How to Pass the CFA Level 3 Exam

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

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[@daviddenicola8247]

Mark Meldrum is the goat. I am currently a dietitian and 2 years ago didn't know what a dividend was. passed level I and II first try, both in the 90th percentile. never read a page in those 12 books. He is the absolute goat wizard.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

He is the goat! I recommend Mark Meldrum to just about everyone now. In my opinion, his videos are much more efficient and enjoyable than the CFAI textbooks. Also, I landed around the 90th percentile using Mark Meldrum as my primary resource for Level 3, so good luck!

[@daviddenicola8247]

@@RyanOConnellCFA Gotta finish the fight.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@daviddenicola8247 You got this. After a 90 percentile finish in L1 and L2, you are in a great place.

[@timur_kz7443]

Why goat? 🐐

[@chuckzuzak]

@@timur_kz7443 GOAT = greatest of all-time

[@pinBin25]

Completely agree with you on not getting Kaplan and just focusing on official curriculum. For certain chapters their summaries are so bad that you have difficulty answering the end-of-reading problems because they are either too concise or don’t cover certain concepts at all. For ethics they even suggest reading the official curriculum and examples - why do I need your summaries then if I have to then go back and read the original?!

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Very true! I loved Kaplan at L1 and L2 but their curriculum just seemed like an afterthought at L3! I'm guessing there aren't enough candidates at L3 for them to justify putting the same amount of effort into their L3 curriculum as L1

[@johnwellington269]

Amazing sharing and great content Ryan I m using powerCFA to practice the concepts and ur video to get the foundation knowledge Thx again

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Goodluck John!

[@pepelepew1227]

passed in 2016 on the 2nd try. if you can pass level 2, you have the Capacity to pass level 3. here are my tips: 1. the questions for ethics are NOT in chronological order. if answering q2 refers to line 10 of the story do not expect q3 to refer to line >11. to save time, read the whole story and circle the possible parts that might be questioned. 2. each parts of an essay question is graded by a different person, so make sure your workings are complete. if 1b require workings that continues from 1a, re-write the previous calculations on 1b. 3. beta blockers make me sweat. if you plan on taking one, buy a couple to test for side effects beforehand. also the whole exam room is recorded with cctv. they gave me a love letter at level 1 for bringing a water bottle to my seat.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

I like the tips and I'm guessing a lot of people will find them useful! I wasn't aware of the last two so I really appreciate the insight

[@pepelepew1227]

@@RyanOConnellCFA wow you study a lot, a great use of time in these covid times. im sensing a lot of overlaps and you must be popular among relatives 😁 (dont be the IT repair guy) around half of my cfa class ends up as entrepreneurs and i hope you transition successfully as well.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@pepelepew1227 Haha well I waste a lot of time watching tv or playing video games so I usually use that as my point of reference of how time could be better spent on learning! Lol I definitely don't want to be anyone's It repair guy! Entrepreneurship would be the most fun but also the most difficult career path IMO, but I really respect people that take it on

[@pepelepew1227]

@@RyanOConnellCFA my path was comp science undergrad (the IT repair guy haha) and taxes+cfa at the same time. cfa took 5 tries aka years that left a bad taste for studying exams and, thanks to redbull) took its health toll. starting a business was the natural conclusion to 8 years of 60 hour weeks and doing grey area stuff that felt wrong (context: 3rd world country, a lot of that ethics section came into practice 😆). i hope your robo adviser makes it big with security being one of the biggest risk today. it's going to be a long road with temptations but you are going to make it.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@pepelepew1227 I totally understand that, CFA can be very discouraging! Hahaha I'm laughing at your reference to the ethics section, I really can't imagine lol How is your business doing? I don't think the robo-advisor could ever be a legitimate business, its more of a fun project for me but it would be awesome if it somehow started to get lots of traffic

[@saras1663]

Thanks for the video, taking level-3 in August-21. I think I am more worried about taking AM session in the CBT format than the AM session itself.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Not a problem! I would be right there with you my friend. Hopefully they make it as easy and fast as possible to type formulas

[@saras1663]

@@RyanOConnellCFA thanks for replying. I am planning not to write formulas in the exam, if required will write like plain vanilla text!

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@saras1663 Please let me know how that goes! I'm very curious haha

[@sidharthsrikumar]

Hi Ryan, is it alright to learn mainly by watching lectures rather than reading everything? I do have time constraints because of full-time job.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

During Level 3 I was constrained for time and primarily learned by watching lectures as well! However, I supplemented that with flashcards and practice problems. If you are going to skip the readings, make sure that you do all of the available practice problems and mock exams on CFAI's website and all of the end of chapter questions as well

[@sidharthsrikumar]

@@RyanOConnellCFA Thank you for your reply

[@MrSanta1993]

Where can we get the 10 years question bank?

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Here, but it hasn't been updated since 2017: drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8CYozSqvEvXM0tyZ0xoLWhMeVE

[@albano2910]

Hi Ryan , fully agree with that, this was my CFA journey up to now: - 2018 Level 1 pass 90th percentile (estimated score 75%) - 2019 Level 2 fail (estimated score 50%) - 2020 Level 2 covid postponement - 2021 Level 2 pass > 90th percentile (estimated score 87,5%) - 2022 Level 3 fail (estimated score 50%) About level 3 fully agree was the hardest one ever...fully of tricky questions and ran out of time. The PM session was almost even harder. While in L1 and 2 the downside is 33%, the downside for the AM sess of L3 is 0%. Going to retake it in february. PS: did not feel confortable with the prometric keyboard and lost a lot of time finding multiplication signs, parenthesis etc....a mess....

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Best of luck Albano! It is really tough to be that close to passing and just miss the mark. However you have shown in the past with level 2 that you can come back and crush the test even if it gets the better of you the first time around. If you remember, please come back in February and tell us all the good news that you passed!

[@albano2910]

@@RyanOConnellCFA I Passed Level 3 !!!!!

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@albano2910 Congratulations! That is amazing! It must be such a relief to be done huh?

[@albano2910]

@@RyanOConnellCFA a 66 month journey ended.... still do not believe it

[@NishantGandhi7]

​@albano2910 any tips? I am planning to start prepping for Feb 2024 exam

[@rajtanna8134]

Ryan, congratulations on passing level 3 and attaining the charter! 🥳 Any additional tips to grind through it in 3 months? I'm appearing in May.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Thank you Raj, it was a big relief to finish it! You haven't started studying yet? If that is the case, then I'd try to get through the entire curriculum in 2 months and spend the last months doing practice problems and mock exams. Make sure that you work on a lot of free response essay problems and have your timing down perfect!

[@rajtanna8134]

Thanks Ryan! I have had a pretty on and off schedule so far and finding the theoretical concepts hard to cover. I'll take up your advice and focus on practice!

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@rajtanna8134 You just need to stay consistent! Level 3 is more difficult than the other levels (in my opinion) so you can't afford to study on and off for much longer. Working the practice problems should help a lot for memorization tho

[@macwarr8121]

Great tips Ryan. I just wish to find out from you is it possible to finish the curriculum in time to take the cfai l3 exams within a 3months window? Looks like there is so much to memorize

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Thanks for the feedback Mac! It is certainly possible but it will be extremely difficult if you have a fulltime job. If you are out of work right now, I think you'll be fine and have enough time. If you're working it will be a grind but possible. Think about pushing your test date back if you work fulltime

[@magnificencetv7424]

why do you recommend EOR and online questions? they're both the exact same thing. the online questions are the EOR questions plus extra ones. so it's repetitive. yes, i've checked every single questions, they're all repetitive. second, i have my reschedule 1 week sooner - from september 3 to august 29. i'm panicking and and have 700 online questions to do and 10-11 mocks. i dont have time at all. can u please help me. this is my first attempt and finding derivatives and fixed income extremely difficult. i already spent around 100 dollars on international calls with prometric to give me back my original date and all they did was raise a complaint that i have to wait for around a week. i'm extremely depressed and can't handle the stress anymore. i don't want to go through what i went through level 2 last year - which is studying 12-18 hours a day for 2 months straight - no breaks nothing. it was tormenting and i dont ever want to go through that again. so i have vacation from now till august 29 or hopefully till sep 3 if they decide to give me back my dates and based on the 700 online questions i have left plus 10-11 mocks. how should i tackle this. i wasted so much time on the first 300 online questions, reviewing every question and reading each los the pertains to it. so much time was wasted. also, there are only 3 past am mocks available on the cfa website. there's no longer the ones all the way back to 2000s

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Man that is seriously impressive that you went and confirmed that they are all duplicates. I took Level 3 back in 2019 so things may have changed since then. Although, I think there is a lot of value in repeating practice questions as the key to passing many parts of Level 3 is rouge memorization and repeating practice problems can really drill home the concepts into memory. I would not consider those 300 online questions you did to be a waste of time. You just locked those concepts into your memory via spaced repetition. The mocks that date back to the early 2000 are not on the CFA institute's website. They can only be found in 3rd party sites on the internet

[@soussoukarim937]

Thank you for all the tips. Where can I get older level 3 exams?

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

You can find a lot of them at the link below: drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8CYozSqvEvXM0tyZ0xoLWhMeVE

[@soussoukarim937]

@@RyanOConnellCFA Thank you so much my friend. This is really awesome.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@soussoukarim937 Not a problem my friend, best of luck!

[@karlomileta654]

I had the same question but link doesn't work anymore. Can you share it again Ryan or Karim. Thanks!

[@MediaWorkify]

@@RyanOConnellCFA Hey Ryan, is this link still safe? It's telling me my access is denied and I need to request access.

[@husseinjaber3526]

Hello, thank you for this video. Do u think 7 months enough to prepare for the level 3 exam? Thank you

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

Hussein, it's my pleasure! 7 months is absolutely enough time if you can dedicate enough time to studying every week. I studied for Level 3 for 5 and a half months and it was more than enough time

[@vanessa271]

@@RyanOConnellCFA cuz you are more intelligent than average. I will probably need 3x your time.

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@vanessa271 that is not true! I survived the CFA on mostly willpower lol. I'm sure you will do just fine if you stick to a consistent schedule

[@tanududani4902]

Hi, i have cleared my cfa level 2 exams in Feb 22 and wanted to ask whether I can sit for August 22 which is just 4 months away?

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

You can try it but I think that could be quite difficult. Level 3 candidates are the best of the best and you need to beat 50% of them. If you are able to put in a lot of hours in that 4 months you would have a decent shot however

[@ayaan2254]

Can Level 3 be done in 4 months without a job. Studying 6-8 hours a day?

[@sarthaknegi9591]

What according to you is most challenging topic of level 3 ?

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

In my opinion, Level 3 didn't have a blatantly hardest topic in the same way that Level 2 did (derivatives). If I had to choose one, I'd say Fixed Income was the most difficult for Level 3. I also found it to be the most interesting and useful however

[@sarthaknegi9591]

@@RyanOConnellCFA Thank you Ryan 😊 Any suggestions you would like to give for morning session?

[@RyanOConnellCFA]

@@sarthaknegi9591 Get ahold of those past AM papers and practice all the relevant problems! Time yourself to make sure you are going fast enough. This is the hardest part of Level 3