Thank you. By the time I was in third year of engineering, I was pretty sure that Chemical Engineering is not what I am going to pursue a career in. I was always fascinated by the stock market and its operations. Then in my graduation college, I won a Stock Market contest played on virtual money and stocks. This peaked my interest in finance in a serious way, and I started reading the basic concepts on Investopedia.
When did you first come to know about the CFA exam?
I came to know about CFA from a senior in college, who was appearing for the same. From him, I got to know about the curriculum and the subjects I needed to prepare.
What was your motivation behind it?
By the start of this year, I was certain that I would do an MBA in finance. After I was done with the CAT interviews, I had 50-60 spare days to utilize. This was the time that I started preparing seriously, and put in maximum effort. For me personally, giving CFA was a challenging task because I had no prior commerce background. But yes, I just focused on working hard and thankfully, it paid off.
When did you start preparing for it?
I was passively preparing for it for a long time, but just after my CAT interviews were done with and I had time to kill, I dedicated all my time to clearing CFA level 1.
Please share your study plan, how much time on average did you dedicate to CFA per day?
During the preparation phase, I was taking part-time lectures in TIME institute. So whenever I didn’t have lectures, I would go to the library and study. From 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening was the time when I would either study or take lectures.
Pretty hectic schedule we must say! What advice would you give to the aspirants, who are preparing for coming December/June exam?
One thing which I would like to emphasize on is to start as early as possible. The biggest challenge for me was the vast syllabus to cover. Also, if you are not from commerce background, the task becomes even harder for you. So start as early as possible, and read everything from the CFA curriculum and nothing from outside its scope.
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