I need to know personal experiences of people who have taken the cfa exam or preparing to take the cfa exam?

Question

Has anyone used stella or schwesser cfa preparation? if so which one is better. If i work full time how long should i wait till i take the exam? the next exam for cfa level 1 is in december if I got started studying in august would that be enough time to pass the test? and can you tell me of your expenses including study materials and registration.thank you

Answer 1

Hi I am currently preparing for December Level I. I bought Schwesers. Total cost of enrolling to getting Schwesers books with shipping etc was around $1450. Yours might be less b/c I live in Bahrain and had to pay international shipping for CFA material and Schwesers. I started in last week of June. I do one reading per day (total 76 readings; not counting weekends). I'm a house-wife. At this rate I will be done 2 months before the exam.

Now we get to your situation: If you study 4 hours a day, I think you can finish one reading. Since you work full time I'd say get a chunk of the reading done during the weekend (like 12 hours Fri-Sat). You should be fine, but you might not have enough time to review. Right now I am not even looking at the CFA books...just doing Schwesers. But my plan is that once I get done with one (Schwesers) book, I will do all the practice problems in the CFA book related to the readings just finished in the Schwesers. That way if there is something I do not know I will refer to CFA and how they want us to know that concept. You will be very busy if you start in August, but I think it is doable.

I like Schwesers because they state 1 LOS and then the stuff you need to know regarding that LOS. CFA states all the LOSs before a particular reading and all the concepts are together....you have figure out yourself which one relates to which LOS. It is not that hard to do but, with a single LOS and its related material stated together you understand it better. I don't know how stella is. Schwesers is the more widely used than Stella. Also if you go fo Schwesers, they have LOTS of stuff to buy on their site....but what most people go for is thier STUDY NOTES PACK. I am just saying b/c I got confused when I went to buy on their site...there is so much...I was like what am I looking for here??

Anyway I hope this helps. If you need more info e-mail me. [e-mail]