Hmm. Now that that's done, CTD, how about if you gave us some gyan on how the June L1 was, and how much, in retrospect, seems to you would've been a good amount of prep for L1?
For context, I was initially gunning for this December's L1, but quickly banished the thought after several weeks of little to no prep. June '07 is the current target.
Thanks!
I think it's better I'll start posting as and when i have time than to wait for the time when i can pen down a 10,000 word essay that no one wants to read! So here goes....
Overall, my CFA L1 was disastrous! But as bad as it went, i'm gonna keep hope alive until the results come in about 2-3 weeks and be positive. Plain, simple, straigt-forward advice: DO NOT TAKE THE CFA L1 LIGHTLY. This is NOT your regular school/college exam where you can study and cram for a coupla weeks and then vomit it in the main exam and pass. If you dont have a commerce/eco background or work ex, ou need at least 6 months of consistent preparation with 2-3 hours every single day and full time studies on the weekends. i studied very sporadically. i started in full force in december 2005, which tapered off by feb. Then picked up some speed around late feb and tapered off again around april. I hardly studied in May and by then it was too late. The ideal time to prepare for a newbie is about 8-9 months, assuming he has a job and can snatch a coupla hours here and there. for students (who can devote much more time for studies), i think it'll be ideal to study for 6 months consistently.
the biggest problem i faced was recalling/remembering concepts. There is just SO MUCH to learn...it`s really vast. Even if you study hard, your memory might fail you...there was stuff that i had studied, and i was so confident that i KNEW it well...but i couldn`t recall something as fundamental as a formula or a shortcut. I stared at some problems so helplessly coz i couldn`t recall what the concept was, or i spent way too much time on some problems coz i went long way calculating coz i didn`t remember the formula. the only solution is to devote the last one month exclusively for revision, and not go in for anything new in that period.
secondly, i focussed a lot on the textual and conceptual part of the topics and didnt focus so much on the application part. if you study from the prescribed textbooks, each topic is covered in dozens of pages of pure text...no applicaiton, no problems, nothing. CFA asks you to APLLY these theory concepts to solve numerical problems. So do not get satisfied if you feel you've read thru the text and "understood" everything. You HAVE TO know how to solve problems and apply concepts. this is where schwesers, stalla, prep material, etc comes handy. I should have made my studies more exam focussed rather than purely academic.
Thirdly, the calculator! You must be fluent with it...it's quite a complicated peice of machinery! learn to do all that jazzy techno stuff with the calcy and be fluent with it. Input cash flows, calculate IRRs, NPVs, amortization values, etc. This stuff can be done manually as well thru regular arithmatic operations, but knowing ho to use the hi-tech functions of the calcy can save a lot of time.
Fourthly, you have to prioritize and allocate appropriate times to each topic. For example, accounting and asset valuation forms a big chunk of the paper, and for a person without accounting background, it takes ages to get used to the concepts. in contrast, topics such as portfolio management and derivatives are easy to understand, fun to study, can be completed quickly, and carry very little weigtage in the exam. So pick and choose your topics accordingly and prioritize them well. i spent way too much time studying simple topics with low weigtage and rushed thru heavyweights such as accounting.
As for study material, i feel one should try and study from as many sources as possible. I mean, you shouldn`t restict yourself to only schwesers or only textbooks. Schwesers is good from exam point of view...it gives you actual exam questions, application based questions, and problems. but it condenses important concepts and presents them very briefly, so it`s difficult to understand such concepts for a newbie. On the other hand, standard books give you no exam based training and present concepts in plain text...you might understand the concept thoroughly, but may not be able to apply them if you study only from textbooks. A good strategy would be to keep both side by side and study in parallel, referring to textbooks each time you dont understand something in schwesers. Obviously, such a strategy will require a lot of time...6 months along with a job may not be sufficient to implement such a strategy.
that`s all i can think of now. if you have any specific questions, i`ll try and answer those. best of luck!
PS: mojo, i think your style of writing, the flow of language, and word choice is very impressive...not to mention the perfect punctuation!! (i tend to notice such things a lot!)
I knew it in advance.
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