When I was studying for the CFA® exam I took the advice of a senior colleague of mine to create stack upon stack of “old school” card board flash cards with all of the LOS, formulas and key concepts as I progressed through the readings.
This turned out to be great advice, and really helped me throughout the program.
But, if I was to do my exams all over again, I would definitely use a smartphone app for the flashcards. Besides making you look like a social outcast from the 80s, shuffling through cardboard flashcards in the supermarket queue is pretty impractical. Your smartphone is always with you, and it will enable you to make good use of every idle moment, during your commute, while waiting to meet someone etc. If you have signed up for FEA Elite, flashcards will form part of the back-bone of your strategy.
Pre-made or DIY flashcards.
You will feel a more intimate connection with the material if you create them yourself. It is a very important step in the learning process that you rob yourself of if you purchase a pre-made deck of cards. In addition you are flexible to include information that may not be available in a purchased set of flashcards.
There is an overwhelming amount of free flashcard apps available in the iOS and Android app stores. I have tested a handful of the most popular ones and I would currently recommend Quizlet or AnkiDroid.
Quizlet
Quizlet would be my preferred option if you just want a no-frills intuitive solution that enables you to do basic digital flashcards without any learning curve. As soon as you have downloaded the app you can start creating decks of flashcards. I would recommend that you create individual decks containing the LOS, formulas and key concepts for each reading. You can then quiz yourself going through any of the decks that you have created to see if you can remember what’s on the flipside. Once you are done with a deck you will have the option to redo only the flashcards that you could not remember to improve comprehension.
AnkiDroid
If you would like a bit more flexibility AnkiDroid might be a better option for you. The app embraces a scientific approach to memorization based on the twin concepts of (1) active recall testing and (2) spaced repetition. These are in essence just fancy-pants ways of saying, (1) flashcard revision (2) repeated at the ideal time interval determined by your level of difficulty in answering each card.
In combination these two concepts work as a very effective memory hack improving your ability to learn and recall new material quickly. The same methods can be applied to learning just about anything including the LOS, formulas and other key concepts that will be tested on the CFA® exam.
There is an entire science to this, and you can easily spend hours pouring over the documentation if you really get into it. I wouldn’t recommend spending too much time, but granted that you have the patience to get AnkiDroid up and running on your smart phone, it is going to be extremely helpful as a memorization tool. If you do decide to use AnkiDroid I will write out a separate post to get you started, as it is not entirely self explanatory.
A common problem for all of the flashcard apps that I have come across is that they do not deal very well with formulas. It is e.g. a bit tedious and hard to interpret complex fractional formulas when created using basic keyboard entries. If you do come across a user friendly smartphone app that supports formulas, I would be very grateful if you leave a comment below or reach out at info@financialexamacademy.com.