Passing CFA Level 1 in a month with the curriculum

Hello fellow candidates and charters,

I don’t recommend trying to pass the course in 1 month, however if some of you find yourself in this position (with only the curriculum as study material), this is how I did it:

Profile: 
– Candidate for CFA Level 1 Dec 2018
– Last year bachelor student (Business & Engineering: majors Finance & IT)

Result:
Top percentile: Quants ; Corp Fin ; Equity Inv ; Alt Inv
Passing score: Econ ; Fixed income ; Financial report ; Portfolio 
Between 50-70: Ethics

How I studied:
1) Per Reading start by carefully analysing the Learning Outcome Statements so you know what you should really focus on. 
2) Then read through the curriculum (skipping the sections marked as ‘optional’)
3) If the reading presents example questions, DON’T read them but already try to make them autonomously.
4) At the end of the reading analyse the summary and make a link with the LOS.
5) Make the Practice Problems (fully autonomous, no looking back).

If your score is higher then 85% => mark as completed
If your score is higher then 50% => mark as to revise
If your score is lower then 50% (this never happened to me), I would suggest to try to answer the LOS and if you can’t then revise those topics.

6) At the end of each Volume, retry all the Practise Problems that aren’t marked as completed.

7) Repeat 1-6 for each Volume.

Try to finish all volumes preferably 3 days before the exam (I finished only 1 day before exam day…, I lost some points there)

8) Revision
Read the LOS and reflect (try to answer, and check in the reading if your correct).
Then read the reading-summary.
Do this for the whole volume.

Only after doing the above for the whole Volume: make all the Practice Problems for this particular volume one after another.

Comments:
Being a student is a huge advantage since studying will be much easier (you do it all the time), furthermore having a background in Math, Econ, Finance, Accounting will make some readings look more like revision. 

If you aren’t a student (and working a FT job) I think it is highly implausible to pass in a month by only using the curriculum. It is far to comprehensive to do in less then a month, so in such a situation I would recommend using external notes/summaries (Schweser, …) although I don’t have any experience with them.

Below my study routine (as you can see once I had a plan on how to tackle the material I sped up tremendously doing the last 5 volumes in 18 days)

Good luck to you all !