Is Schweser enough to get you through level 1 CFA® exam

by | Aug 30, 2014 | Blog |

As you may be aware Kaplan Schweser provide a complete suite of excellent revision tools when prepping for the level 1 CFA® exam. The study guide contains the key information from the curriculum that Schweser expects to be the most exam relevant. It is not hard to see why it is tempting to completely ignore the curriculum and just rely on the Schweser Notes to get you through. If you spend any time hanging around CFA® exam related forums or otherwise interact with past candidates, you will also hear plenty of stories from candidates that passed using only the Schweser Notes.

Before you make up your mind however, have a read through the post below explaining why I believe in most cases it is a bad idea to rely solely on the Schweser Notes at level 1.

You will miss out on the end of Chapter Questions:

The end of chapter questions in the underlying curriculum is arguably one of the most underutilized yet most effective revision tools for mastering the level 1 CFA exam. If you have joined FEA Elite, you will know that practicing these questions forms the backbone of our proposed exam strategy. I would highly recommend that you start what we call a question log. It is basically just a text document (evernote would be ideal) where you can keep a record of the end of chapter questions and LOS (Learning Outcome Statements – listed at the beginning of each reading) that you struggle to answer as you progress through the curriculum.

My recommendation for studying each reading in the curriculum goes something like this:

  1. Creating flashcards for each LOS and seeking out the answers while going through each reading using your preferred mode of study (curriculum or study guide). Flicking through the flashcards created at the end of each reading and making a note in your question log (evernote document or similar) about the flashcards that you are struggling to understand/answer.
  2. Answering all of the end of chapter questions upon finishing each reading and making a note in you question log about the questions that you struggle with.
  3. Redo the flashcards and end of chapter questions from your question log. Revise your answers and make a note of those that you are still struggling with. Continue this process daily for as many days as required until you have mastered all (You can start the next reading in parallel while doing this).

This entire process helps to highlight the areas of the curriculum that you are not very well versed at. This is crucial as reading the underlying curriculum cover to cover will likely result in complete information overload. It is very important that you manage to map out which areas of the curriculum you are going to struggle with fairly early and focus your efforts on mastering those.

You could miss out on information:

The CFA Institute can and will test you in obscure corners of the curriculum. If you base your revision purely on the Schweser Notes you may be unlucky and find questions that were not covered in any detail in the Schweser Notes. This is however typically a much bigger problem at level 2.

So why should I get Schweser?

Schweser does a great job of summarizing the CFA exam curriculum, so Schweser is going to speed up your progress through the curriculum dramatically. Certain areas of the curriculum like e.g. economics are extremely lengthy in the underlying curriculum and do not carry a high expected % weight at the final exam. So if you are short of time (aren’t we all) Schweser can be a great time saver.

This is a discussion that divides opinion a lot. You will find plenty of examples of candidates that have passed the level 1 CFA exam using nothing but the Schweser Notes. It is definitely doable, but in my mind you are better off studying at least the Ethics readings and end of chapter questions based on the underlying curriculum.

To make things even more complicated Schweser are note the only providers of excellent level 1 CFA exam materials. I would highly recommend that you have a look at Wiley CFA Exam Review Products as well before you make a decision.

Last but not least if you are one of the “rare individuals” that actually want to learn the underlying subjects in depth. This is often overlooked as the primary motivation for most people seems to be to get it over and done with as quickly as possible so you can stick the 3 letters on your business card. But if you genuinely are studying the CFA exam to obtain an in-depth understanding of the topics learned, then there is obviously no better place to go than the underlying curriculum.

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