When you register for the CFA Exam, CFA Institute sends you the entire curriculum for the Level you’re taking. It is a lot of material, and anything in the curriculum can be tested on the Exam. However, for most candidates, preparing for the CFA Exam using only the CFAI curriculum won’t be enough.
The fact that pass rates for the first two levels remain below 50% and the 10-year weighted average CFA® exam pass rate for Level 1 is less than 40% is telling. That’s why it would benefit CFA candidates to prepare with a third-party provider like UWorld. This article will cover how to use the UWorld Learning Platform with the CFA Institute materials.
1) Practice Until Perfect
At UWorld, we take an active-learning approach to exam prep, which means our CFA Learning Platform is built to emphasize practice. With over 2,000 instructive questions modeled after the CFA exam covering all Level 1 learning outcome statements (LOS), you can create unlimited customized practice tests. Just pull from our question bank (QBank) and practice the questions repeatedly until you’ve mastered the concepts.
True to our commitment to excellence, our expert team of CFA charterholders continuously monitor and update our content to make sure you are always preparing with the most up-to-date, relevant CFA content.
Each chapter of the CFA curriculum contains practice questions as well. An excellent way to check your progress is to try some of those questions after you’ve answered several of the UWorld questions. Try to gauge if your performance on both is similar or if you notice discrepancies in your results.
2) Dive Into the Detailed Explanations
What sets UWorld apart from other CFA prep providers is our commitment to explaining the why behind each answer choice. We believe that knowing the rationale for an answer helps you to understand rather than simply memorize the underlying concept. That’s why for each practice question, we provide a detailed explanation of the correct and incorrect answers.
These in-depth explanations help you improve by giving you step-by-step problem-solving guidance to understand why your answer is correct and identify where you went wrong in choosing an incorrect answer.
As you master the CFA concepts, take more practice tests from CFA Institute’s materials and apply the knowledge gained from our explanations to improve your scores. You will find that the more time you spend reviewing our comprehensive answer explanations, the more adept you’ll become at applying your understanding of the concepts, and the more confident you’ll feel on exam day.
In addition to our detailed explanations, we provide you with practical, professionally produced illustrations. These visual aids complement the explanations to help you understand the rationale for the answer choices, both correct and incorrect. Together with the explanations, these vivid illustrations will help you master the concepts.
3) Use Our Flashcards With Spaced Repetition
The UWorld CFA QBank comes equipped with a “Study” feature that lets you use enhanced digital flashcards that come fitted with spaced repetition. This scientifically proven technique boosts memory retention and recall. With UWorld, it works with our flashcards by presenting UWorld CFA content for your review in increments over an extended period, based on the degree of difficulty.
When reviewing flashcards you’ve created, you can mark them as “Again,” “Good,” or “Easy,” depending on the degree of difficulty. Flashcards designated as “Again” indicate concepts you find more complicated and will appear more frequently (every minute) until you’ve mastered them, then appear less regularly, challenging your brain to retain information over the long term.
Similarly, flashcards designated as “Good” will appear less frequently (every 10 mins), while the “Easy” flashcards will appear even less often (every four days) until you’ve understood the concepts you’re reviewing. This repetition pattern during your study sessions allows you to remember the information and recall concepts you’ve mastered on test day.
4) Take the UWorld and CFAI Mock Exams
Once you’re comfortable using flashcards with spaced repetition, put this technique to the test by taking both the UWorld and CFAI Mock Exams. You should see an improvement in your ability to remember the concepts you learned with the UWorld QBank while taking these Mock Exams.
Our mock exams offer you many benefits that boost your confidence. First, they closely resemble the actual CFA Exam in all respects, from the interface to the time allotted to the number of questions and topic weighting. Like the real CFA exam, our mock exams consist of two 2-hour, 15-minute sessions, each with 90 multiple-choice questions not included in the QBank.
Our online mock exams also paint a clear picture of where you stand by showing you how prepared you are for the actual exam. When it comes to performing well on timed exams like the CFA, time management is one of the most critical factors. Taking more mock exams improves your chances of completing the exam on time.
Testing yourself after having prepared thoroughly with our UWorld QBank and the CFA Institute materials is an effective way to improve your knowledge and apply concepts. Even if your initial results are subpar, it can serve as a wake-up call that perhaps you need to put in more practice, revise your study plan, and develop better habits to perform under pressure.
5) Track Your Performance
As you go back and forth between UWorld and the CFA Institute prep materials, use our performance and improvement tracking tool to monitor your study progress conveniently. We designed this tool to help you quickly identify your strengths and weaknesses, so you know where to focus your efforts. You can also compare your results with your peers who have also used the UWorld CFA Learning Platform to prepare for the CFA Exam.
We wish you the best of luck as you use UWorld and the CFA Institute materials to prepare for the CFA Exam.
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