The hardest part is not making a study plan. It is staying in control of your whole exam prep.
Weekly intervals are the best to control your CFA prep.
Controlling your prep is possible only if you get immediate and meaningful feedback.
CFA readings are not made equal. They differ with respect to length and difficulty. Plus, different candidates consider different things difficult or easy.
Proper CFA exam prep needs 2 phases: study time and final review. The duration of your final review should depend on the duration of your total exam prep.
When creating your CFA study plan:
You choose your start date and CFA exam date.
You choose your preferred topic sequence.
You choose your perceived difficulty of topics.
You choose holidays (if you want).
You can also check off the readings you studied (if you already started your prep).
What the app does and how to use it:
The app assigns CFA readings to study weeks. When assigning readings, it takes into account their length and difficulty.
There are 3 views: CALENDAR VIEW presenting all weeks with their readings inside, WEEK VIEW with the readings for a given week only (to focus on), and TOPIC VIEW, i.e. all topics and readings visually illustrated on a timeline.
You can take 3 major actions in the app: {1} change your readings’ *done* status, {2} sum up your weekly progress, {3} edit weeks (remove or add readings).
The KEY action to take is to summarize your current study week on weekend to be in control. During the summing-up, you mark your readings as done, partially done or not done. Then, you can edit your next week (e.g. add the overdue readings to it). Finally, you are redirected to CALENDAR VIEW where your readings are presented in a visual way: overdue are red, partially done are yellow, and done are green. More and more red is obviously bad (it’s your warning alarm!).
You can change your readings’ *done* status also during your study week (e.g. as you finish a given reading). The same goes for editing weeks – it’s all up to you.
After you summarize your current week, you’ll get your progress measured. Your Chance to Pass will either increase or decrease. This way you get both feedback and motivation .
Some weeks before your exam are scheduled for your final review. Special review tasks are suggested there for you to ensure better knowledge retention before the exam day.
What the app doesn’t do:
It doesn’t automatically add overdue readings to the next week and reschedule all other weeks after you sum up your current study week. WHY? Because the worst thing for you would be to realize too late that you’re stuck with a pile of readings impossible to cover before your exam. Immediate and meaningful feedback means you need to see your overdue readings red and lagging, not rescheduled as your next week readings. In other words, automatic rescheduling would suggest you are not behind the schedule while you are and you need some extra effort to catch up (if you edit weeks by yourself, you become aware of that!).
It doesn’t lie. Weekly control means successful execution. Without it, your study plan slowly goes to pieces. This truth gets harsher as your exam day is getting closer and too many readings are still overdue...
It doesn’t study for you. Without due effort, you won’t pass the CFA exam.
