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Originally Posted by forrest_gump
cheerz to all the guyz who cracked L1
it would be great if you could share your exam prep strategies and the study resources with the newbies..will only sweichser notes get u thru??
also just wanted to know if four months is still gud enuf to crack the jun 07 slot assuming one starts afresh??
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Hi,
When I first started off with CFA preparation a friend of mine recommended the official CFA textbooks for preparation .However they are far too verbose and all encompassing for the purposes of this exam.
The Schewezer notes are in my opinion more than enough.I had done no financial courses before and found the notes easy and comprehensive .I would recommend canidates preparing for this exam to stick to these notes only ,however if for your own learning you want to do certion sections more comprehensively there is no harm

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As regards the time frame required it depends on your abilities and the time and effort you put in.I know of people with no fin background cracking the exam with 30 days of preps and also of MBA not being able to make it.
On an average I would suggest 4 months of preparation with about 8-10 hours a week.of course for the weeks leading upto the exam you would have to study more intensely.Try to finish the course at least 3 weeks before the exam .The questions in the Level 1 exam are in themselves not very tough ,the problem being the sheer volume of the course you tend to forget the concepts you had studied in the past.The more you revise the better it is because you will keep forgetting concepts and formulas.Also start practicing with approved calculators beforehand.Schewezer provides a step by step guide to use those calculators.
And finally for the exam day do take some chocolates and health drinks along with you .I made this mistake ,did not have any breakfast and on the center found only 1 single shop catering to thousands of candidates.Finally was so sleepy and hungry by the afternoon exam that I did not even stay for the entire 3 hrs ,walked out in just under 2 hrs.
And on a slightly different note many people would be giving this exam for various different objectives .But if you are seriously interested in making a career out of this field it would be most beneficial to follow the happenings in the Investment Management business .Try to regularly reading online editions of the Economist, Business week, Fortune ,Risk etc and try to go through all the articles dealing with Financial Services.Even the Schewezer notes do not cover everything.For example this year we had a question on Hedgefund alphas something that was not covered well in the Schewezer notes.Fortunately I had read an article on Hedge Funds weeks before the exam which helped me out.
I hope this proves useful to all future aspirants for the CFA Level 1 exam.As for me just hope I can compose a similar post in July about the Level 2 exam.