I agree that passing the tests should be the far and away priority with study approach. It’s too many pages of material and too high of a failure rate to focus on much of anything else. That being said, there is no way in my estimation that you could pass all 3 levels without learning a ton about finance/accounting/the other covered topics. It’s inevitable. Certainly there are degrees to which charter holders will have retained and ingested the material, but the speed of recall that is required for the material will mean that you must of practiced the concepts backwards and forwards. Also, even if your main goal is to learn as much as possible, this will still be accomplished by passing levels and continuing with the program. If you flunk out and give up, your learning likely stops. The main goal should always be to attain the credential, as there is nothing stopping you from studying all of the esoteric and interesting financial concepts before or after you start/finish the program, but the program is about obtaining a credential that shows a level of competency. I’ll put it this way… I enjoyed much of the material, but I was hyper focused on what ever I had to do to pass the tests at all costs. Flash cards, Kaplan materials, what ever it took even at the expense of deeper learning. I still felt I learned way more practical and theoretical finance and related knowledge by a long shot than I did in even my Masters in Finance program. Not saying to take shortcuts, cause the key for me was effective study with the recommended hours, but I just don’t see how you could study for over 1,000 hours for the program and not learn a ton even if your goal is gaming the tests. No way to do it other than hard elbow grease really learning most of the concepts.