What did Schweser miss?

Question

I once commented I should study from the curriculum instead of the Schweser. But the condensed Schweser is so hard to give up on. So, like anyone studying with a prep provider I have the usual questions, main one being what have they omitted? To rephrase that last sentence, what particular sections should I study from the CFAI curriculum if my primary study source is the Schweser? Differed Taxes comes to mind. What else? While we are at it, lets make a list for both Level 1 and 2 people for 2014 and 2015 for Level 1. Thanks.

Maverick · Answer

Hi Surangasa.Personally, I'm a December 2014 candidate for Level 1. At this time I am studying exclusively from the CFAI curriculum, so I couldn't comment on what Kaplan are missing out. However I plan to do things in reverse a bit. The CFAI take great pains to really expand some subjects which you wish they'd covered in 1 page rather than 5, but then you come up against a section that brings in a formula that is entirely unexplained, rather that you should already know what they are talking about in the new notation randomly introduced for a given function. You can take one of two approaches;- sit and try to wrap your head around it for an hour, look back in the book to see if you missed something, search for algebraic terms to see if they're just assuming that you happened to already pass an advanced mathematics course. Or you can just accept it, move on and see if you can come back to it later via another providers material or similar and make sense of it.I'm heading towards path two now. If something simply doesn't make any sense, don't fall behind in required reading, just note it, accept it and come back to it later with additional material or readings.Has anybody else found this to be the case?

ec_test · Answer

This is just a personal opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt. I am registered for the December 2014 Level 1 test and so far I've covered Ethics, Quants, and I'm half way through Econ. I have used both the CFAI curriculum and Schweser books to study and for those three areas this is my conclusion. For Ethics, I feel the Schweser books are better to grasp the basics of the concepts, but for practice the CFAI case studies are more suitable. The reason is that the wording is long and confusing which resembles the test closer. The Schweser Ethics practice questions are straight forward and easier to answer whereas the CFAI Institute practice questions are more complex. As for Quants, I went back and forth between both and feel they complement each other. I used both and feel I got a better grip of this section by using both books. For the Econ section, I'd go with the Schweser curriculum, it is so much better. The CFAI curriculum is unreadable and hard to grasp - I was an Econ for undergrad and grad school, and even then, I found it really hard to read of the CFAI books. I ended up reading the Schweser books for LOS 13, 14, 15, and 16, and referring back to the CFAI books to make sure Schweser didn't miss anything. I hope this helps. Sorry I can't provide feedback and the other areas, I'm still not there yet! :-/