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
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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.