L2 – when to start?

From my first year, when I was a member of my local CFA Society, I attended a meeting at which study strategies and statistics were given and there was a Q&A. The survey they presented demonstrated that the most successful candidates began study in January, and those who began in September, as I had, were less likely to pass. I think the biggest reason might be burnout.

Nonetheless, Level I is not Level II, and Level II is a beast.
My own idea to give myself two weeks per Study Session, followed by 4 weeks revision and mock exam time, for Level III, would have me start study next Monday!

I think this is too soon. It’s summer, here in the Northern Hemisphere, and I want to enjoy my freedom to go out, see friends and family, read books again, watch films in the cinema, and just soak up some sunshine (as I so often couldn’t when I was preparing for the exam).

If you can consistently and with discipline study at least 2 hours per weekday night and at least 4 hours per weekend day, maybe you’ll be fine with a January start. Have a read through the L2 syllabus, even if you haven’t signed up, you can find the entire LOS listed on the CFA Institute website. There you can make a semi-educated guess as to how long you think you’ll need to understand all of that.
I started in October one year, and failed, then in October again the next year, and passed. Strategy is important!

I would recommend starting in January as well, with a clear plan on how to use your allocated time. Burnout is a real issue – I started in Sept for one of my attempts and hit a ‘hump’ where I was demotivated, not studying, and not doing much useful.

Good
answers here but the key points are you must have a strategy and yes, burn out
is real. Thing with L2 is it is deep, very deep. It’s quite hard to explain how
deep it is until you are quite a way in and start doing the second pass at EoC
questions and that can panic a lot of people when you do your first past paper
and get 40%!

There are
a huge number of calculations to do and unlike L1, you can’t just learn the
formula and move on. You need to understand how that formula works in the
context of what they’re going to ask. If there are 5 steps to a problem, they
may ask about step 2 and 4 or 1 and 3 etc. so you’ve got to know every part of
how it works. That takes time.

There
isn’t a fixed best time to start as everyone is different, but you need to a)
give yourself enough time to digest the concepts. b) give yourself enough time
to PRACTICE each section THOROUGHLY and c) do lots of vignette style questions
to feel comfortable about how they are going to ask these questions (this is underrated,
you need to do this).

The best
advice I read after failing L2 the first time (passing the retake) was to 1)
give yourself 500 hours to read and practice everything in the syllabus (I didn’t
do that but still scraped through, I would have been much more comfortable had I
followed that advice) 2) go through the syllabus and highlight everywhere it
says calculate, then write each formula out in words and a worked example, then
do 5 example questions on that formula (doesn’t have to be complex just putting
different numbers into the worked example). 3) do every EoC questions multiple
times especially the vignette questions as you need practice time on Vignette
and EoC chapter questions are part of the curriculum!

However long
it takes you personally to do those things, that is when you start. 300hours
have a good write up on the reality of hours require per week vs when you start
(link at bottom). Personally, I feel that starting really early and just drip-feeding
bits in can be useful but not really getting into the “lock yourself away
all night” phase until after January. 6 months is a long time and burning
out in the last month is a real problem. If you were going to start early, then
I’d suggest starting with the strategy stuff like reading how vignettes work
from the EoC questions even if you don’t know the answer – hint, the questions
are chronological down the page but sometimes a big passage will have 1 question
then a single sentence can have 3*. Also, working through the all the calculate
LoS’ without the pressure of a study schedule was a big help for me as they can
take quite a bit of time to do properly (especially derivatives) and
understanding the mechanics of the formula really helped when I then sat down
to do the reading and had some context for the concept.

https://www.300hours.com/how-long-to-study-for-cfa/#.W6DEeflReM8

Edit – *This is how the vignette questions are laid out in EoC, End of section test and past papers; I couldn’t possibly comment on what they were actually like in the exam.