June 2020 CFA Level 1 Study Plan & Tips

CFA exam / Study plans / Level 1 June 2020, 8-month

NEW STUDY PLANNER available for ALL LEVELS

It's still 8 months to go before your June 2020 CFA exam. Since you're reading this post – you must have already registered or you're thinking about it. You're about to start your preparation soon. But before you get down to books, you need to arrange your own CFA level 1 study schedule allowing for:

• your strengths,
• your weaknesses,
• your learning pace,
• your finance background.

You best know what are your strong and weak points but here we'd like to draw your attention to some key aspects: ability to prioritize, ability to plan, ability to act as planned, and ability to focus. Ask yourself how serious you are about your exam and whether you're able to organize your CFA exam preparation well and follow your plan effectively.

NOTE: It's no mistake to start your CFA level 1 preparation so soon. On the contrary, it may be a very prudent and responsible decision as long as you can manage your study time reasonably and use it to your advantage.

Your strengths (or weaknesses for that matter :/) may relate not only to time management, diligence, or determination but also to your previous knowledge of some of the topics gained as a student or at work. You may want to take this into account when making your study plan.

Remember that even with 8 months to go it is important to study systematically and at a suitable pace. The exam day will come sooner than you think and you want to be prepared for this day and then satisfied when the exam is over.

The CFA level 1 study plan you will find below is a good basis for your own 8-month study schedule. If you use our CFA Study Planner, you'll be able to adjust it to your needs, e.g. you’ll be able to allocate fewer study hours to those topics you are good at by marking them as ‘easy’. We say more about it at the end of this post.

Creating a CFA Level 1 Study Plan for June 2020

Basic information:

1. Starting date: 7 October
2. Ending date: 5 June, i.e. Friday before the exam
3. Final revision: 1 whole month before the exam

START on 7 October

FINAL REVIEW (4 May – 5 June)

END on 5 June

This plan follows the optimal topic order – topics come in quite natural pairs, where one is more challenging and one a bit easier, namely QM+PM, FRA+CF, FI+EI, DI+AI. Ethics starts and Economics ends your preparation. Also, apart from the final month of revision, there are 7 topic review sessions scheduled meanwhile.

*Topic difficulty is a rather subjective criterion (here as estimated by Soleadea expert). To learn more about it, see CFA topics categorization.

What is great about this CFA level 1 study schedule is that you will be able to study every topic thoroughly. You may as well read each topic twice. The final revision lasts roughly 30 days. Proper revision enhances your long-term memory and allows you to better recall things in your exam. There is really a lot of time and you should try to use it as effectively as possible.

Detailed CFA Level 1 Study Plan Timetabled

Here’s a table with all the topic deadlines for your June 2020 CFA level 1 study plan. You will also find the number of days devoted to each topic according to the schedule (incl. topic review). Given in the last column are also the most current CFA topic weights.

CFA Level 1 Topics	Schedule (Deadlines)	No. of Study Days*	June 2020 CFA Topic Weights
Ethics	20 Oct	22 days	15%
Quantitative Methods	10 Nov	23 days	10%
Portfolio Management	30 Nov	23 days	6%
Financial Reporting and Analysis	12 Jan	43 days	15%
Corporate Finance	26 Jan	16 days	10%
Fixed Income	23 Feb	19 days	11%
Equity Investments	10 March	15 days	11%
Derivative Investments	29 March	7 days	6%
Alternative Investments	5 Apr	8 days	6%
Economics	26 Apr	26 days	10%
Final Review	5 June	33 days	n/a

*Includes dedicated topic review sessions.

Your CFA Study Plan: 35 Weeks, 315 Study Hours

The topic deadlines are given in the table based on the 35-week exam prep (8 months). The study plan allows for the total of 202 study days plus 33 days of revision. However, with still 8 months to go, you need not study every day. By studying 3 hours 3 days a week, you get yourself as many as 315 study hours, which you can easily split into study time and review time.

In the paid versions of our CFA Study Planner, you can find separate blocks devoted to revision and get benchmark study times for all topics given on a weekly basis and allocated to every CFA reading one by one.

Want to Arrange This Study Schedule
to Your Needs?

Using our CFA Study Planner, you can personalize your study schedule. That's what you can do:

• choose the topic sequence,
• choose the exact starting date of your CFA exam prep (need not be today),
• decide for each topic if it's easy, moderate, or difficult to you (easy means you’re not new to the topic and you can cover the topic more quickly, difficult means you’ll need more time to study the topic),
• tick off the readings you have already studied (if there are such),
• choose if you want to take any weeks off studying and say when exactly,
• opt in for some aids to help your motivation,
• decide if you wish to add review sessions to your study schedule and fill in your study plan with study tools & review apps to support the productivity of your work,
• edit each study week by adding or deleting concrete readings.

Below you can see both calendar and weekly view of your 8-month CFA level 1 study plan:

Study Plan: Calendar View That’s where you can view all the weeks of your CFA exam prep to see how much you’ve done and how much is still ahead of you.

Your Current Week View You will be asked to focus on your current week of studying. Each week you will find some useful practice tools & compact study materials. At the end of the week, your hard work will be evaluated (hit the ‘Sum Up Current Week’ button).

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.