I haven’t done a practice exam yet – just the practice problems that are at the end of each reading. Many people seem to be recommending Schweser and I will probably bite the bullet and place an order with them eventually. Was going to do so a while back but got a little sticker shock at the price (though it’s definitely not cheap for me to have to keep taking the same exam over and over!).

I chose index ETFs over index funds just because the commission is cheaper with my online trading service. Not a day trader either!

I definitely felt the same anxiety you are experiencing that there was no possible way that I could remember all of the material but, drilling through problems again, again and again seemed to serve its purpose for me [hopefully not too simplistic of a view?!?].

One thing on practice exams: I did not do my first practice exam until about 4 weeks before the actual test. In retrospect, it would’ve been nice to do the first runthrough sooner than that to give myself time to absorb and work through problems more than I was able to leading up to the exam. I used the Schweser books and found them to be quite useful and eventually worked through problems only using these books….

In an aside here, I really like what you said about needing to find a new trading strategy after learning about financial statement analysis and earnings management in particular. It does make stocks difficult to analyze now I would think when isolated using stock screens since fraud is something that is next to impossible to easily screen for; no problem with ETF’s in my mind though but I am not a day trader! As you said in your other post, at least it’s ‘anything but money market funds’ but who would’ve thunk that investment firms would even be concerned about mm funds with SIV’s and even agency paper exposure due to the subprime credit mess!

-Bob

Bob – thanks for the comments and congrats on passing! Even with 103 days left I feel enormously pressed for study time. Having a lot of fun learning so much but am afraid it’s all going in one brain cell and out the other.

-Lumilog

Loving your comment about how most candidates take one of two approaches – 1) memorization, or 2) understanding concepts. I think it was very tough for me to follow 2) even though one of the general partners at my firm told me that was really the key to it all. I think in the last few weeks of “crunchtime”, I stopped being as worried about memorization as just getting these concepts down and really knowing the ins and outs of the material…I

‘m happy to say that I passed Level I in December! Will not be taking Level II until next June though as the wife and are hoping to be first-time homebuyers but best of luck to you in June! I know you’ll do just fine…thanks for the continued insights on your study path…

Eric…

3 hours is the max I’ve ever put in for a single day – and it’s amazing how much you can get through in that time. Motivation is never my problem – just finding the free time.

My approach so far has been to read the chapter and work all example problems and test problems at the end of each reading, taking care to understand the ones I’ve missed. So except for the occasional times when I find myself totally lost, I only hit each problem & each page 1 time.

I’m hoping I’ll have time leftover to go back and work the problems at least a 2nd time before test day. No doubt I can be ready by December – but June will be a stretch!

Thanks for the comments.
-Lumilog