The Cornerstone of Every CFA Exam "Pass" Grade - study timetable

I bet you’ve heard many stories about what it takes to pass the three sequential CFA exams:

A “friend of a friend” didn’t leave their house for 3 months before exam day…
“I didn’t exercise for 6 weeks”…
“Coffee became my most important food group”…

And the list goes on. Everyone has their own techniques to pass the grueling level I, II and II CFA exams. And regardless of prior work or academic experience, everyone has to dig deep to get over the line when it comes to earning the CFA charter.

We here at the The CFA Loophole believe the key to passing each CFA exam is a little hard work mixed with a realistic study timetable and a month of exam revision before exam day.
But the cornerstone of every CFA Exam “Pass Grade” is your study timetable. If you plan your study timetable well at the outset and stick to it, you’re placing yourself in the best position to hit a home run come exam day.

Our Top Tips for a Successful CFA Exam Study Timetable:

“Be realistic” – If you can’t stick to a 40 hour week study regime, don’t set this as a study goal! You will only end up disappointing yourself while adding non-existent pressure to other parts of your life. Perhaps set aside 3 weeknights and one day on the weekend, or study during the day on weekends with the nights free. Whatever study timetable you choose, make it realistic, achievable and most of all, stick to it. Otherwise you will end up feeling guilty for not living up to your unrealistic standards.

“Understand the Beast” – The “Beast” here is the exam. You need to understand that you are preparing for a 6 hour closed book exam, comprising challenging material with many tricks and traps designed to trip-up unsuspecting candidates. Remember that the CFA Institute recommends approximately 300 hours of preparation time. Make sure that your study timetable starts early enough to allow a month of revision before the exam and that you have enough time to compile the required hours to enable you to “understand” as opposed to “rote learn” the learning outcomes.

“Revise as you Go” – A number of the staff here at the CFA Loophole have found that by not periodically going over the early material, by the time they got to practice exams and final revision, they didn’t even recognize some of the early material!! As you can gather, its not the ideal situation to be re-learning concepts when you should be taking practice exams during your final few weeks before the CFA Exam. To remedy this problem, building revision into your study timetable is crucial. We recommend at least a fortnightly revision session to keep those early study sessions fresh in your mind.

“Take Time Off” – not time off from study, but work and other commitments. The team here at the CFA Loophole believe that if possible, a few days off work close to exam day can make a big difference in helping one focus and prepare. We recommend raising this with your boss as soon as possible. Hopefully your boss will agree that a few days off before the exam will benefit you and ultimately the firm should you pass. Some of us here at the CFA Loophole even took annual leave to prepare which you may need to consider.

So now you have it, our top tips for constructing your CFA Exam Study Timetable, the cornerstone behind every “pass” grade on the CFA Exam.

(source: http://analystloophole.com/level-1/the-cornerstone-of-every-cfa-exam-pass-grade/)