Fastest way to Cover all CFA Level 1 books?

Kevin-Gnappor:

LSOMonkey:

I know you don't want to hear this, but buy the Schweser guides. I mean, it sounds like you are hoping to study efficiently and are worried that you are a slow reader. Schweser will help you with the former and help compensate for the latter. I know they are expensive and all, but the real question is how valuable is your time? Reading through ~2x the material is a brutal exchange to make for a few hundred bucks (that's what they cost when I took it, could be higher by now).
Just my two cents.

I hate to reverberate, but this is definitely the trade off you take here. as you said, if it takes you 3-4 minutes a page, that's 15-20 an hour, or 75-100 per 5 hours. at that rate, you could figure an optimistic completion at approximately 150 hours. Is this plausible? absolutely. However, you'd have to start right now, and keep the grind till exam time. (take this from someone who waited until november to begin, and then lived as a recluse for 4 weeks to get the pass.) If you are willing to shell out 800-1000 ish, and have the assets to do so, its a good condensed version to help you get through L1. It will be tougher to get by L2 without the in depth understanding of the texts, however.

If you begin now, at a pace of 15 hours (couple hours a day) for 2 1/2 months, you will have the material locked down by November, when you can tackle a few mocks (i recommend 4-6 minimum. this is the bedrock that will allow you to evaluate how you stack up for the actual exam.)

Note that this test is tough. very tough. However, the end result is definitely worth it in my view.

I will start with repeating what you don't want to hear. Buy the Schweser books! Not only due to the compacted reading material, but also due to the extra questions / study material they provide.

I wouldn't say that CFA Level 1 is more in-depth than University courses, the main struggle with Level 1 is the vast amount of material, which is harder to learn due to not getting the deep understanding needed for all of it and as such you need to memorize more. This would obviously differ from person to person but the topics that I scored lowest on were Accounting (even though I have a Bs in Accounting/Business) and Fixed Income (once again, even though this is an area I find very interesting). I believe I scored lower in these areas as I was lacking the in-depth understanding that leads to not needing to memorize but rather reasoning your way to the answers. As I've a Masters in Economics & Finance I have spent a lot of time in all of the other areas and have a very deep understanding of them.

Another advice I would give you is to buy the calculator you will be using (I used TI BAII Plus Pro, but it's a matter of taste) and start using it immediately and spend some extra time on learning all the functions that can help you during the exam (Youtube is the place to go for this). The calculators are very powerful and means you don't have to memorize as many formulas for the exam.

Other than that the only way to proceed is like for all exams, open the first book, page 1, start reading and use what ever method you find works for you to learn and understand the material in the book. Once again, for me it's reading everything once and between each topic/chapter I do some questions/challenges to ensure I've understood it. After I've finished all the books I only do questions/mock exams for 1-2 months and when I answer wrongly I'll go back and see why, redo that question and carry on. For Level 1 I did some 20-30 mock exams + other questions if I remember correctly, takes some time but well worth it as it takes more time to wait another 6 mths for a second shot.