You’ve started out on the path to gain the CFA charter, and you’re getting advice from everywhere. The journey ahead is long — you are now committed for 3 years of your life to hours and hours of study on top of a full life of work, hobbies, and family.
You will seek out advice from current charter holders on how to do that. And if you’re like the hundreds of thousands who have signed up for Level I before you, you’ll ask 10 people and get 11 different answers.
So how do you make sense of this advice, which, while offered in good faith, often is contradictory, and often conflicts with your own intuition about how to approach the curriculum study.
One way to organize the advice you gain is to consider the source. This doesn’t suggest that you think some sources are wrong, it just suggests that some advice might be worth to you.
The rationale for this advice is — there’s no one right way but there is an optimal way FOR YOU. Here are a few tips to help you give weight to advice to cut down on confusion.
1) If you are taking a class from an approved review provider, their word ranks highest on all counts.
For one, they have more experience and it is up to date with both candidates and the CFA Program. Secondly, they have constructed a class for you that addresses what’s important; any advice they have beyond that will help you to further focus on what’s important.
2) You will get a different set of tips from candidates who have failed than candidates who pass all the exams on the first attempt. Listen carefully for what retakers have learned; if they learned nothing and just repeated the same study habits, that’s advice to IGNORE. Retakers who are able to say “If I’d known________ the first time I took Level (I, II or III), I’d have passed”.
3) Candidates who have passed all levels on first attempt just followed the advice of read the materials, spend 300 hours studying, do mock exams one month before exam date, review subjects you aren’t doing well on yet. They don’t add much, except as advocate for one exam review provider over another!
4) Do you know what your unique obstacles might be? Might you lose Motivation or Focus? Might you be distracted and not be able to pay Attention to this task? Might you be a highly social person and know that the lonely self-study course will be challenging? Then seek out candidates who have solutions to your specific obstacle. We have identified these as the big categories shared by all so you’ll have no problem finding someone with advice!
For more about our solutions: www.candidatesuccess.us/programs
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sam@candidatesuccess.us
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