CFA Exam Tips

The CFA is one of the most challenging professional qualifications. Candidates are expected to dedicate around 300 hours to prepare for each the 3 examinations, so you should plan to start stuying 6 months prior to the exam date.

Each of the 3 CFA Exams lasts for 6 hours, 3 hours in the morning session and another 3 on the afternoon session. Of course, each of the sessions is independent, so you cannot answer or see questions from the other session.

The Level I Exam contains 240 multiple-choice questions, each of which is worth 1.5 points. As a result, you have 1.5 minutes to answer each question, although this is just an average indication as some questions are more time consuming than others.

The Level II Exam contains 120 item set questions, which are essentially multiple-choice questions based on a common problem. After reading each problem, you are asked 6 multiple-choice questions based on it. With half the amount of questions a Level I, Level II gives you twice the amount of time (3 minutes) for each of the questions.

The Level III Exam consists of both essay and item set questions. You have 180 minutes to answer 60 item sets and another 180 minutes to answer a variable number of essay questions. Essay questions can come up on many forms: including calculations, short answers or templates. . Please note that the exam material is not purged after each level, so level III will require applying concepts studies on Level I and II.

Not all topics are given equal weight at each level of the CFA Exam. Although variations exist from year to year, and the categorization of multi-faceted problems are open to some interpretation, Stalla’s estimate of the relative importance of the different topical areas for the different levels of the CFA Exam is as follows: