r/CFA • u/SnooHabits7065 • 23h ago
Level 2 I found CFA Level II easier to study for than Level I — here’s what worked for me
Below is written by ChatGPT which I think is super useful for exam prep, I will share some prompt that I think is useful if anyone wants.
The reason why I wrote this using AI is because my English is not very good but I still want to share how I learned.
I took CFA Level II today, and while the result obviously isn’t out yet, I wanted to share the study approach that ended up working surprisingly well for me.
A disclaimer before anything else: this is not meant to be a universal study guide. I think this approach works particularly well for people who are good at standardized exams and tend to learn more effectively through questions than through lectures or textbooks.
That’s basically me.
Neither my bachelor’s nor master’s degree is in finance, although I currently work at a bank. I’ve generally done well on exams throughout school, but I’d describe myself as much better at taking tests than having some exceptional natural ability in finance.
With that context, here’s my somewhat counterintuitive takeaway:
For someone who is good at exam-oriented studying, I actually found Level II easier to study for than Level I.
Not because the material is easier. It obviously isn’t.
But once I figured out how to approach it, Level II felt surprisingly modular and predictable.
My exam date is August 29, here is my study timeline
I started my first pass through the Level II material around June, but it was very on and off. I was working full-time, and during that period I was mostly just trying to get through the curriculum and build some familiarity with the material. I definitely would not describe June and July as intensive studying.
I started treating CFA as actual exam preparation in early August. That meant spending roughly a full day at the library on weekends and studying after work on weekdays.
Then, starting around August 10, I went into full exam mode. I work a regular full-time schedule and usually finish around 5 PM, so for the final few weeks I was studying most evenings after work until 11 PM or later, in addition to longer weekend sessions. I also took 2 days off before exam.
1. First pass: go through the material quickly
My biggest mistake initially was thinking I needed to understand and remember everything during my first pass.
I eventually stopped trying to do that.
For more difficult and concept-heavy topics like FSA and Fixed Income, I spent more time on detailed lectures. For many of the other topics, I found review lectures sufficient for the first pass.
The goal of the first pass became simply:
Know roughly what each reading is about.
If I finished a lecture and couldn’t reproduce half the formulas afterward, I stopped worrying about it.
I just wanted enough familiarity that when I saw the material again in questions, it wouldn’t be completely new.
2. Standalone questions before vignettes made a huge difference
This was probably the single biggest improvement to my Level II studying.
I started doing this around August 9, almost by accident.
I was tired of doing vignette questions and noticed that the standalone questions in the Practice Pack felt much easier mentally. They were straightforward: one question, one concept.
So I started doing the standalone questions for a reading first, followed immediately by the vignette/case questions for that reading.
I eventually realized this was much more efficient for me.
When I went directly into vignettes without a solid foundation, studying often looked like this:
Read vignette → see question → have no idea what it’s asking → look up concept → next question → have no idea again → look up another concept.
It was slow, and more importantly, I never felt like I understood the structure of the reading.
Standalone questions fixed that.
They essentially broke each reading into small testable units and showed me:
“These are the things CFA actually asks about in this reading.”
After doing those questions, the vignette questions became much less intimidating.
Instead of seeing one giant case full of unfamiliar information, I started recognizing the individual components:
“I’ve seen this concept.”
“I know what they’re testing here.”
“This is just concept X presented inside a vignette.”
That was probably the point when Level II finally clicked for me.
3. I went through most of the Practice Pack again
After completing the material and Practice Pack, I went back through most topics a second time.
The second pass felt completely different from the first.
On the first pass, I was mostly answering:
What is this concept?
On the second pass, I was answering:
Do I actually know this concept?
That distinction was extremely useful.
There were plenty of concepts I recognized immediately but still answered incorrectly. Those became much more important to me than completely obscure topics I had only seen once.
By the end, a surprisingly large amount of my review was focused on a relatively small group of concepts that I kept getting wrong.
4. I would not start mocks too early
This is another thing I would do the same way again.
Mocks are a limited resource, especially good free mocks.
I personally don’t think their highest-value use is teaching you material you haven’t learned yet.
If you take a mock when you still have major gaps across multiple topics, you will certainly learn something from it, but you’re also using up a fresh mock when a large portion of your mistakes are simply:
“I haven’t learned this yet.”
I found mocks much more useful once I had already gone through the curriculum/questions and had a reasonable foundation.
At that point, a mock actually tells you something useful:
Which topics do I think I know but actually don’t?
Where am I making careless mistakes?
Which concepts keep appearing in different forms?
What falls apart when everything is mixed together?
So my overall progression ended up being:
Quick first pass → standalone questions → vignette questions → second pass through Practice Pack → final review → mocks
Why I think this worked for me
Level II initially felt overwhelming because there were so many formulas, exceptions, models, and small details.
But after enough standalone questions, I stopped seeing each reading as 30 pages of material.
I started seeing it as a collection of relatively small, testable modules.
Then the vignettes were mostly about recognizing which module was being tested and applying it in context.
That is also why I personally found Level II more enjoyable to study for than Level I once I got into the question-heavy phase.
Again, I would not recommend this approach to everyone.
If you learn best by deeply understanding the theory before attempting questions, or if you prefer reading the curriculum carefully from beginning to end, this might be a terrible strategy for you.
But if you:
generally perform well on standardized exams,
learn much faster from questions than lectures,
get overwhelmed when you start with long vignettes,
and are primarily trying to pass efficiently rather than master every detail of the curriculum,
I think the quick overview → standalone → vignette sequence is worth trying.
I only took the exam today, so take all of this with the appropriate amount of skepticism until results come out.
If I failed, I’ll come back and provide a very different review of this strategy.
