Planning the Review

[tuse]

Hi folks,

I should be done with the first pass of the material in a couple more
days, and was just chalking out the review plan. Looking for your
inputs / plans.

Till now, I have gone through the Schweser material & Schweser
Videos.
Now, for the month of April, I plan to revise the LoS from the CFAI
text with the CFAI End of Chapter Questions.

Then in the month of May, I should start attempting the mocks.
Hopefully, I should be able to get 2 weeks off from work in May to
help with the last minute preps.

BTW I tried attempting the CFAI mock test (morning session) just to
check if I was able to retain the stuff I'd studied. Got a score of
35/60 which is below par for the course (got some of them through
guesswork), and now need to revise hard -- just too tough to remember
all the formulae and concepts.

[adam johnson]

Congrats on getting through the material. I am using a similar strategy in terms of watching schweser videos and doing the schweser readings. However, I still have the fixed income, derivatives, and portfolio management to get through. I have been doing all of the CFAI EOC questions as I go...as well as the schweser questions.

Dont worry about your 35/60. You have two more months to prepare.

Once I get through the material, my plan is to take one mock per week and spend the weeks working on my weakest areas with a focus on FRA and Equity. I just want to get as many practice questions in as possible. I want to go back through the CFAI questions as well.

Does anyone know where I can find a really good formula sheet?

Best,

Adam

[martin]

I have devised an initial plan for the review. Thoughts/Feedback
appreciated. I've spent a lot of time reading other people's systems
and tried to incorporate the ideas that I think will work best for
me. I thought I'd share in case others find this helpful, feel free
to tailor to your needs and schedule.

I'm assuming everyone will be finishing the material within the next
week and I will have 6 weeks to review. If you have less time than
this, condense the schedule as necessary.

6 weeks out:

Break the sections down one by one excluding FSA, Equity, and Ethics
for now. There are 7 other sections. According to the institute
these 7 sections will constitute anywhere from 35-55% of the exam.
Not only is that a wide range, but more importantly you don't know how
much each section will comprise of this total so they are all
important to review.

Read each chapter summary from CFAI text thoroughly. Re-familiarize
yourself with all key concepts, formulas, LOS, etc. This should only
take about an hour as most are only a few pages. Next, take the
portion of a mock exam for this section only. If you are scoring 80+
%, move on. If you are scoring sub 70%, go back to the material and
try again. If you are between 70-80% focus on the problems you missed
specifically and then move on.

By my estimation you could do an entire section in one study session
but some will take 2 depending on how much you've retained, the
difficulty level of the chapter, and how many hours you have available
per study session. Aim for this total review to take 2 weeks (avg. 2
days per chapter). You don't need to score 100% on these sections,
but the worst thing you can do is leave easy points on the table
because you completely forgot a key concept and missed an entire item
set. This review ensures that you understand the easy/medium
difficulty level concepts and have at least a cursory understanding of
the difficult ones. If on a particular section you just can't seem to
get it after 2 legit study sessions, flag the chapter and move along.
Everyone will have weak spots and it's not worth getting bogged down
over something that may not even appear on the exam, or that you might
miss anyway because its ridiculously hard or tricky.

4 weeks out:

Equity. Prepare to spend a full week mastering Equity. Your goal for
this section is to make 85-90%+ as it comprises 20-30% of the entire
exam. If you master this section it can make up for a lot of weak
spots elsewhere and if you fail it you have to destroy nearly every
other section to overcome it. Beyond that, the section doesn't have a
lot of grey areas like ethics, minutiae like accounting, or trick
questions. This is a section where if you master the formulas and
concepts you could conceivably score perfect.

Follow the same pattern by reading the chapter summaries and LOS.
Master the formulas and spend a lot of time doing practice questions.
Periodically take mock exams to see which areas you need to review
further. Don't move from this section until you are scoring 80% or
better consistently. If it takes 9 days instead of 7, so be it. You
need these points.

2.5 - 3 weeks out:

Ethics. If you haven't already done so READ THE CFAI TEXT. Don't try
to save yourself 45 minutes by reading Schweser or Elan or analyst
notes here it's not worth the time savings on this chapter. Review
the Code thoroughly. Take a few hundred of practice problems. This
is a guaranteed 10% of the exam. The material itself is easy but the
questions are tricky. Yes, you could probably not review this at all
and still get 50% correct, but with ~8 total hours you can master this
section and save yourself the self-loathing and second guessing on
exam day.

2 weeks out:
(WARNING: Math ahead)

Take a full mock exam with all sections except FSA. This should
compose 75-85% of the material on the actual exam. Let's say as an
example that FSA actually comprises 20% of the exam. This should give
you a great idea of how close you are to passing with two weeks left
to review.

If you answer 80% of the mock exam (excluding FSA) correctly you have
a 64% overall already without even taking the FSA section yet. That
means you would only need to score 30% on the FSA section in order to
reach a 70% overall score. You're looking great and you haven't even
reviewed the 2nd largest section yet.

If you answer 75% of the mock exam (excluding FSA) correctly you have
a 60% overall already without the FSA section. That means you would
only need to score 50% on the FSA section in order to reach a 70%
overall score. That's a nice margin or error built in.

If you answer 70% of the mock exam (excluding FSA) correctly then you
will obviously need to score 70% on the FSA section to reach a 70%
overall. This will require work but is certainly attainable.


Now you may be asking, why is this guy so obsessed with what he scores
excluding the 2nd largest section on the test??!? Well, it's my
belief that FSA is one of the most inefficient chapters in the book to
study. There is tons of minutiae, lots of trick questions, and a
large amount of material. I think you could probably score 50% on the
section without doing much review at all, while with weeks of review
on it specifically you'd still be hard pressed to break 90% on the
section.

Which brings me to my next point.

If you answer 65% of the mock exam (excluding FSA) correctly then you
will need to score 90% on the FSA section to reach 70% overall.
Whoa! I don't want to enter the exam knowing I probably need to get
90% on the FSA section just to hit the minimum overall passing
score.

A lot of people recommend focusing only on Equity/FSA/Ethics because
they comprise the bulk of the exam. That advice has merit as you need
to divert more of your time to those sections. But don't do it at the
expense of the low hanging fruit in the other chapters. Unless you
think you can hit 90% on FSA.


Okay, so you have an idea of where you are at with two weeks to go.
Spend the week reviewing FSA with the goal of hitting 80% consistently
on the section by the end of the week.


1 week remaining:

Do a full mock. On each question mark whether it was a confident
answer, an educated guess, or really a total guess. Score your exam
and do a breakdown on how you scored on each section and a sub-
breakdown of how you scored on confident/educated/total guess.

Review all answers of course but particularly focus on:

1) "confident answers" that you got wrong. A question that you
confidently missed is a great way to identify a critical
misunderstanding of the material, and save yourself costly mistakes on
the exam. Also, a lot of "confident misses" are questions that
contained a trick answer that you completely fell for. Don't just
chalk it up as "oh they got me that time but i know how to do these",
identify the trick they are using so that you are more likely to catch
these on the exam. It's a great feeling when you read a question on
the exam and can immediately spot the tricky statement before you even
begin solving the problem. You know tht the less well prepared exam
takers happily checked the wrong answer and you just gained a point
over half the field.

2) All "educated" guesses. An educated guess means you have a fairly
strong understanding of the material but a quick refresh of the
concept may solidify this as a "confident" answer on the real exam.

Note: When preparing for Level 1 with mock exams I noticed that I was
getting well under 50% of my educated guesses correct. At first I
chalked this up to random fluctuation, but after my sample size grew
larger I realized there was something else going on. The tricks
employed by the exam were taking my "educated" guesses and leading
them straight to the dummy answer designed to make me spend $700 re-
taking the exam next year. To combat this phenomenon I used a
strategy gleaned from the "Monty Hall paradox". Typically, you can
eliminate one answer that is definitely incorrect which leaves you
with two answers to choose from. Now, if you can confidently answer
the problem by all means select the answer you think is correct.
However, if you are attempting to employ an "educated guess" based on
the answer that just seems like it would be correct just know that
25-33% of the time your guess is correct and that 67-75% of the time
you are falling right into the evil trap set by the CFA instititute.
Therefore, on the real exam whenever I couldn't confidently answer a
question I attempted to eliminate one answer and make an educated
guess between the two remaining answers. Whichever answer I felt
"seemed to be right" I eliminated and then selected the other answer.
Did it work? Well, unfortunately I can't say for sure as I don't have
a breakdown of which questions I answered correctly. However, I can
tell you that I did a lot of educated guessing on Level I and here I
am preparing for Level II. Anecdotal I know, do with it what you
will.

3) Total guess. Are you getting at least 33% of these right? If not
you are biasing your guess and selecting the wrong answer more
frequently. You'd be better off just guessing the same letter (i.e.
'C') throughout the exam anytime you have a total guess. Review
these answers and make a determination. With a few minutes of review
can I understand this concept? If so, go for it. If realistically
you'd need to review the entire chapter, make notes, and do hours of
practice move along. You'd be better off getting sleep than reviewing
this in detail.


Alright, hope this helps. Good luck.

On Mar 25, 4:23 pm, adam johnson <johnsonadam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Congrats on getting through the material. I am using a similar strategy in
> terms of watching schweser videos and doing the schweser readings. However,
> I still have the fixed income, derivatives, and portfolio management to get
> through. I have been doing all of the CFAI EOC questions as I go...as well
> as the schweser questions.
>
> Dont worry about your 35/60. You have two more months to prepare.
>
> Once I get through the material, my plan is to take one mock per week and
> spend the weeks working on my weakest areas with a focus on FRA and Equity.
> I just want to get as many practice questions in as possible. I want to go
> back through the CFAI questions as well.
>
> Does anyone know where I can find a really good formula sheet?
>
> Best,
>
> Adam
>