As you count down to the Level III CFA exam, use these strategies to earn the marginal points needed to pass.
- Participate in study groups. Overconfidence bias is a classic mistake for the L3 candidate. When studying solo for the exam, you naturally “think” you know what you know. Preparing with other well-equipped candidates pushes you and challenges your understanding—in a good way. It’s better to be challenged before the exam than on exam day. At LevelUp BootCamps? we connect candidates and form weekly study groups for this very purpose. It works!
- Mosaic perfection. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew which topics are likely to appear on the exam? In fact, the CFA Institute conveys that information to candidates in the CFA curriculum. There is a tell-tale sign—what we refer to as “mosaic perfection”. When you find the intersection of examples, problems, and exhibits in the curriculum, it is more than likely that topic will be on the exam. At LevelUp BootCamps we focus on this mosaic perfection within the curriculum and ignore the outside noise.
- Verbalization. When you learn a foreign language, you do not attain mastery until you have spoken it. Listening, writing, and watching others speak the language don’t equal fluency. This principle applies to the L3 exam—you’ve only mastered the questions and solutions once you’ve spoken them. Have you ever given a presentation and remembered that topic for years? The same works for the L3 curriculum. Speak it until you know it. Our weekly live classes encourage candidates to speak the solutions.
- Typing. You type all day at work so you must be good at typing, right? You read CFA questions, guess the solution, and then read the solution. That all works right? Then why is the pass rate below 50%? You need to take out a spreadsheet and create cells to type your solutions to the problems. Just make sure you work the right problems (see #2).
- Texas Two Step. You covered a topic three months ago and haven’t looked at it since. Now what? It takes forever to get back up to speed on that topic and you’re running out of time before the exam. Practice the weekly step back and review. Find a time slot, i.e. Sat morning for two hours, to dive into a difficult topic, rework the problems, and review the reading summary. Waiting for two or three months to pass by is a losing strategy.
The L3 CFA exam is one of the hardest exams you will face and less than half of you will pass. It isn’t just about reviewing study notes and working q-banks—there are far more factors that contribute to your success. Visit levelupbootcamps.com to discover more marginal gains that will help you pass the L3 exam!
