Making the last few days of your CFA preparation count

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The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam is known to be a tough one to crack. Even after months of preparation, the last few days leading up to the exam are crucial.

Here are some tips which will help you prepare for your exam to lead you to success:

Focus on formula retention

As the exam gets closer, the amount of new information you learn will decrease. The key to connecting all this information will rest on your ability to recall and apply formulas. Dedicate the last few days leading up to your exam to learning and revising formulas. Using flash cards to revise them with a study partner will build your confidence and let you allot the valuable exam time towards actually solving questions rather than trying to recall the right formula.

Read and re-read Ethics sincerely

The CFA Institute board of directors determine the minimum passing score for each level, depending on the difficulty of the paper. Because of Ethics Adjustment, if you have scored well on ethics and are on the verge of passing, your score will be bumped up. And if you are on the passing score and have done poorly on ethics, your score will be lowered. Ethics is part of each and every CFA level, and is especially a valuable investment of your study time since it makes your preparation for other levels easier.

Know your topics and related questions inside out

Understand how each topic is going to be tested. The paper is full of MCQ questions so it’s easy to be misguided by their phrasing. Read the learning outcome statements of each question and understand whether they’re asking you to calculate, compare or analyse. In long answer questions, you will spend less time reading the questions itself if you understand the objective before you start going over them. Practice is the only way you can be confident with every topic. It is important to be perceptive your weaknesses and try not to pick favourite topics when practising.

Take care of yourself

Setting your sleep cycle right and eating healthy throughout the period of preparation is as important as preparing for the exam itself. An exam totalling 6 hours can easily become an uphill battle if you’re not well rested. A good night’s sleep after a day of intense studying can tremendously help you to commit information to long term memory and make it that much easier for you when it is time to revise and go over concepts.

Looking for guidance or support to create your study plan? Need more information about the CFA exam? Email mer_academyuae ~3#$A~ pwc &D06s& com to arrange a free counselling session with a CFA charterholder.

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Priyam Mahajan

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Priyam is the Head of Marketing for PwC’s Academy Middle East. She is a senior marketing practitioner with over 12+ years of experience in marketing to consumer and corporates.

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Priyam is the Head of Marketing for PwC’s Academy Middle East. She is a senior marketing practitioner with over 12+ years of experience in marketing to consumer and corporates. She is a seasoned trainer for CIM qualification course and has delivered training progammes to clients and to our internal business functions on a range of marketing theories, applications and best practices.
Priyam has been associated with PwC’s Academy for the past 5 years where she has been instrumental in establishing a 360 degree marketing function for the Academy and has led its B2B and B2C marketing strategy, implementation and control. Prior to this, she worked as the Head of Marketing and Sales for an education business in the region and with a media and CXO community engagement firm in India.
She specialises in delivering omni-channel campaigns with a focus on ROI, growth and innovation. Her areas of interest span across social media management, traditional and online advertising, content marketing strategy, event management and execution, affiliate marketing, and public relations. Her professional passion is relationships, be it customer experience, strategic associations or vendor management.
Priyam has a deep understanding of contemporary marketing practices and their application in business, and she brings this insight and experience into the classroom.