How many hours do you need to dedicate to your level 1 CFA® exam studies? The standard answer that you will see “floating around” is the guideline 300 hour+ average for passing candidates. I would not put too much emphasis on this exact number however.
Is 300 hours realistic for you?
There are many factors that impact how much time you need to spend on your studies. Most importantly: What are you planning to read? How quickly do you read? Apologies for being so simplistic, but your answer to those two questions should provide a pretty good indication about how much time you are going to need… The underlying curriculum is roughly 3000 pages long. So if your strategy includes reading through the entire curriculum, you will clearly need to read more than 10 pages per hour if you are going to stay within the 300 hour guideline, and still have time for extra practice questions and mock exams during the last month before the test. Personally I struggled to exceed a run-rate of 10 pages per hour in parts of the curriculum, particularly on more quant oriented readings, and when dealing with end of chapter questions. Remember you will also need to factor in the breaks that you will inevitably need during your time allocated for studying, if you want to maintain your sanity… I am in no doubt that some people will be able to read a lot quicker, try it out for yourself and see how quickly you are getting through the material. I have added a chart below illustrating how many hours you need to get through the curriculum at different reading speeds.
Source: Financial Exam Academy (CFA® exam – level 1 curriculum – June 2015 Exam)
What if I don’t have the time needed to complete my desired study plan?
I think there is a pretty broad consensus amongst passing candidates that your last month before the test is best spent doing questions (If you agree/disagree with this statement I would be very curious to see your opinion in a comment below). So if you take this advice, the number of hours estimated above need to be completed one month in advance of your test. I touch upon how to work out the number of hours at your disposal in this post. If there is a mismatch between the number of hours you are able to dedicate and the number of hours required to get through the curriculum, don’t despair, hopefully you have still got time to adjust your approach. One of the most popular routes to address this issue is purchasing a set of abbreviated study notes from one of the course providers. I recommend the Wiley CFA Exam Review Products (previously called Elan Guides), but there are plenty of other options out there too. If you have the budget but lack time, these study notes are extremely useful, but more as a supplement than a substitute for the underlying curriculum. I know this is a contentious issue, and there are probably as many opinions on this matter as there are CFA® program candidates. Relying on the study notes alone would obviously cut your preparation time substantially, as you are focusing only on the details that the study note provider deems the most relevant. Skipping the underlying curriculum is a pretty risky strategy however, particularly in more “wordy” topic areas like ethics that are known for carrying extra significance, if you are a borderline pass. If you are signed up for the newsletter and following the 20 week study program you will find that I sometimes stress that you use the underlying curriculum for a certain week’s readings even if you have purchased a set of additional study notes. The Wiley Study Notes are condensed to just about 1100 pages (only slightly above a 3rd the size of the underlying curriculum), so you should be able to get through the Wiley Study Notes in the following amount of hours, depending on your reading speed:
Source: Financial Exam Academy (Wiley Study Guide – June 2015 Exam)
So how many hours do I need then?
To sum up, there is no easy answer to how many hours you will need to dedicate to your studies. But if you measure your reading speed, and decide what material you are going to read, you should be able to get a pretty good estimate on how much work is required, prior to the last month of study, based on the information in this post. For the last month of study my best answer concerning how many hours to allocate would be, “as many as humanly possible!”