CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) is a professional title awarded by the CFA Institute in the United States and is the highest qualification for investment professionals. Among the candidates for a CFA certification are students who want to pursue a career in finance and investment, professionals who seek to increase their expertise in the field, as well as the degree of recognition of it and, last but not least, people who reorient professionally to the field of financial investments. The CFA program is a postgraduate program that prepares and tests candidates in the field of professional ethics and standards, analysis of financial statements, economics, portfolio management, analysis and evaluation of various financial and investment instruments.
Candidates for the CFA title must pass a series of 3 exams in a period of 3-7 years. Each exam involves approximately 250-300 hours of individual study. In addition, 4 years of relevant professional experience in the financial field are required, as well as adherence to a code of strict ethical and professional standards.
Mostly holders of the title of Chartered Financial Analyst or candidates for one of the 3 levels of the examination that leads to the award of this title. The purpose of the association is to promote the highest professional standards in the field of investment analysis and management, in accordance with the Code and the Standards of practice and professional ethics of the CFA Institute.
How to learn effectively when CFA exam is approaching? The first reflex is to gather all the books and notes you have. Then you read them and reread them indefinitely. Or until you think they’ve been memorized. It is a courageous initiative, but not very inspired for learning the subject.
If you want to remember and, above all, understand the information in the textbook, you need to rethink your strategy a bit and start the study plan at the right time. Here’s how!
Self-assessment of knowledge through free test papers or CFA Mock Exam
Numerous studies say that self-test learning is one of the most effective ways to retain the subject and not be affected by the stress caused by the CFA final exam. The research results show that people who solve previous papers, free test papers, CFA Mock exam tests and self-assess their level of knowledge manage to retain more information than those who do not. In addition, the memory of the first category of people is more resistant to stress-specific conditions of CFA exam.
In other words, if you self-evaluate while studying, you will be able to get rid of that unpleasant feeling that everything you have learned seems to disappear from your brain when the subject sheet is put in front of you. Moreover, some research suggests that knowledge testing just before you start learning can increase your performance on the exam itself, more than if you used the same time to read the subject.
Even if there is research that says that the first-mentioned option is more effective, contextual learning is one of the strategies you can choose with confidence. To more easily retain a large volume of information, you can build context maps. You can use old solid knowledge, creating associations with some of the new, newly learned concepts.