CFAI Level 3 curriculum – how long does it take to read? (my experience to date: 79 hours)

Ok, I know this will depend on the individual, but for Level 3 I decided to time how long it took me to read the curriculum cover-to-cover (not in one sitting).  

Approximately 79 hours.  

That excludes End of Chapter practice questions, and within that were a few patches that I probably skipped through a little fast, but equally there were areas that I read twice and/or became distracted.  While the 79 hours is a fairly arbitrary number, I have re-read a few of the Readings and found that on the second time through I am able to cover the material roughly 30% – 40% faster than the first time through (I highlighted extensively on the first read).  That said, my attention span is much shorter the second time round as it’s fairly boring, so I am probably going to turn my attention to the end of chapter Summary.  No surprise that topics I scored poorest on also tend to take (page-for-page) the longest to read.

I have no doubt that Kaplan (or any of the other third party providers) could substantially reduce the reading time, and perhaps help concentrate the candidate’s attention on the most obviously testable stuff (I felt some readings had sections with a lot of words but not much substance), but equally it hopefully provides some perspective of the finite time commitment one may need to make if they only want to use the CFAI material (as I have also done on Level 1 & 2).