Study Plan

The CFA Institute recommends at least 250 hours study for each exam. Depending on your current knowledge of finance/economics/accounting etc. this may increase or decrease the minimum amount needed. I am definitely making sure I give myself more than this even though one of my majors is finance. I'm not leaving anything to chance..

They also recommend spending 10-15 hours a week on 1 study session for a total of 18 weeks. This sounds reasonable so I have taken that into account when making my study schedule:

Since my studies at university will take priority until June (there's no way I want to fail those exams), I have set aside 8 hours a week, Monday-Saturday for CFA exam study. I work on Sunday but I want to have Sunday as a "buffer day" to catch up on study and revision if I'm up for it.

I have already started studying session 1 (on ethics) which is available online from the CFAI website. I'm going through it slowly and I think I'll only need a week to finish it when I start my study plan next week. With 8 hours study a week, I think I can do a study session every 2 weeks until June. With university exams on that month, I may not be able to study that much in that period. So I've set myself a goal to finish 4 SS's by the end of June.

After that, I will review my study plan and increase my study hours to a level so I complete a SS each week. At that rate, I will finish studying the curriculum by the start of October, which leaves be with 9 weeks until the exam. I have 7 mock exams to do for practice so I think I'll do one a week from October 20th. After I do them, I will use the rest of the week to go over the answers and study more in the areas I did not do well in. By the time the exam comes on December 7th, I should be well prepared to get the minimum 70%.

What do you think about this schedule? Is it too little study? I honestly don't think you can do too much for it...Do you have any suggestions to make it better? What are your experiences with study and how did you do with your exams? Let me know.

220 days until the Level 1 exam.