So how did your first week go? Do you feel like you have mastered Ethics yet? Did you reach 80% on the end of chapter questions for reading 2? If you need this weekend to wrap things up, that is all good. It is crucially important that you are on top of Ethics for the test. Once you are done you’ve got the most important 15% of the test covered. Lets build on the momentum.
Your 15 week study program:
We are aiming to get through the curriculum 4 weeks in advance of the test, allowing you to spend the remaining 4 weeks on concentrated question practice. As a result we have set aside 15 weeks to run through the curriculum. You will notice that the curriculum is split into 18 study sessions, but there are a few shorter ones enabling us to get through the curriculum in 15 weeks, if we cluster some of these together. The table below illustrates the size of the 18 study sessions in the curriculum (in the Pages column) and the estimated size of the study sessions on the test (in the Exam column)*.
Source: Financial Exam Academy (Based on the CFA® exam – level 1 curriculum – June 2013 Exam)
A couple of points to note:
- As discussed last week the Ethics study session carries a disproportionately large exam weight (15%) compared to its curriculum weight (7.4%).
- The reverse relationship is true for the 3 Economics study sessions.
- Study sessions 10 and 18 are really tiny, by any measure, compared to the rest.
So keeping these points in mind, we have clustered the study sessions into a 15 week study program as follows:
Source: Financial Exam Academy (Based on the CFA® exam – level 1 curriculum – June 2013 Exam)
As you can see the 3 Economics study sessions have been consolidated to a 2 week program, given their limited guideline exam weight. It is going to be 2 pretty tough weeks (particularly the first one) but the low guideline exam weighting just does not justify spending any more time on these study sessions. Secondly you will notice that the tiny study session 10 has been rolled into session 9, and the same is the case for study sessions 17 and 18.
So there you have it, your 15 week plan to tackle the level 1 CFA® exam curriculum 4 weeks in advance of the test.
The week to come:
Now let’s have a look at the week to come. We’ll be diving into the first Quants study session. As previously mentioned don’t worry if you are trailing by a few days at this stage, but if not before make sure that you have put Ethics to bed by Sunday evening (27 January 2013).
Quants…. you either love it or hate it. Whichever one it is, you are starring at another lumpy part of the test (12%) and a host of foundational concepts that you will be relying on throughout the CFA® program. So it makes sense to pay attention here. As you can see from the 15 week plan above the Quants topic is divided into 2 roughly equal size study sessions. We will focus on the “basic concepts” study session this week. The session is made up of 4 readings. We will be employing the same tactics as last week in attacking each reading:
- Answer the end of chapter questions before going through each reading. List the questions that you find challenging as well as the questions that you answered incorrectly.
- Write down the LOS so that you have it handy, and actively seek out and write down the answers as you progress through the individual readings.
- Answer the end of chapter questions from your list again once you are through each reading as many times as you need until you can confidently answer all questions correctly.
One caveat regarding this approach as it applies to this study session is that most of the end of chapter questions in reading 5 are not actually multiple choice question, some of them have got numeric answers whereas others prompt you to provide definitions and similar. This feature makes it a bit more difficult to objectively measure whether or not you have answered correctly. There is no silver bullet here, just try and mark your own answers as fairly as you can.
Good luck with your studies!
*The estimated size of the study session on the test is calculated by multiplying the relevant guideline topic exam weight with the proportion of pages within the relevant topic area dedicated to the study session in question.