You’ve passed Level I and are looking to register for the Level II exam. Well done!
You might have heard that it’s a lot to take in and are looking for study tips from other candidates. You’re in the right place!
Level II will help you develop deeper expertise in asset valuation and advanced analytical tools. Compared to the Level I exam, Level II has more multi-step calculations.
The importance of having a study plan and sticking to it stays the same as in Level I. It’s also worth taking some time to note down the areas that you had more difficulty with in Level I, and plan more time for them.
So, let’s dive into the tips.
Learn from other candidates
A good place to start is with advice from other candidates. When we asked them to vote online for their most useful pieces of study advice, nearly all of those who did picked either “consistent study hours” or “take practice questions”.
If you’re struggling to schedule your study, you may find it helpful to allocate consistent study hours and then build the rest of your commitments around them. That way you know you have your study plan under control, but can still deal with everything else – after all, life doesn’t stop just because you are studying. You might also find that studying smaller amounts on a regular basis helps you retain more information than trying to cover big chunks of the curriculum in occasional long sessions.
Practice, practice, practice
The usefulness of practice questions is something that comes through regularly from candidates – the message seems to be: “mock till you drop!” It’s invaluable because it not only tests your knowledge but also allows you to get more familiar with the exam and question structure. And that means you’ll be more prepared when it comes to the real thing.
This really matters for the CFA® Program Level II exam, because there are more multi-step calculations than in Level I, and you also have to navigate “vignette” questions, where you are given a scenario and then have to answer a number of multiple-choice questions related to it. It means you need to be used to absorbing and analyzing a longer text than in a Level I question – and practice will help a lot with that, particularly when it comes to organizing your time in the exam.
Three techniques to try
When you are working towards a second go at an exam, it can often be worth using a new study technique. It’s a way of keeping things fresh even though you are looking at the same material, and a different method might also help you retain information that you didn’t the first time around.
How you learn best is a very personal choice, but there are a lot of techniques out there that have been tried and tested over the years. Here are three for you to try:
Pomodoro® Technique – for distraction-free focus
Invented by Francesco Cirillo, the Pomodoro Technique aims to help you avoid distractions when you are trying to study. It emphasizes the importance of working on one task at a time and in small bursts, using something simple like a kitchen timer or smartphone timer app to keep you motivated and on track.
It’s all about breaking down a big curriculum into achievable bite-size chunks. Cirillo suggests working intensively for 25 minutes and then taking a five-minute break.
To-do lists are important, but just as important in the Pomodoro Technique is keeping a record of what you have learned. There’s no better way to keep your spirits up – and get a sense of real progress – than ticking off a list of small wins that build towards your bigger goal.
Feynman Technique – for deep understanding
Here’s a technique from Richard Feynman, who was a physicist but also a master of the art of simplification. The idea is that when you are learning a new or complex concept, you should work out how you would explain it in the simplest terms possible to someone who knew nothing about it.
That can be harder than it might sound, and you’ll soon find that learning in this way really tests whether you understand a topic deeply.
It can be a great method to try if you are part of a study group, where each member can choose a topic to explain to the others. But even if you’re studying alone, you’ll find that by acting as if you were teaching someone else, you’ll teach yourself better too.
Leitner System – for grading your knowledge
All of us know about using flashcards as a way to learn large amounts of information, but do we always use them effectively? It’s easy to lose sight of structure with lots of cards, and that can mean lots of wasted time.
The Leitner System, invented by German journalist Sebastian Leitner, builds on ‘spaced repetition’, which is the idea that if you review information regularly, but with longer intervals between each review, you’ll retain it better than intensive ‘cramming’.
The Leitner System combines this with flashcards that you keep grading according to how difficult you find them to remember. You set up a series of boxes in order of difficulty, and start with all your cards in the hardest one. When you recall a card correctly, you put it into the next easiest box in the sequence. Get it wrong, and it goes back to a harder box – and so on.
The harder a box is, the more often you test yourself on it. That means you will gradually focus your effort on the information you’re finding more difficult, while not neglecting what you’re more confident about.
Don’t forget the basics
It’s also important not to ditch those study techniques that worked well for you on Level I. The classics never go out of fashion. Work backwards from the date of your exam to create your study plan, to make sure that you cover all the material and don’t leave yourself a sudden panic with only one week to go.
Make sure you continually reinforce your learning. Don’t assume you will be able to do this when you reach the end of all the material – it’s much better to test yourself on each section of the curriculum as you study it, and this way you also avoid the risk of running out of time to revise at the end of your study.
Good luck!
Finally, tackling new topics, managing study time and persisting when you get to challenging subjects is part of the test already. “Keep going even when you don’t want to,” one candidate told us. It might be the most important piece of advice of all.
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