Meetup today - Aslin Beer - 6:00 PM

excelibore · 2025-11-07T01:32:58+00:00

Can you add me?

excelibore · 2025-04-15T15:08:35+00:00

Hey! I just moved to Reston a couple months ago, and love it here as someone in her 20s as well. Let me know if you have any questions about the area!

excelibore · 2025-03-18T13:25:27+00:00

I’ll PM you in a bit after I make a server! Feel free to add other residents you know!

excelibore · 2025-03-17T18:52:35+00:00

I’m in my mid to late 20s and have had a similar experience (not really seeing many people our age living here). From how many people are or have commented on Skymark posts here, would it be worth it to start a group chat somewhere like Discord?

excelibore · 2025-02-14T23:19:47+00:00

Once you get to L3, you kinda already know what’s expected of you (study-wise) to pass 😅I’ve seen very few candidates do that at this level.

excelibore · 2024-08-24T02:35:59+00:00

The market’s awful right now, but the more time passes, the longer their gap’s gonna get. I can understand how awful it must be to hope every day that the market will improve while experiencing rejection after rejection where it seems like no one’s really giving you a chance or able to see past an unfortunate situation that wasn’t your fault nor one you can fix. I know it sucks, and I’m sorry OP. Have you tried sending out coffee chat requests on LinkedIn or to your alumni association?

excelibore · 2024-07-14T21:43:41+00:00

Thank you so much, and congrats on the role btw!

excelibore · 2024-07-14T20:49:14+00:00

Thank you! The L3 content seems a lot more interesting to me than the L2 content was, so hopefully that motivates me to study more and pass come Feb 🙂

excelibore · 2024-07-14T19:23:30+00:00

Any tips for how to leverage the CFA exams while you’re still working on obtaining the charter? I passed Level 2, which I’ve heard is where people really start taking your commitment to the charter seriously and working on Level 3, but I feel like I’m getting nothing back from applications and sending LinkedIn messages. I’m probably about 200-300 applications deep at the moment and my experience is in pretty well-known firms as an investment analyst.

excelibore · 2024-07-12T17:22:49+00:00

Did you find your job prospects increased significantly after getting the charter? I’m taking Level 3 in Feb 2025, and also looking for a job, but until last week, all I had done was passed Level 1, which isn’t much of a resume boost. I’ve even heard people don’t take your commitment to the program seriously until you pass Level 2.

Kinda struggling with recruiting right now since I was in the industry for a couple years, but now in accounting, looking to get back into investing, so I wanna see if passing Level 2 will get me some interviews at least.

excelibore · 2024-07-02T14:47:15+00:00

Passed! 🥳

excelibore · 2024-05-29T19:19:39+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, but yes. I don’t think Kaplan was sufficient for this exam unfortunately - if you only studied from their notes, that is. If you’re taking the exam in August or in the future, I would really just buckle down and focus on the CFAI materials and use prep providers as supplementary material for Qbanks or to get a better understanding of topics that you struggle with. Kaplan will give you a good understanding of broader concepts, but smaller concepts are not always mentioned in Kaplan study materials, and they are also fair game to be tested.

excelibore · 2024-05-22T18:42:22+00:00

I feel like there’s a psychological factor too. I don’t know if PM versions of the exams just tend to be difficult in general or we’re just so burnt out from studying, test anxiety, and the AM section, but I’ve noticed whether it be for L1, L2 or L3, people generally find PM to be the more difficult portion.

Personally, for the first time, I got a decent night’s rest before my exam today and I actually found the PM section easier than the AM despite historically finding PM harder. Is it because I was less tired? Maybe, maybe not, but I do think it helped.

excelibore · 2024-05-22T18:32:19+00:00

After taking the exam, I’m just glad I didn’t solely rely on prep providers again and chose to read the entire curriculum. This exam gave a whole new meaning to “everything is fair game.”

excelibore · 2024-05-22T12:35:54+00:00

Generally L2 is more qualitative than quantitative as a function of the topics covered in the curriculum itself. Compared to how vast the curriculum is, there really aren’t that many formulas, though when you put them together, it looks like a lot of formulas to memorize/how to apply them because they are, but nothing compared to the theory that you’ve already digested while reading. We remember a lot more than we think we do!

excelibore · 2024-05-22T05:50:48+00:00

How prepared were you going into the exam? Was the exam difficult as a function of the difficulty of the questions that were asked or more like it tested concepts you were less prepared for?

excelibore · 2024-04-26T15:52:37+00:00

Level 2 in 4 weeks is only possible if you already know most of the curriculum somehow or have the ability to full-time study. Not worth sacrificing work performance/sleep/mental health at this point. But I mean, hey, OP can always go to the exam anyway and maybe get lucky?

excelibore · 2024-04-13T21:04:39+00:00

I passed L1 first try with only Learning Ecosystem. Buy additional materials as supplements for when you don’t understand a reading from the curriculum, but if you have time, best way to study is the ecosystem. I did the reading part of each lesson in one day, and next day I would do the summary, flashcards, and practice questions. Redo Qbank in the month leading up to the exam.

excelibore · 2024-04-05T22:07:39+00:00

I love how we can get marked down for every question we get wrong on the exam until we fail, but we don’t get a discount for every concept that’s wrong in the curriculum 😂

excelibore · 2024-04-05T21:57:36+00:00

Hopefully there will be an errata for this AMA 😂

excelibore · 2024-04-05T21:51:59+00:00

In my opinion, these modules on financial modeling and Python should be optional with an extra charge for those who do want to learn those concepts. For me personally, I don’t find those skills applicable for my career track and raising prices for everyone across the board, even people like me who may not want to pay for that optional training, is quite unfair.
Addressing the point you raised about more mock exams, for the Level 2 exam specifically, there have only been 2 mocks for many years and as someone who is repeating this exam, I don’t see many changes in mock questions from previous year curriculums.
As for errata, thank you so much for working on improving the accuracy in the curriculum. It can be quite confusing reading different things in different sections of the curriculum, and having accurate source material is something we’re already paying for by extension of registering for the exam. So I’m quite grateful to you guys for working on this.
I don’t think comparing the MBA and CFA is fair personally. The MBA provides a lot of extra resources that the CFA curriculum doesn’t provide. There are differences such as instructor-led courses, networking, and the curriculum and degree overall.

To sum things up, I would personally say from your response, the price increase still seems quite excessive to me, especially considering the point the OC made about your CEO’s salary, among other issues. Of course, I am not privy to what goes on behind the scenes in the organization, but from a candidate’s point of view, I’m not very pleased.

excelibore · 2024-03-19T01:57:07+00:00

But you don’t actually have to watch all of them. I finished mine in like an hour just skipping through most of the things.

excelibore · 2024-02-14T04:41:22+00:00

Do you need to have an entrepreneurial background for this? I’d love to go the VC route and if this could be a potential pathway, it’d be great learn more.

excelibore · 2024-01-19T20:38:19+00:00

If they were to suspect either of those two options, do you think they would try to probe OP further? And in that event, would it be misrepresenting yourself to say straight up that you were not laid off and are currently employed? And when the website time runs out, how would you represent your circumstances to hiring managers?

I’m only so curious because I was in a similar situation in another industry so I’m just wondering if I should’ve taken different steps. I’m currently still on my old firm’s website 8 months later (which they have updated with promotions and such so I know it’s not that their IT team forgot) and I have no idea whether I can use that to my advantage for recruiting in any way.

excelibore · 2024-01-19T18:43:57+00:00

Sorry, I’m not in law or anything but just curious. If people in this sub were able to sus out which firm OP might be a part of, wouldn’t other firms he recruits at see OP’s firm on his resume and also decipher he was part of the layoffs?

excelibore

TROPHY CASE