Exam strategy 9 - Study tips for level 2

The content of this post is mainly coming from the CFAI website. As you can notice, on top of my own exam strategies, I am also promoting some of their study tips/tools as I discover them online. The content on CFAI website can be easily overlooked because of the sheer volume of the material candidates are responsible for. I, for one, didn’t pay much attention to their advice at all back in time. However, I’ve realized over the years these are all very useful tips for practice exams. So I will continue to post when I come across more of these. Ideally you will practice these techniques/tips while you are doing practice exams so you are mentally trained and they become part of you on exam day. I’ve added my own comments at the end of each tip to explain what I think is important and why it’s important. So here it is.

1. Know your acronyms. Common acronyms are no longer spelled out in the exam questions. Download and review Level II acronyms you should know. Here you will want to remember the foreign exchange conversion during the exam. They will likely not give you USD/CAD (US$ over CA$) even though it’s the most intuitive. They might give you USD:CAD, which means CAD per USD.
2. Each question addresses a generally accepted concept or principle and can be answered using only the information provided in the question and your knowledge of the curriculum. Don't introduce other information; the exam questions are not designed to trick you or test you on rare exceptions. This one is key, no assumption is allowed in the exam, you will always have sufficient information to answer the questions. There could be rare occasions where a question may have more than one answers, this is extremely rare and you will be fine as long as you answer the question in an acceptable way.
3. Read each question carefully. Incorrect answer choices are designed to appear plausible to an unprepared candidate.  The CFAI has done a great job making answers look alike, especially for qualitative questions such as ethics.
4. You may mark up your exam book. Circle or underline important information in the vignette and write down your equations or logic. However, only your final answers recorded on the answer sheets are graded. Don’t be scared about writing notes or underline key words on the question sets, this helps you identify key information quickly when you need to read the case again. I did this a lot.
5. Expect to go more slowly on the Level II exam than on the Level I exam. You are answering 50% fewer questions, but spending twice as much time thinking about each one (including time for reading and analyzing the vignettes).
6. Manage your time. Don’t spend too much time on any one question or topic area. On average, you should allocate 3 minutes to each multiple choice question about the vignette, including time to record your answer on the answer sheet. Time management is a bigger problem for level 3 which I will explain in a later post.
7. Eliminate obviously incorrect answers. We are all familiar with Process of elimination. If you have to guess, use reasoning and logic. The concepts that you know on one topic often apply to another topic and if you can eliminate one of the responses, your odds of answering the question correctly are much higher.
8. Answer all questions: There is no penalty for incorrect answers.  I recommend candidates to skip a question and come back to it at the end.
9. Mark your answers on the answer sheet as you complete each question. Some candidates write their answers in the exam book and wait until the end of the exam to bubble/fill out the answer sheet. This is not an advisable strategy because you may run out of time before you can complete the answer sheet. I’ve actually done this for level 1 and 2, and indeed this is not advisable, it’s actually very time consuming when you are left with no time to fill out the answer sheet. So try to move through the exam and the answer sheet at the same time.

One last comment, you need to work really hard but you are allowed to take a night off once a while and relax before you burn out, go have dinner at a restaurant you like with people you like. This process takes a lot of hours and diligence but don’t let that take over your life. 

Have a great Thursday night.