[Frm Level 2 Schweser 2013 Torrent
Elis Riebow
I used Schweser almost exclusively for LIII and passed. The notes are great, and cover realistically about 100% of what you need to know to pass, that said CFAI material will have some additional material that may or may not show up on the exam. I started reading both the Schweser notes and the CFAI material, and I found the CFAI material to cover the same stuff, though was much lengthier and more difficult to get through and I stopped going through the CFAI books. The QBank is just OK. I used it mainly to drill down the main points and to make sure I had the formulas down. One thing the CFAI books are excellent for are the end of session questions which you should do for each study session. Pretty much everyone will tell you though that practice exams are the best way to really prep for the exam. As you do practice exams your weaknesses will come out, and that is where the Qbank can come in handy and you can drill through dozens or even hundreds of questions on a particular topic to get up to speed.
Used only schweser for all three levels and passed. (almost all ppl i know cleared various cfa levels used schweser exclusively.) In fact i have hardly come across anyone personally who has used the CFA curriculum.
I find that schweser gives nice consice explanations for most of the topics and this is more than sufficient as a majority of the topics are not really that difficult to understand. (the ones you find too difficult can obviously be looked up from the main curriculum) The main benefit of this is that one can quicly go through the entire curriculum once and get a good grasp of what fits where in the broad portfolio management process. This is especially important as i think a key part of level 3 is to be able to pick points from various sections of the curriculum and answer accordingly.
Schweser in my view is more than enough. The videos on Individual and Institutional portfolio management is really good. I thoroughly enjoyed watching other Scheweser videos too. Whatever you do, do well.
I have cleared L3 in my first attempt and i didnot even order the hard copies of CFAI books. I have never seen those CFAI books. I prepared from ONLY schweser material and schweser videos. Honestly wirtten all the 6 question papers of Schweser and 3 past question papers from CFAI. Following is my result where i have aced both morning and evening. (Didnot get 70% in 6 topics). I assume i am waay above the MPS and cleared the exam quite comfortably.
I just passed level 3. I used schweser and NYSSA. I did not touch CFA books. I hate CFA books and they put me to sleep in 10 minutes. It really depends on how well you know the material. I took 9 complete tests, solved 2000+ Qbank and NYSSA practice test. I read Schweser for all level3 and found them very helpful for my life style that involves working 70 hours a week with 2 young kids.
@jimmyg same here man, have heard that its not comprehensive. But having said that, and having studied for the past 2 levels with Schweser, I am still using their notes. What you can do is maybe refer the schweser notes, and when you have time or when you are revising, try and go through the CFAI EOC questions and also the Blue box examples. Someone suggested the same at one of the forums I was a part of.
Agreed with @Christine. I used Schweser with online supplements and it worked fine. Advantage of 3rd party notes IS the condensed version. L3 is about broad connections between material, and not having to wade through overly detailed readings from the original curriculum works well as a time-saver. As with L1 and L2, the secret is going to end up being practice problems and sample exams
The most critical part of review for me was doing mock exams. Over and over. I was able to take a week off before L3 and did 6 morning exams and like 3-4 afternoon exams that week. There were no curve balls left at that point.
Generally, I finished the material about 3 weeks before L3. that was a little later than ideal but I had been reading Secret Sauce or flipping through notecards on my commute to keep all the material fresh throughout the process.
One other strategy I find particularly effective is circling the difficult (or crucial) practice problems at the end of each chapter and flagging their page # so that I could review only the most relevant EOC questions as part of that cram review process in the last few weeks.
CFAI seem to be more straightforward in general, but I also agree that it tends to get wordy at time. What I am most concerned with on the morning part is knowing exactly what the question is looking for when they can be quite ambiguous. But overall, CFAI less ambiguous than Kaplan.
I found the Schweser questions to be good practice but occasionally poorly worded or asking about obscure topics. But I also found the CFAI official 2015 mock to be poorly worded at times too, both come from third party providers. The past AM exams are your best guide so use those to your advantage. 9 days is still enough time to improve your scores.
Hi guys, I recently passed level 1, and here is my advice to those who are planning on taking it in December (or retaking it in December). I found that Schweser was NOT enough to cover the concepts. It is an excellent source of material, but should not be the only one in your arsenal. I would highly recommend everyone at least skim the CFAI materials to fill in the gaps, and ESPECIALLY go through every single EOC questions with a fine tooth comb.
Each reading in the cirriculum will have a main topic. This main topic should not be skimmed from Schweser, but should come from the source. The CFAI books are written incredibly well, and may elucidate concepts that a few sentences in Schweser might not. Furthermore, certain things will simply be left out of Schweser entirely (sources of borrowing for instance in corporate finance).
Finally, I highly recommend that all candidates get their main knowledge of fixed income from the new readings in the CFAI as opposed to Schweser. These new readings are worth the price of the books alone.
GTFO of here with your strawmen and hyperboles. Schweser is of course not a scam. I used Schweser as well and if you read my post carefully, I said Qbank is very useful, as are the notes. However, Schweser should not be the only tool in your arsenal, for instance, would you try to build a house with just a hammer?
In Level II it will not for most people - there is another recent thread here that discusses this. I used it but HAD TO complement it with CFAI EOC and LOS and Bluebox examples to pass. No background in finance here.
But if you struggle reading the CFAI texts and you may end up only understanding 60-70% of the material, then you are no better off because you are 1) not focusing on the most testable material, and 2) you are stuck on the overwhelming length instead of spend your studying hours more productively, ie questions and reviewing of answers.
Remember that just because some people pass only using schweser does not mean you will to. Definitely possible but think you should be comfortable as possible since failing means you have to wait another year.
Posted this in another thread Also did Level 1 Dec 2012 and Passed Level 2 in June 2013Only used Schweser Notes with Econ/PM < 50%, Ethics 50-70, rest 70+ Did 5 mocks total, first 4 Schweser mocks and the official CFAI mock, got around 75% in all the mocks Highly recommend getting schwesser, studied around 250 hours. Started studying in Feb and finished Schweser notes by the 2nd week in April, 2 weeks of review of all the materials, and then a mock every weekend until the exam
A different strategy for the original poster: ask yourself at the beginning which of the ten topics you find the easiest. Fra, equity maybe? Use Schweser for those. For the rest, use BOTH CFAI and Schweser. BOTH. And as others have provided, work on tons of Schweser and CFAI mock tests. I did about a total of 10 practice sets (1 set = am + pm sessions), took the horrible Schweser live mock which I very much recommend (I got a 58% which gave me a wake up call, WHICH is all I needed.), all EOC questions in CFAI.
EOC: If you did the first step, you can probably beat most of the EOC questions. However, you may still see very few that are not explained clearly or even never appeared in Schweser. Here, you need to go back to the textbook and read that part. (go over those you did wrong before exam).
I simply used Schweser's notes to pass CFA Level I with minimal study time. Has anyone had a different experience w/ the Level II exam? Will study notes be enough and is Schweser the best Level II option?
I took Level II last year. Schweser skimped on the portfolio management section so make sure you read the curriculum especially in this area...for the other areas, I thought the exam was fine, but do practice a lot and review the CFAI documents for ethics and PM. It's obvious that CFAI is trying to make the exam more "proprietary" as evidenced by the requirement to now bundle the curriculum with the exam.
Don't underestimate the amount of time needed to pass Level II - it is quite a bit more challenging than Level I. A lot of the stuff in Level I, I either learned in college or during my experience in BB equity research. Best advice I can give you is to take a lot of practice tests, do not procrastinate, and understand how all the key concepts relate to one another (rather than getting too caught up in the little minutia). I put in about 125 hours of study time for Level I and probably around 200 hours for Level II. You seem to be pretty on top of stuff so maybe it would take you about this much time too, but just don't let anyone tell you that you can "get by" doing a certain amount of hours...you have to figure out what's right for yourself.
Also, I second an aforementioned poster's suggestion to read AnalystForum.com. Actually, this is where I've posted most frequently, since given my experience in equity research, I've generally had more to contribute there (and in a similar fashion as WS Oasis where most people don't work in IB/PE, most people on AnalystForum also don't work in ER/HF and are trying to learn). However, you'll see me more on these boards now that I'm working in PE.
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