Successful candidates take an average of four years to complete the program

On the same page of the CFAI website they also post that you should take into account roughly 6 months of studying per exam. So I believe it includes preparation. Also, there is of course survivorship-bias in this statistic, as it only includes the people that actually passed all three levels and doesn’t include all the people that didn’t. Hope this helps! 🙂

@timbo since we are only taking “successful candidates” wouldn’t that confirmed the survivorship bias that @mm12 raised?

As in candidates who only completed 1 or 2 levels are not taken into account, otherwise the average might be ‘increasing’.

The only way I can think of on how to achieve the 4 years average is as follows:

Starts Level 1 in Dec:

Dec 10 – passed
Jun 11 – failed
Jun 12 – passed
Jun 13 – failed
Jun 14 – passed
Total 3.5 + 0.5 (6 months revision) = 4

Starts Level 1 in Jun:

Jun 10
Jun 11 – failed
Jun 12
Jun 13 – failed
Jun 14

Total 4 + 0.5 (6 months revision) = 4.5

Average = (4.5 + 4) / 2 = 4.25

However, these are only my assumptions.

@timbo – why care about average? You all here are way above average anyway 😉