Kaplan Schweser Cfa Level 2
Elijah Rakestraw
Wow, @Marc. That was very well written. I am almost done with my L1 curriculum and will start practicing papers soon. But i will definitely consider these views when i do my L2. Too late for L1 right?
However, my advise to others is to really think about what value you will get from prep provider materials over and above the CFA curriculum. As someone who has sampled a broad range of the prep materials out there, I offer the following thoughts, which you are free to find useful or stupid, but that I wish had been provided to me earlier.
In summary, I find prep materials useful. Formula sheets are a very handy time saver. Videos are helpful when you are to tired to concentrate on a reading. Audio recordings are way under-rated, under-provided and under-used (anyone else commute to work?). But I would strongly advise people who are considering not touching the CFA readings and only reading Schwesser or whatever to reconsider.
To use an analogy with which we are all familiar (or at least should be), you can pay for active portfolio management, and you might even get a little bit of alpha, but is it worth it? And are you comfortable with the idea that you could actually be worse-off than if you had just been boring and stuck to the benchmark?
Hi I think the curriculum notes are no doubt the bible to understand Cfa topic concepts and its especially very helpful for the non finance guys. It makes you understand thins as if you are completely out of this world and you are explained each and everything in minutest details so it all depends on you. If you are ok with the concepts generally then I guess schwesers are definitely more than enough. I believe or live with the saying that, the more you know the more you get confused so always know things precisely. :d
In level 2, I do refer to CFAI from time to time as I find schweser tend to over summarise certain information (maybe they are not important but at least for me, I would always like to understand the logic behind it rather than memorising it).
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.
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