Recent College Grad, and new to banking.

Hey @matthewtara, I’m Chris, a recent charterholder.

1) Third party study materials help cut through the sheer volume of CFA Curriculum to go through. It depends on your study style, I’ve not tried Mark Meldrum (he’s more video-focused), but used Kaplan myself, just the standard notes package with practice exams. Heard good things for both, so you probably won’t go wrong there, just choose what you prefer.

2) It’s hard to ‘measure’ really, but you can’t be worse off for sure. As I’m already in Portfolio Management (apparently the most common route for CFA charterholders), it helped in terms of solidifying my reputation and made my case for promotion more straightforward. It’s pretty valuable / well recognized in the Asset management world by clients and employers hence I did it. But it is a versatile qualification for broader finance, and I wanted to have that option just in case. You’re still young and starting out, so it can be useful to have a broad certification in finance like CFA to open up options as you’re still discovering/exploring what career paths to pursue.