Updated SIE/79/63 Advice - 2023
Completed FINRA licensing earlier this month and wanted to highlight best practices and consolidate info for all incoming 1st years. I took the exams in this order: SIE/63/79.
SIE
11 days studying. Maybe the trickiest or as tricky as the 79. You should be scoring 80s on tests and benchmark before teeing this one off. The content is so wide that sometimes it feels like a lot. This was also my first one, so I wasn't sure how to feel.
79
20 days. You really only need 15. You should be scoring 80s on tests and benchmark. Felt that this might be the hardest just because there's so much.
63
6 days. The easiest actual exam but not necessarily on paper. I overstudied on these because you probably have so little time. I would lean on the textbook more than the videos. You should be doing 82s on tests/benchmark to feel safe. I hit an 88 on the benchmark, and I knew I was ready.
Morning of routine: get up early and leave 1.45 hours for yourself. First, read through half of the key concepts. Then hit a quick 10 question quiz. Then read through the second half. Just lightly and I mean lightly skim the textbook if of comfort to just re-establish key terms/dates/and definitions if you must. Nothing more than "oh 13g is passive and oh BD for federal register is home office and 1 retail client."
One piece of advice during the test. Since you're basically half memorizing half looking for phrases on a 400 page+ book on a test in ~2 weeks, there will be questions you aren't 100% sure of. This isn't high school math. I'd say 60% of the test is definitive (you know the answer), 20% is 60/40, and the other 20% is 50/50. let me go in on the last 40% I just mentioned. When you have a question that you're 60% sure of and have a leading gut feeling but the 40% sounds ok, go with the 60% and move on. If you track your intuition with the worksheet I explain in the next paragraph, you'll find that like 90%+ of the time this first guess is correct. You should still mark this question for review, but don't flip the answer unless you really learn something new from another question. Then we get to the last 20%. These are the worst. it's 50/50 and you really can't tell. Just go with your gut and remember some of the questions aren't being graded. If you've practiced enough, you should really only have 4-5 of these per exam come you doing all the questions, and statistically you might be right on half of them. If you prepare well enough, these questions you can just mail in because you're way above the threshold.
Everyone says skip the textbook and just do videos. I think that's moronic to be honest. Read the textbook cover to cover (should take you 1.2 days). Take light notes on bolded terms. Then watch videos on 2x. Then do questions religiously. Then go back through the weak parts of textbook. Have the key concepts memorized and do those the morning of. The textbook is your best friend here because all the questions come from the book. As long as you're diligent and see your score moving up, you'll be ok. One thing that I would do differently is (when you take questions) create a template for questions where you're between 2 answers. Mark the one you think is most right, mark you're second choice, mark the one you went with, and the right answer. Knopman tells you not to change your answer and there's a good reason why. Stick with the study plan and you should be fine. I wouldn't dick around on these. If you're the guy/girl that fails it, that's sticking with you because you have to wait to retake it/restudy while everyone else moves on. Just put the time and energy in (9am to like 6 or 7) everyday and you'll be fine. I 100% overstudied but during the exam I also clicked through it and rechecked like 4 questions. Hit submit. Walked out fine.
