I’m very excited that I have the opportunity to join the “Golden Certificates”. “You will never regret that”, the brilliant decision you made. No matter which way you decide to prepare the examination, you have to spend time studying.

I passed the level 1 of the CFA examination last December 2015 during the work at Shanghai, while on the day working, on the night listening the class online. The period that I totally prepared was nearly 3 months, every day studied at least 3 to 4 hours, on weekend at least 10 hours, and all was nearly 400 hours totally. I finished the first round reading textbook and Golden Certificates’ materials at the end of the October, so I have one month to review all, wrote the quiz and the mock exam, each test I examined my weakness session and focus that before the next, reviewing where is wrong, it’s very important for the understanding.

I have to say, although I already knew some of the CFA examination knowledge, it still cost me to prepare quit a lot time structuring the framework of the knowledge. The candidates who has known these is good, if doesn’t you may need spend twice the time.

Why the school firm can accelerate the preparation time, I’ll not recommend to read the whole textbook, the CFA curriculum, because the content is too many that we don’t need to read now, also the examination not included all either. This gap is the school firm can abridge, let us focus on what is important under the limited time.

It’s hard and not very easy to put effort studying after the whole day’s work. It need very strong motivation to drive the action, so I very suggest that “have a reason to push yourself while preparing”, no matter what the reason is, I believe this is how I can pass through these tough days and successfully pass the examination. These days life is very like in jail indeed, I have to say, no lied to you and you have to reject any invitation.

I summarize 3 key successful factors for candidates who is now preparing the examination:
1. Each session, do the exam on end of the textbook, do not study the textbook.
2. Review Mock Exam again and again, focusing on the weakness part you are.
3. Aggregated the math formula from each session’s solution part because you can know how to use that.

The last, I want to share my mock exam results to comfort our candidates who not performed well. My first mock exam is 45% correct, then 54%, 60%, 64%. I never passed the 70%, but finally I still passed the level 1 of the examination. Be sure that you are going ahead, on the up and up, that was the key it’s very important, so I say three times. And I have to kind remind who has already prepared the curriculum, please do not read additional materials, just for one and reading that again and again until you fully understand and be familiar with.

Hope every candidates can pass the examination, have a better life and career path, good luck.