12/30/2016 CFA Level 1 Study Plan (3month study plan) | SOLEADEA BLOG
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How to Prepare for the CFA Exam in 3 Months?
Soleadea
3 months 3 weeks 6 days
CFA EXAM (HTTP://SOLEADEA.ORG/CFA-EXAM) / STUDY PLANS (HTTP://SOLEADEA.ORG/CFA-STUDY-
PLAN) / LEVEL 1 JUNE 2017, 3-MONTH
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3-month CFA Study Plan: Intro
This post tells you how to effectively prepare a 3month CFA study plan. You will definitely
find it worth reading no matter if you have already started studying or if you are about to open
the Curriculum for the first time today.
Apart from the study plan, you will find here 4 CFA level 1 topics categorisations together with
some relevant exam preparation hints designed to let you make the most of the upcoming 3
months.
Interested in different study plans? Click:
JUNE 2017 5-month CFA Level 1 Study Plan (http://soleadea.org/cfa-level-1-june-2017-study-
plan)
JUNE 2017 4-month CFA Level 2 Study Plan (http://soleadea.org/cfa-study-plan/level-2-june-
2017-4-month)
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Are you a Superhero?
Very Important: Your aim after reading this post should be to acknowledge what kind of a
learner you are: natural or supernatural one?
What kind of learner are you?
I am a supernatural learner possessing attributes worth a superhero.
I am a natural learner, which means I can acquire any kind of knowledge but I need a
sufficient amount of time to do this (as for the CFA exam, I would make do with these 3
months).
The thing is it is already September, which means there are (only) 3 months left before the
exam is due. This, in turn, implies lots of hard work for natural learners, who you hopefully
turn out to be.
Well, sometimes you may hear a story telling how someone passed the CFA exam after only
[choose the option applicable to the story:] 2 months/1 month/2 weeks/1 week/1 hour ;) of
pre-exam preparations.
However, it may prove right if you assume that you are not a Superhero.
It will surely turn out so much better if you take exam preparations (and the exam itself)
seriously. This can successfully prevent you from being among the 25% of CFA candidates who
do not even show up in the exam because they know they did too little to pass.
This blog post is a part of our CFA Study Plan Series (http://soleadea.org/cfa‐study‐plan).
Check it out!
Get blog email updates: (http://eepurl.com/HlWy9)
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CFA level 1 topics categorisations
There are 10 exam topics, which can be divided using different classifications. Below, you will
read about 3 possible categorisations we prepared for you plus 1 you will be guided how to
create.
Exam topics can be divided according to:
weights in the exam,
difficulty,
efficiency.
CFA topics – exam weight
CFA Level 1 Topic Weights
Financial Reporting & Analysis
Ethics
Quantitative Methods
Fixed Income Investments
Equity Investments
Topic
Economics
Corporate Finance
Portfolio Management
Derivative Investments
Alternative Investments
0 10 20
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The graph presents the most significant topics if their weights in the exam are taken into
account. The highestweight topics group includes:
Financial Reporting and Analysis (FRA), whose weight is as much as 20%,
Ethics, which takes 15% of all exam questions (also note that ethical issues are important
in the exam because of the ethics adjustment),
Quantitative Methods, which is given 12% in this classification.
Then comes another group of topics with the same weight of 10%. It consists of Fixed Income
Investments, Equity Investments and Economics.
The last group is made of 4 topics that are given less weight, namely Corporate Finance and
Portfolio Management (both with the weight of 7%), Derivative Investments (5%) and
Alternative Investments (4%).
Exam preparation hint
Spend more time on the topics with higher weights.
CFA topics – difficulty
Another criterion taken to categorise CFA exam topics is their difficulty. Contrary to the
weight criterion, this one is subjective, which means that the classification we propose below
need not work for you.
Our division is based on our observations during the courses we provided, as well as the
opinions of Soleadea users given mostly through questionnaires.
According to this classification, we distinguish 3 groups of topics: difficult, moderate and easy.
Note that the sequence of topics is very important here: the higher the position, the more
difficult the topic is.
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How do we define difficulty?
If a topic is said to be difficult, it means that the concepts it covers are considered difficult. It
does not have to mean it will take you long to acquire the topic.
Just the opposite, if you easily grasp mathematical concepts but you find it difficult to
memorise things and learn them by heart, you may feel that Equity Investments is a greater
challenge to you than Fixed Income Investments.
Difficult topics:
1. Fixed Income Investments,
2. Financial Reporting and Analysis (FRA),
3. Derivative Investments (a positive thing about DI is that although its concepts are
difficult, level 1 exam questions often prove much easier).
Moderate topics:
4. Ethics,
5. Economics,
6. Quantitative Methods.
Easy topics:
7. Portfolio Management,
8. Corporate Finance,
9. Alternative Investments,
10. Equity Investments.
Exam preparation hint
If you happen to really struggle with something while studying, you should consider
leaving it out and concentrating on some easier problems, of which you will be able to
acquire more in a shorter period of time.
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CFA topics – efficiency
The last classification we are going to present is about the efficiency of the topics.
Efficiency is understood as an average number of exam questions for a given topic per 100
pages of the CFA Curriculum and it is calculated using the following equation:
W×240 questions
E = × 100 pages
N
Where:
E – topic efficiency,
W – topic weight,
N – no. of pages on a given topic in the CFA Curriculum.
For example, if the efficiency for Ethics is 13, it means that in the exam you will find about 13
questions per every 100 pages on Ethics in the Curriculum.
CFA Topics Ef ciency (No. of questions per 100 pages)
14
12
10
0
FRA ETH QM FI EI ECO CF PM DI AI
Topic
Exam preparation hint
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If during your exam preparations you feel that you have to give up on certain topics, make
sure that Economics is the first to drop out. Do not give up on other topics too hastily.
CFA topics – your classification
The last division is yours to decide. You should consider your previous knowledge of topics. If,
for example, you took your finance lessons in the university or you work in finance, you will
definitely know some topics better than others. You need to take this into account while
preparing your 3month study plan in our CFA Study Planner (/user/register?
render=overlay&destination=studyplan).
Exam preparation hint
When planning your exam preparations, take into consideration what you already know.
CFA LEVEL 1 CURRICULUM = 3371 pages
Are you a Superhero?
If NOT, get down to work now using our FREE (registration required)
CFA Study Planner (/user/register?render=overlay&destination=studyplan).
If YES, why don’t you save the world instead of reading blog posts about the CFA exam ?
3-month CFA study plan
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Topic Deadline Study days
1 Quantitative Methods Mar 13, 2017 10
2 Portfolio Management Mar 17, 2017 4
3 Financial Reporting and Analysis Apr 7, 2017 21
4 Corporate Finance Apr 12, 2017 5
5 Equity Investments Apr 20, 2017 8
6 Derivative Investments Apr 25, 2017 5
7 Fixed Income Investments May 3, 2017 8
8 Alternative Investments May 5, 2017 2
9 Economics May 13, 2017 8
10 Ethical and Professional Standards May 20, 2017 7
11 REVISION TIME Jun 2, 2017 13
7-point summary
Let us recapitulate the key things you need to remember after reading this post:
1. There are 3 months left till the exam – so, not much time is left to lose.
2. Not everyone can be a Superhero ;).
3. You should spend more time on the topics with higher weights in the exam.
4. If you happen to really struggle with something while studying, you should consider
leaving it out and concentrating on some easier problems, of which you will be able to
acquire more in a shorter period of time.
5. If during your exam preparations you feel that you have to give up on certain topics, make
sure that Economics is the first to drop out. Do not give up on other topics too hastily.
6. When planning your exam preparations, take into consideration what you already know.
7. Soleadea offers a free CFA Study Planner (/user/register?render=overlay&destination=study
plan) to enable you to organise your preparations successfully. To get access, you only
need to register (complete in 30 seconds).
Posted in: Resources (/blog‐categories/resources)
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