FEB 2023 Level 1 CFA® Exam in 2 Months: Is It for Me?
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NEW STUDY PLANNER 4.0 available for ALL LEVELS
"It’s 2 months before the exam and I haven’t done much yet..." If that’s what you worry about, cheer up. Chances are not everything is lost. Read on to see if & how you can prepare for your level 1 CFA exam in just about 60 days.
Dealing With CFA Program Curriculum
Level 1 CFA Program Curriculum is over 3000 pages long (including end-of-reading questions), which means roughly 50 pages a day to go through over the following 60 days (without any day off).
The number of pages to cover is really huge.
If you work full-time, studying all of the content will give you a hard time and – most probably – will turn out impossible. That's why you need to make some tough calls.
AVAILABLE FOR ALL LEVELS
Think about Economics, for example. If you look at your curriculum, this topic is very lengthy compared to its weight in the level 1 CFA exam (only 8% to 12%) but it's quite intuitive in many aspects. To economize on time, you may want to consider giving up some Economics readings (you don't have to pass each topic to pass your CFA exam). On the other hand, spend enough time and energy on the most important level 1 topics, namely Financial Statement Analysis and Ethics, because the higher the topic weight – the greater the number of topic questions per exam session (plus there's ethics adjustment).
That's our general recommendation. But to make these 2 months of study worth its effort, you have to decide what topics to focus on by yourself.
And focus you must!
First, prioritize the topics. While doing so – consider your previous knowledge of topics (any finance courses you took? work experience in finance?) and the recommendations we gave above.
Then, decide on the optimal study technique.
In the CFA Program Curriculum, you will find lots of examples, exhibits, or end-of-reading questions with solutions. You might want to concentrate on these fragments of books because they may help you acquire the required study content. They are a great source of knowledge and – very often – serve as the basis for exam questions. Moreover, exam questions are based on Learning Outcome Statements defined for every reading (module). So, when preparing for your exam: focus on different kinds of examples and problems given in the Curriculum, as well as analyze the LOSes instead of reading whole study sessions.
Organizing Your CFA Exam Prep
With only about 60 days to the exam, you also definitely need a good study plan that you will strictly obey.
Here's some basic information about your FEB 2023 level 1 CFA exam in 2 months:
- Starting date: 12 Dec 2022
- Ending date: 13 Feb 2023
- The FEB 2023 level 1 exam window lasts from 14 to 20 February 2023. So, you can have 1 or 2 weeks of – what we call – Final Review. Basically that's when you should do as many mock exams as possible!
- Using our Study Planner, you can choose your topic sequence. This is what we propose for such an intensive 2-month course:
CFA Exam Topic Deadlines: Detailed 2-Month Schedule
| Level 1 CFA Exam Topics | FEB 2023 Deadline Schedule |
|---|---|
| Quantitative Methods | 16 Dec 2022 |
| Portfolio Management | 22 Dec 2022 |
| QM+PM Review | 23 Dec 2022 |
| Financial Statement Analysis* | 2 Jan 2023 |
| Corporate Issuers* | 7 Jan 2023 |
| FSA+CI Review | 9 Jan 2023 |
| QM+PM Review | 9 Jan 2023 |
| Fixed Income | 14 Jan 2023 |
| Equity Investments | 17 Jan 2023 |
| FI+EI Review | 19 Jan 2023 |
| QM+PM+FSA+CI Review | 19 Jan 2023 |
| Derivatives | 22 Jan 2023 |
| Alternative Investments | 24 Jan 2023 |
| DER+AI Review | 26 Jan 2023 |
| QM+PM+FSA+CI+FI+EI Review | 26 Jan 2023 |
| Economics | 31 Jan 2023 |
| Ethics | 4 Feb 2023 |
| ECO+ETH Review | 5 Feb 2023 |
| Final Review | 13 Feb 2023 |
* Before 2022, CFA Program curriculum referred to Financial Statement Analysis as Financial Reporting and Analysis (FRA for short) and to Corporate Issuers as Corporate Finance.
NOTE:
If you set up your personalized study plan,
the deadlines will get adjusted.
AVAILABLE FOR ALL LEVELS
REALLY-REALLY-IMPORTANT:
- Not everyone will be able to follow this plan – it's mainly intended for individuals with a good finance background who need some time to revise their knowledge (or the adrenaline addicts willing to take up the challenge but realistic enough to accept a possible failure).
- It's cruel, but if you decide to follow this plan, you should forget about your private life and spend every minute of your spare time studying – study at work (make sure you don't get fired for this, though), during lunch break, while on your way to work, etc. Every minute counts! Here's how you can do this:
Main Piece of Advice To Guide Your Preparation
You should practice, practice, and never stop practicing. There's no time to read all of the CFA exam books page by page but you can make use of our short e-books (printable notes) available inside your study plan.
As soon as you take in the key concepts of CFA exam level 1 topics, you should do as many exam-type questions, tests, and mocks as you can. To this end, you can use:
- end-of-reading questions (in the CFA Program Curriculum),
- mock exam provided by CFA Institute,
- our online mocks in the 2023 CFA exam format,
Inside our CFA Exam Study Planner you can also find:
- VIDEO APP with some bite-sized videos explaining many level 1 concepts,
- TEST APP with tons od exam-type questions that can be generated into various practice tests,
- FORMULAS APP with relevant formulas for each topic.
LEVEL 1 & LEVEL 2
You can benefit from all this even when on the go! Soleadea is accessible at any moment of your day on your smartphone:
- listen to our brief videos on your headphones,
- generate & do short practice tests when you’ve got a minute,
- learn or repeat formulas when you’ve got a sec.
IMPORTANT! If you set up your study plan and activate your account, you'll be able to access all our study materials and use them for your study & revision at – what we call – 'pay-what-you-want' price. Yes, that's right! You can choose what you pay for using our videos, exam-type questions, mocks in the 2023 format, and more!
Here’s a sample level 1 CFA exam study schedule as displayed in our new Study Planner 4.0:
FIND your Study Plan in the PLAN tab View all the weeks of your CFA exam prep, see how much you’ve done and how much is still ahead of you, as well as customize your schedule using your Study Plan personalization options and the DRAG & DROP for both topics and study weeks.
CFA Exam Study Planner: STUDY View You will be asked to focus on your current week of studying. You will know what to study (left-hand menu) and how much to study (benchmark study times). Here, you'll also find your study lessons, including videos, tests, PDFs, etc. At the end of the week, your hard work will be evaluated (hit the SUM UP button).
CFA Exam Study Planner: PROGRESS View You will be able to see your progress by topics and weeks. Each week your Chance to Pass score will go up or down.
CFA Exam Study Planner: REVIEW View To learn, you must review. Use the special view of your Study Planner to review your study lessons, rewatch videos, revise formulas, etc.
Last Update: Nov 17, 2022
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