manageable. I gave up all but a handful of weekends between mid-January and the exam with 8-12 hour study days, and probably 5-10 hours during the work week.

Shameless ad: I have some L2 shit for sale if anyone wants it!