CFA® Level I Candidate
March 3rd, 2007
Seeing as how my MBA was such an amazing success and having discussed it during several interviews and having recently been given a surprise online quiz basically about my status as a candidate even though it was not a requirement for the job if you had an MBA, I’ve decided to officially enroll. I’m now a CFA® Level I Candidate.
What this means is I’ve committed to studying at least 250 300 hours and taking an extremely hard test, in order to be able to study even longer and take an even harder test. Only one in five people who register for the certification program complete it. The first test actually has had the highest failure rate as it weeded out the uncommitted. Apparently I am committed enough to pass all three CFA exams.
Standard I(C) Misrepresentation
You know what is worse than being uncommitted, being blatantly dishonest. I’ve had an extremely long and extremely painful last ten years or so. Many people who insisted they were my “friend” turned their back on me and left me to die. I’ve learned many painful lessons on who can be trusted. Despite all that I stayed a CFA Candidate for longer than was probably sane. It took me a long long time to find a post-MBA career and it was while trying to find the proverbial better job that I discovered Abhishek Chaudhary had decided it would be a good idea to steal my intellectual property.
I assure you I will not take this outright theft of hundreds of hours of my labour lying down. It is even worse for Abhishek Chaudhary if he is a Charterholder or Candidate because his actions may be a violation of Standard I(C) Misrepresentation as he publicly claimed copyright over files I created and uploaded to my website over a decade ago.
If you’re a CFA Level 1 Candidate I advise you to not be like Abhishek Chaudhary. Do not take credit for other people’s hard work.
More Advice for Level 1 CFA Candidates
Every exam results day, it seems like everything I’ve ever written about the CFA exam is being reread by random strangers. I actually passed the CFA Level 1 exam, but most definitely not on my first attempt. So candidates seeking advice may want to consult that post or one of the ones below:
- Free CFA Study Materials
- 30 questions a CFA Level 1 candidate should be able to answer
- My Personal Collection of CFA Flash Cards
Finally Andrew McKay, CFA
It officially took until August 25th 2022 for me to get to add three more letters after my name on my resume. Now finally I’m updating a couple old blog postings because yes, I did indeed complete the program much to the surprise of the haters online and off.
I can not advise blogging about being a CFA Candidate or even blogging in general especially if you’re gone through too many nights like these.
Because rest assured that even after 15 years there are people online who will hide behind their handles and VPNs to post on an obscure website of reddit rejects an entire thread about your blog. Perhaps this website will ultimately go the way of their sister site in hate Kiwi Farms. These forums are populated by people having nothing better to do with their life than scour the Internet looking for people to hate for no other reason than they are different.
They also can’t communicate apparently unless they use gifs and unlike the case of Fussbett Sanitario I am not dignifying the website with a link let alone wasting my time writing an entire post about them. They can enjoy this clip from giphy and remember that crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Personal Improvement and tagged: CFA®, Exam, Finance.
Well done passing the cFA level 1 exam. CFA level 2 is the real hurdle. good luck on your preparation.
I’m unemployed, so I stopped pursuing the CFA in order to try and actually earn a living… I may still register for Level 2 in June, I was hoping to have a job by now. I’m waiting to hear back about two, possibly three jobs but things have been tough for a long time for me. I try to help people, it is a character flaw. My writings on the CFA Level 1 exam have become popular because I passed and I gave away study materials that took 100s of hours to create. My ROI on the CFA is negative, just like the ROI on my MBA.
Helping people is not a character flaw. At the end, the return will be positive. I wish you the best on your research.
I finished the second book, it was a lot different than the first, only two chapters had any sample questions at all. That is not to say there wasn’t formulae in the other chapters just no questions to practice with.
I actually think the chapters that are just reading are better for me. I can read anywhere, though on the bus or in the gym, or even at lunch is tough. I’m using a two bookmark system. One bookmark is where I’ve read to, the other bookmark is where I’ve typed notes to, I generally read ahead and highlight and type up my notes later when I have access to a desk or table.
I of course will be revisiting my notes, the sample questions, and likely an entire pool of additional sample questions once I’ve completed the reading. I’m roughly on schedule, sometimes I fall a day or two behind, but I really prefer to be ahead of schedule then I don’t have to feel guilty when I do something other than study for the CFA.
I’ve made so many sacrifices over the last five or six years, hopefully one day it will be worth it…
Another observation I’ve had is the existance of optional material. At first I was reading it, but in chapter 32 for instance most of the chapter was optional. The reason there is optional material in the official study material is I believe they licence entire chapters and sections from other books. I was reading the optional material at first by why bother, I have so much material to learn already, shame about paying for optional material though.
I finished the first three study sessions which compose Book 1. Things like NPV were review but statistics in particular had new material to me. I’ve never been particularly good at statistics. I will definitely have to revisit this material.
One of my early complaints is not all chapters require the same approximate amount of time. They all don’t have to be the same number of pages and I actually planned my studying around the study sessions as I’d been instructed to. I don’t think all the study sessions are the same amount of work. The first book has only three study sessions and many sample problems at the end of most chapters. Book two has almost no sample problems but study session four is eight chapters long rather than the four I’d grown accustom too.
Doing the sample problems takes a lot of time and I will be redoing them or ones very similar many times before I write the actual test, but when I made my study schedule I allocated approximately the same number of days to each study session. I think this may have proven a bit naive.
Each book has a glossary, but I think each book has the same glossary. I was going to review the glossary at the end of each book, but since it contains terms that weren’t even in the readings… I may make some sort of definition testing apparatus (flash cards perhaps) for the glossary, but not until closer to the exam. I have a pretty good memory, I’m more concerned with the quantitative and reasoning questions than definitions.
Although I spend more time lurking at Sherdog (which is an absolute zoo of an online forum) I’ve also tried to check out Analyst Forum from time to time. I think once you’ve covered the material initially being able to ask peers questions will be a big asset. Of course it relies on other people knowing the material and voluntarily helping you. After my MBA I’m not so sure of the benefits of voluntarily helping others.
My 19 pounds of official Level I curriculum books have finally arrived. That’s six inches of reading material. The six volumes cover:
Volume one should contain considerable new material, but the next four volumes were all covered to a degree by courses I took during my MBA. Although I studied venture capital, real estate investment, even options volume six might contain a few surprises.
I’ll probably start this weekend and I’ll eventually have to buy one of the official calculators to perform the practice problems, over and over.