The SECRET to Passing ANY CFA Exam on the First Attempt

Patreon Link: www.patreon.com/StraightTalks...
This is probably the biggest differentiator between those candidates who will pass their upcoming CFA exam and those who will fail, and in this video, I’m going to show you how to do it right. Had I not done this thing, I don’t think I would have passed the L2 OR L3 exam. And the good news for YOU is that this practice is ideally handled in the final week before your CFA exam. With the August exams about a month away, you have plenty of time to make sure to do this and to pass your CFA exam.
OK I’m done beating around the bush here. The SECRET, that many candidates completely fail to do, is to memorize formulas. You MUST make it a priority to memorize formulas in the final days before the exam. In this video I’m going to tell you exactly how to most effectively memorize all the formulas that you need, with some tips from the mistakes I made along the way. Now let me be clear, I’m not saying just memorizing formulas is enough to pass. It’s definitely not. The MOST important factor to passing any CFA Exam would be the total hours spent studying. You just need to know the material. But memorizing formulas is the biggest differentiating factor because candidates who studied a lot, but fail to memorize formulas in the final week before their test may come up short. However, if you studied well AND you make sure to memorize all the formulas that you might need for your exam, you will have a drastically higher probability of passing than most candidates will.
Really soon were going to cover exactly how to find all the formulas that you need to memorize, but first to get in a shameless plug - if you want to see the exact formulas sheets that I made then memorized to pass each of my CFA exams, they are available on my Patreon.
So - lets cover this formula memorizing process, and why it is so important. Shoutout to Mark Meldrum for making a video about this very topic about 30 days before I took my Level 1 CFA exam. Had I not watched his video and done exactly as he said, I don’t think I would be a charterholder today.
First - we will cover the logistics. I was lucky enough to get 3 days off of work before the exam. 2 for formulas. About 24 hours total to do this well. You could split this up, but you don’t want to get behind on this then push it off because I promise you, knowing formulas is critical to the CFA exams, Especially Level 1.
Method - write each formula from your formula sheet 20 times. In blocks of 10. After each block or 200 formulas. Cover what you wrote and quiz yourself. Any you got wrong, write them each 10 more times and then recite those in your head again. This is painstaking. Your hand is going to hurt, badly.
At the end of the day, take the last hours to go back through them all and quiz yourself again. Circle ones you forgot. You will need to focus on this in the coming days.
Do it all over again tomorrow. This is so boring, but you need to do this. You see - one of the reasons most candidates fail to do this is they think since they have done the questions and APPLIED many of these formulas, that they know the formulas. You don’t. they come to you when reading questions or looking at study notes. You MUST have these memorize to answer questions quickly and accurately on the exams.
Now onto where to get all the formulas to write on your formula sheets. What I did was all the while that I was studying… another option is to use the ones from Kaplan or Wiley but too long. Now if you want to save a lot of time here, you can buy my formulas sheets on my Patreon page that I mentioned earlier in the video. They are exactly what I used and memorize. Note they are a bit outdated.
The day of the exam review them all. Focus on the circled ones. If you do this right, you will walk into the exam center know them all. And that is going to give you a MASSIVE advantage over most other candidates taking the exam.

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

LINK TO THE FORMULA SHEETS: www.patreon.com/StraightTalks?fan_landing=true

[@Prinzden1]

The link is no longer working, I need help I’m far behind and it’s less than 30days to my exams

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

@@Prinzden1 Search straight talks on Patreon! www.patreon.com/StraightTalks

[@Tkellz62]

Did this for L1 in Feb. Definitely helped me get some questions right that I wouldn't have otherwise.

[@panktithaker2833]

I agree! I had listened to the same last week prep video of Mark meldrum and one of AJ's earlier videos where he had given this tip. I diligently made a formula list(a formula booklet for L2🤭😂) revised it every night for 2 weeks before the exam and in the last week I wrote down the same formula 5-10 times to get it to stick in my brain. And it worked!! Planning the exact same for L3 as well... 34 days to go for the L3 exam!! Wish me luck😊

[@gauravpatil7977]

All the best!

[@gauravpatil7977]

I am going to appear for level 1 in Feb 2023, can u give me any advice for that?

[@panktithaker2833]

@@gauravpatil7977 I am sure you would have heard this before but here it goes, practice practice and practice! 1.) Curriculum Examples and EOCQs (atleast twice, once as soon as you finish a reading and then once when you revise) 2.) CFAI website practice questions (There might be repition of EOCQs here.. you can decide to either do them again or skip them based on your time availibility and relative expertise in that topic) 3.) Do spaced repition of the content 4.) Last month for review and mocks.. try to do around 3-4 mocks with atleast 2 mocks replicating the exam scenario. Other random stuff: Have a decent sleep and meal schedules, eat foods that boost memory and focus, keep some time for a walk or spend time with family or any other non-disrupting relaxing habit so you don't feel burnt out... Hope that helps.. feel free to revert back incase of anything.. All the best!!

[@gauravpatil7977]

@@panktithaker2833 thank u so much for the detailed advice, i am studying 8 hrs a day and will try to finish whole syllabus in 3 months, if I can do that then I'll go for mocks and revision, i hope that works out, thanks again for ur help!

[@panktithaker2833]

@@gauravpatil7977 I can say Mocks and revison would add more value to the over all effort.. If there is a time crunch... I could say skip a couple chapters but DO NOT skip on mocks..

[@douglasluisklauberg8510]

I follow your tip for level 1 and works very well, ive remebered many fórmulas too fast and save a lot of time. I Will do that again on my august level 2 😁

[@HG51_]

Excellent strategy!

[@bigsmokesyd]

This guy I tell you. Thanks man!

[@siddheshshastri8860]

Thank you for sharing 👍

[@panktithaker2833]

I did exactly this in my level 1 and 2 and trust me there were some super tricky ones in L2 which I could remember on the exam day just because I was reviewing the formulas every single night for 15 days prior to exam and writing them down 5-10 times in the last week lea

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

Exactly! I wouldn't have gotten many of the questions right had I not done this.

[@bhartiyamemesena546]

Hey can I get your notes for the level 1 please, that would be a huge help if possible!!

[@panktithaker2833]

@@bhartiyamemesena546 Hi Milin.. I have almost 200 pages worth of hand written notes which would be difficult to share but even if I could share them, I would highly recommend to make own notes... It will be a life saver when it comes down to revising in those last weeks leading upto exam.. Sorry if that doesn't help... All the very best!

[@bhartiyamemesena546]

@@panktithaker2833 thank you for the advice!!

[@carrafiel]

I passed the May 2022 level 1 and did this trick too thanks to Mark Meldrum. What really helped me as well was, as mark also said, to write down the whole formula before solving any problem. That way you practice formula memorization from the start.

[@tridentfx2443]

This always worked for me from sitting exams as a teen

[@Denis-vr3sh]

I can vouch for this - I didn't write them down but that would help. You just need to get the ~50 pages of formulas and memorise them. This is the differentiating factor.

[@Yasharghami]

I think understanding the theories behind formulas would be a more efficient method. You can build a mind palace, connencting the content. I am currently studying for level 1(November) and at this point(studying fixed income) I have reallized that most of the formulas are connected. I think visuallizing would be better than memorizing.

[@joaoaires31]

Your formulas are your map. During the exam, you often dont have time to connect all the dots to come up with a solution. Just figure what formula to use and plug in the Numbers

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

You are right and wrong. You need to learn the concepts while studying. But if you don't memorize formulas in the last week, you will miss a lot of easy points.

[@rockets0296]

Understanding the concepts behind the formulas helps tremendously with memorization. For me there were usually a few concepts I didn't understand so I would just memorize the formulas. Sometimes just memorizing the formulas would help me understand the concept because I had to think about each variable in the formula. If you have time you should try to have a deep understanding of the formulas but if not cramming them in the last two weeks works great

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

@@rockets0296 Very good points.

[@connorxiaoyang878]

thanks a lot man

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

Glad I can be of help!

[@connorxiaoyang878]

@@straighttalks-ajsrmek323 indeed

[@laurettac7329]

Great video. During your months of prep , have you also written them ? Or only few weeks before the exam ?

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

I started doing practice exams about 6 weeks out from the real test.

[@yashlath8790]

please make a vid on passing L3 specifically....i have it in aug 2022

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

Okay, will do!

[@panktithaker2833]

Yes yes! That would be really appreciated 📚🤓

[@benben2891]

Actually I don't quite understanding why candidates have to memorize so many formulas. Exams should be testing students' knowledge and understanding to those formulas instead, not how to memorize them.

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

Its a good point; in my view its just another way to make the exams more rigorous.

[@PvP_Darwinism]

Can you do a video on the CAIA ?

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

I don't know much about the CAIA, sorry.

[@ahmadnabil3262]

do you know any free vidoes for CAIA

[@smartyyoung7319]

Studying equity for lv 2. Do the exam actually test all those valuation formulas?

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

Anything in the text (besides the sectioned off optional areas) is free game.

[@NK-vw4ms]

Hey AJ - I am looking to buy one of your formula sheets for 2025. Are they still up to date?

[@milosreljic1565]

How many formulas for Lvl 1 ? 🤔 50-100 ?

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

I think there are a bit over 100.

[@milosreljic1565]

@@straighttalks-ajsrmek323 Does CFA "overkill" for Bussines Developer Manager job or not ? What do you think about CIPM from CFA ? Tnx man 😁

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

@@milosreljic1565 Yea CFA would be overkill for that. The CIPM is very easy compared to the CFA.

[@milosreljic1565]

@@straighttalks-ajsrmek323 tnx

[@abhishekbal399]

AJ I passed before you and admired you for your forthrightness and direct and straight to the point content. But off late not only you smack of commercialisation ( which is not bad ) but also your contents have become slant and deviated from what you set out for. My 2 cents. Hope you take it positively.

[@straighttalks-ajsrmek323]

I do, thanks for the thoughts.

[@pedroo255]

This is non-sense. With AI and availability of information, knowing a formula is useless. They should provide a standard formula sheet.

[@christophersurnname9967]

This is funny because I just passed the level 1 in May and got above the 90th percentile without ever copying out any formulas. I think copying them out is a waste of time. You naturally will remember them if you did all the chapters with great care and attention.