See how our partners can help you ace your CFA exams.
Schweser not as great for Level III?
I've heard from several people now (candidates + charterholders) that Schweser is not very good material for Level 3 and I should use the CFA syllabus. Is this true? I'm already halfway through and I thought it was pretty OK so far, and I really don't want to go to the syllabus - I haven't looked at the syllabus since level 1 to be honest. too incomprehensible.
Thoughts?
1 ·
Comments
But yes, Schweser is quant-focused, so in a quant-light and concept-heavy level such as Level III, naturally it's not as strong. However, I used Schweser exclusively for Level III (didn't even touch the syllabus - I don't recommend that though) and did quite nicely.
I wouldn't worry too much about it to be honest.
Alternatively you could post anything you're unsure of here
Also did you leave more time at the end to go through practice essays and questions or did you leave the typical 4-6 weeks for review?
Generally, I finished the material about 3 weeks before L3. that was a little later than ideal but I had been reading Secret Sauce or flipping through notecards on my commute to keep all the material fresh throughout the process.
One other strategy I find particularly effective is circling the difficult (or crucial) practice problems at the end of each chapter and flagging their page # so that I could review only the most relevant EOC questions as part of that cram review process in the last few weeks.
Keep it up you're in the home stretch!
First time using schweser so I wouldn't know myself, but that makes me less happy about them now.
I've done the six afternoon Schweser's, two of the mornings and 2011-2014 CFAI morning mocks. My opinion is that the Scheweser ones are more difficult because they don't seem to like to test the basics very often, more oddball questions than there should be. But still good practice, because if you can do second order questions, the basics should be easy!
The CFAI mornings, I'm hoping, are your best gauge for readiness.
Just hoping I don't forget much between now and Sat! Like @mattyc focussing on sleep and refining/refreshing topics now.
CFAI seem to be more straightforward in general, but I also agree that it tends to get wordy at time. What I am most concerned with on the morning part is knowing exactly what the question is looking for when they can be quite ambiguous. But overall, CFAI less ambiguous than Kaplan.
Nothing left from here on out but reviewing some notes and notecards and getting some good nights sleep.
....oh and hoping that they forget to print out the page with the GIPS questions
Schweser is great for every level if that kind of material is your thing. The videos + books are great, you won't ace everything based on those alone, but they get you over half way there. My trick has been Schweser books + videos then the 7city/fitch learning 2 day final prep course (which is basically grinding out questions on the most tested topics) and there in class mock if you want the extra help. Things i didnt like were Schweser online mock exam for level 3, but everything else mentioned above was good. Also i would say secret sauce is limited in usefulness and i never really got around to using it, even though on the surface it seems like a useful product. The reason for this is over half the questions are probably not even covered there, so you are better off using the quick sheet + your notes, + slides (i use slide packs from videos, print them off and keep best ones that cover really important material).