Level 2 in June starting studying today

Sure, I'll take a swing at it. Basically an ideal situation would for you to finish a first read through/skim of the material by the 2nd week of May tops. Try to take off the last 7-10 days before the exam if possible.

Play to your strengths in terms of what you read first (if you're a recent undergrad do the corp finance section first; it's your typical school stuff with WACC/CAPM).

Then I would all in equity/fixed/portfolio. Save a weekend to do all derivs (its only ~100-120 pages of actual reading). Skip economics entirely as a subject (~550 pages for 10%, not worth it).

Quant you can skim if you still remember basic statistics from school/work (probability, present value of $$, etc). Only thing you'd need to take away is the calculations (portfolio variance, return, standard deviation), the normal distribution assumptions (1 SD = 67%, 2 = 95%, 3 = 99%), the non normal distribution (Chevonolv or w/e) and confidence intervals/1 + 2 tailed tests.

And basically the last 10 days of your read through should be split between Ethics + FRA. These two constitute 35% of the exam and you should not skim them. Ethics will probably take ~2 days to read through 1 day for real notes (its ~230 pages - read all of it. Note all the recommended/required procedures for compliance and know the difference. Highlight anything that's singled out, like mosaic theory or soft dollars).

For accounting don't get caught up in the details. There's a lot of extra information. Skim/review the chapters, look at the problems, and then refine your knowledge from there. It's easy to spend way too much time here.

Make a formula sheet for every chapter you read and have it ready for your last 3 weeks. Basically all this time will go to doing problems. Write a few mocks (you can google old copies online, and CFAI provides you with one). Any question you get wrong write down and do every AM till its memorized. Any question you cant answer immediately flag and review the concept.

You repeat this until you're confident about most questions. I would also do the EOC for atleast FRA, Ethics (only 40 ques), and 2 more subjects (I chose FI/Equity). If you know the EOC cold for those it'll add up to ~55% and you're pretty much guaranteed to pass (assuming you've memorized/aced all the EOC).

Imo the best thing to do the last 2 nights before the exam is EOC - in a row. Day before Level 2 I spent 6 hrs going over 2009/2014 EOC for equity and there wasn't a single question that surprised me the next day. The questions are written in a very similar manner with a few #'s changed.

Sorry, I just threw a wall of text at you but this is how I've studied mostly towards the end for Level 1 + 2. I plan to do the same for Level 3 (starting to study On April 10th).

/r/CFA Thread Parent