Starting L2. How to do L2 differently to L1?

Starting early is always a great plan, but lots of practice exams as well; the essays are the concern for L2/L3, so you’ll want to see as many examples as possible once you’re done digesting the material (which itself is going to be a 15-20hr/week job for several months). Good luck!!!

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Starting early is always a great plan, but lots of practice exams as well; the essays are the concern for L2/L3, so you’ll want to see as many examples as possible once you’re done digesting the material (which itself is going to be a 15-20hr/week job for several months). Good luck!!!

Hold up. There are essays in L2?

Probably means vignette questions for L2, not essays.

I did, yes… sorry; vignettes for L2/L3, MC for L2, MC/essays for L3.

Level 2 is all about application of concepts via formulae. You learn a formula, then practice every imaginable way of applying it – usually incorporating other formulae into a step by step method. This is where, in my opinion, so many people fall down as they don’t appreciate just how thoroughly the CFAI will test their understanding of how to apply the concept through a formula.

Best advice I was given on L2 and what I attribute my pass to, was to go through every single LOS that has calculate in and write down that formula in notation, words and as a worked example. Then go through and practice them. Over and over again. Make use of the EoC questions and blue-box examples, working through them to understand why the answer is what it is.

3rd parties do help a lot in understanding this application, you can easily get stuck on a concept and waste lots of time trying to figure it out (especially in FRA and Bonds). Classes are unnecessary, all providers do videos that are in enough detail to understand what to do.

Just make sure you do enough practice.

I remember with L2, it wasn’t just that there was more stuff to study, but the amount of things to study are more in depth – so an increase in volume and difficulty.

Starting early definitely helps, but making time to study consistently weekly is more important. As an associate in a bulge bracket firm, I can only imagine it’s rather impossible for you to study on weekdays, but if you can protect your weekends free from work, it is still feasible because I just studied solely on weekends like 8-10 hours a day to make up for it.

Classes may be tough time wise, UNLESS:

a) your firm allows you to go on classes during weekdays, which gives you an opportunity to leave work on time/earlier than normal, and

b) you can still protect your weekends for extra self study

You may want to consider saving some holidays to take 1 whole week off before exams (more if you can afford it), I found that really helpful to not be distracted by work commitments and solely focus on practicing and reviewing.

More practice exams for sure. I only had about 2 months to study for L2 but I did like 7 practice exams.