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Choices of Study Materials

CFA Curriculum Structure

CFA curriculum is defined by the official study guide in terms of 2 main factors:

Official Text Books (assigned readings)

The official study guide specify a complete list of the textbooks required for each study sessions of the curriculum. The book pages & chapter-end questions assigned are also given in the guide. In other words, your assigned readings are very specificly defined for each topic areas.

LOS - Learning Outcome Statements

Reading-specific LOS are listed for each reading in each study session. In general, LOS help you understand how each reading addresses the learning objective for the topic, and for a particular reading the LOS indicate what you should be able to accomplish after studying that reading. Thus you should use the LOS to guide and focus your study.

Study Notes from CFA preparation product providers

Apart from the official assigned readings, there are quite a number of study notes published by some CFA prep product providers. Since they are VERY concise version of the CFA curriculum from NON-OFFICIAL SOURCES, we shouldn't consider these notes as a kind of complete substitute for the curriculum, especially for some complex topics.

Most popular study notes include Schweser, Stalla, and Shulman. I suppose Schweser is now the market leader of CFA prep products market (I guess more than half of the candidates use Schweser as their major study tool).

How to make Your OWN choices on Study materials?

I always emphasize that we should use a hyprid approach combining the merits of official text bks and study notes to prepare the test. We should also recognise that different people have different background and professional experience, and thus we should have different study approach. How to design your own approach and make a choice on your study materials? There is no easy answer, but 2 basic criteria should be noted to balance your study between text bks and study notes.

Academic and professional background

Available study time

My point is: The more you know about financial study, the less you can rely on official text bks. AND the Less study time you have, the more you should rely on study notes.

In other words, if you already have a finance/business/account degree, a good set of study notes may be pretty enough for test preparation on L1. You enquire text bks only when you have problem understanding the concepts presented in study notes. Regarding study time constraint, when you got very limited study time, of course, it is unwise to do your study in the time-consuming text bk way.

Bottom line: Always balance your study time/effort between text bks and study notes based on your academic/professional background and study time constraint.

More Info on:

Guide on text books

Choices of Study Notes

If U have any notes/study outlines, e-mail them to me. I will post them on the net for free download.

Comments or suggestions? Please e-mail me at normanhk01@yahoo.com.hk

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