Which CFAI Volumes Give You The Biggest Bang For The Buck?
When I just started with my study for CFA Level 1 (June 2009), I thought I would go through the CFAI textbooks in order, saving Ethics for the very end of my study.
After seeing the CFA exam result (not mine) though, I’m thinking of, er, rethinking my strategy. The exam result looks roughly like this:
As you can see, we have a total of 240 questions for CFA Level 1 Exam. There are 36 questions on Ethical & Professional Standards. That’s a BIG chunk of the exam, especially considering that Ethics only take up 160+ pages of the CFAI Book 1, including many pages of optional materials, whereas Economics (24 questions) is one whole Volume 2 by itself with around 480 pages!
Conclusion: not every topic is created equal. Ethics is the lowest-hanging fruit of the bunch. Definitely one to read through first!
The rightmost column in the table below tells you which chapters give you the biggest “bang for the buck”; that is, the most number of questions covered by reading the least number of pages 
I’m thinking that after finishing Ethics (just left with GIPS now), I’ll go to either Volume 4 (covering 32 questions), or Volume 5 (covering 52 questions). I’ll skip Economics for now–there are simply too many pages (480+) with relatively too little number of questions covered!
(And somehow I find that Economics is very, very boring. Some people may find this a surprise–but I find Ethics and Quants a LOT more interesting than Economics. Oh well.)
November 18th, 2008 at 7:48 am
As an economics major, i am insulted!!! i find economics to be very interesting.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Sorry!!!
Chacun à son goût I guess…
November 19th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
[...] « Which CFAI Volumes Give You The Biggest Bang For The Buck? [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I passed L1 in last Dec towards the end of my senior year as a Finance major. If you have finance/econ/accounting education TRUST me when I say don’t waste your time with the CFAI books. I got over 70% on each section, studied 173 hours and didn’t use them. I didn’t even order them, starting with the June exam that was required. I bought the Schweser CFA study guide and Qbank. Best decision I made. The practice exams there were harder than the exam and the information was way more succinct.
December 14th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
J, I don’t have any educational background in finance/econ/accounting. But you know what? I bought Schweser QBank and I think they really rock! The notes are very thin too.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
hi…
Happy new year ..
i hve not seen u updating any notes.. It’s been long and wondering whether u hve stopped mkg notes..
I started with Eco.. as Quants after some point became too much to handle.. Target is to finish Eco and Quants by Jan.. hope so .. let’s c.. u tk ecre n all d best.. Keep updating ur blog on CFA regularly..quite a motivation to others..
Rgds
January 18th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Hi Mayura, Happy New Year!
Wish you all the best with your study… I have changed my strategy from what I’ve learned so far. My study notes will be frozen for now, for reasons I discussed in the post: http://blog.5m10y.com/2009/01/18/cfa-learning-strategies-for-old-people/
Take care, and good luck with the study! Only 140 days to go now…
January 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am
[...] I planned to go through the CFAI books in the order that I thought would give me the biggest bang for the buck. [...]
January 21st, 2009 at 11:35 am
does the page count only include actual txt?