Course Study Plan Guide

[InesGHALI]

Hello my FRM friends,
For the ones who will attend for the FRM PART I next May, did you finish reading garp books? any tips for concentration and memorize ..
I am a little bit confused so I wanted some support from here. I am not sure I will make it for May session as there is a lot to study through books and practice questions.
Any one can help with some tips? or just share where you finished till now?

Thanks et hard luck everyone

 

[DenisAmbrosov]

Hello! I have a question about how to better handle FRM part 1. I have an exam in November. On average I have 80 hours per month for preparing. I don't know really how to deal with question. Should I , for example , read chapter 1 , then write the main things down and the most important - to solve all the question or is it better to solve just part of them and before the exam the last part. My scheme is - read the chapter, then write it down and then learn it, but I don't know how to handle question.

Moreover, I am still a student and I don't have a quite good knowledge in math, I understand not all the concepts but in general everything is quite understandable, the main problem is how to learn all the formulas because ,for example, only for distributions , there are more than 10 of them.

 

[smintx]

Hello! I have a question about how to better handle FRM part 1. I have an exam in November. On average I have 80 hours per month for preparing. I don't know really how to deal with question. Should I , for example , read chapter 1 , then write the main things down and the most important - to solve all the question or is it better to solve just part of them and before the exam the last part. My scheme is - read the chapter, then write it down and then learn it, but I don't know how to handle question.

Moreover, I am still a student and I don't have a quite good knowledge in math, I understand not all the concepts but in general everything is quite understandable, the main problem is how to learn all the formulas because ,for example, only for distributions , there are more than 10 of them.

Hi Denis,

I am preparing for July session (Part 1) and am not a math/stat guy. I began studying back in January and tried several methods. For example, I started "chapter by chapter": take one chapter, read the GARP book, then BT Study Notes, then BT Video, then BT practice notes. Then proceed with the next chapter. This is fine with a limited number of chapters, but the body of knowledge is so dense and overwhelming that if you go back to a chapter you studied 3 weeks ago, you won't remember much.

Thus I continued searching an efficient method, and think that the most efficient one for memorizing all those abstract math concepts and formulas is to follow the methodology from "Learning how to Learn" (free course on coursera.org), which means learning a little bit everyday and repeat, repeat repeat. So for example, I will start with Topic 2 "Quantitative Analysis" like that: week 1: read all 13 GARP book chapters on Quantitative Analyis, week 2: all BT Study Notes, week 3: all BT Videos and BT Practice questions. At the end of week 3, I will have a much better knowledge of, for example, chapter 1 of Quantitative Analysis than if I had studied it "all in one" during one evening three weeks ago. The same goes for formulas and their practical application.

When you have such amount of formulas to memorize, they need to be in your long term memory. You're brain will assimilate them much better if you repeat them very often than doing hard sessions on the same topic in one evening.

As I did not tried to pass the exam (4 months to go), I do not know if the method is suitable. However, I feel much more comfortable with it and I feel my efficiency has increased and that I remember better the concepts.

Hope this helps.

 

[waeltabbara]

hello everyone I'm a new user here, aiming to enroll for the November 2021 exam part 1

anybody got the most ideal way the sequence which one would tackle the study topics ? i need that info to set up a proper study plan . any tips is welcome

Thank you

 

[Nicole Seaman]

hello everyone I'm a new user here, aiming to enroll for the November 2021 exam part 1

anybody got the most ideal way the sequence which one would tackle the study topics ? i need that info to set up a proper study plan . any tips is welcome

Thank you

Hello @waeltabbara Welcome to the BT forum! I moved your post to this thread. Members in this thread have discussed their study plans, which may be of help to you. There are 13 pages of discussion in this thread, so it is a very helpful resource for new FRM candidates. We ask that you always use the search function first to see if your question has already been answered before posting a new thread. This helps to keep our forum organized for all of our members so they can easily search for answers.

 

[Ahmad Siam Wahidi]

Dears;

I just have started the preparation for the FRM and find Bionic Turtle as a guiding source. however now a days I completely lost my-self at the middle how to cope with confusions.

I need clarification on the below points:

1: the instructional videos are very ambiguous specifically on practical solutions. the instructor only read from the slides (same what can I do) and there is no practices and at least some steps to follow for essential formulas and mostly skimming are preferred rather than sharing of their knowledge.

2: I completed the CAPM chapter but not able to solve practical questions. If I enrolled in this course and paid a good prices therefore I have the right to receive a complete solution.

3: Apart from this course, do I need to visit each time many other resource to know about topics, formula and their practices.

Your quick response can save my time.

Regards

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi @Ahmad Siam Wahidi I think Nicole will weigh in at some point (I'm busy with content and support) but briefly two points: (i) the EOC questions are sometimes tough to give you stretch practice, this has routinely been praised about BT (ie., is a feature not a bug), and (ii) if you are really unhappy, just get a refund; it's not like we can re-record all the videos and redo the program based on your vague and sweeping input. We are always trying to improve, but we don't want you to be unhappy. In my experience, a small percentage of customers have unrealistic expectations. In regard to "I have the right to receive a complete solution": your idea of a complete solution sounds like a definition in your head, it may not exist anywhere in the FRM landscape. GARP's books are filled with errors; our primary competitor has basic questions that often mislead. Just for example, are such lazy inaccuracies and errors part of a "complete solution?" If no, then I am not aware of any "complete solutions." That's just an example. We can't be everything to everybody. What we try to do everyday is keep updating and bringing you the best practice questions etc. We don't want you unhappy, but there is only so much we can do. We are already the best and always striving to improve. Trying to answer your questions isn't very productive for me, I don't know how to answer them. The FRM is a lot of work, any way you slice it. Thank you,

 

[herojn4355]

Great initiative!
I think it will be of great help to many who watch the videos and do the readings but are left scratching their heads on some key topics that can be confusing, very similar or difficult.

The PQ drive is also imperative IMO. If you can't do the problems it doesn't matter if you read all the material 3 times and memorized all the formulas, and even some important graphs. Roll-up your sleeves, get out your pen, pencil and calculator and get to work.

[Disclaimer personally I'm too lazy but] do at least some PQs after every of the, e.g. GARP recommended 20 modules. This will greatly improve your comprehension of the material and the retention.

[I do all the PQs, apart from some those I solve on the forum, after all the readings but the problem with that approach is that by the time you get through the readings, you probably won't remember a lot of what you read. More generally speaking, if your work ethic and study approach is the complete opposite of mine I think you'll have a great chance of passing

 

[r.mahagaonkar]

Would like to understand on how to start with FRM 2, what subject do I take first to start with and sequence my study as I have got only 4 months for prep. Thank you in advance

 

[nc27]

Also interested , anyone please ?

 

[LucreziaB]

I also took the exams back to back and yeah I did find it stressful but absolutely doable as I did very well on Part 2. I think this year Part 2 is in December for some reason if I remember correctly so you might have an extra month. Anyway...

This exam is so qualitative and unfortunately does require you to memorize obscure stuff (to a much greater degree than Part 1) so the GARP books are a must read in my opinion. BT notes are notes and meant to help you understand the concepts not cover every obscure point.

So my strategy was to start with BT notes and videos for the entire curriculum, study them well first, make flashcards and do practice problems (maybe half at one time and save half for later), etc. Then, before too much time had passed, read all the GARP stuff cover to cover at least once. Then a second pass through the material, roughly a few chapters a day (depends on the content and if on a weekend or weekday) where I’d review the GARP text and the BT notes and do practice problems.

Do your flashcards every day, after a few weeks, you can start removing flashcards you got right from the pile to whittle it down, though you may want to reintroduce them toward the end so you don’t forget. Time permitting, write out cross topic study guides so you can synthesize topics that come up in multiple contexts (eg liquidity transformation)

The last few weeks, I did a third pass through stuff I thought was either foundational or stuff I did less well on BT questions. And then did BT chapter quizzes and one of the exams. I would have done the other one but I ran out of time. I don’t regret not doing the GARP practice exam as I had heard from others it was nothing like the Part 2 exam (in contrast to Part 1 where I had heard it was more comparable).

This is perhaps more prep than is needed but I work with people across basically all areas of risk management so the material is highly relevant to my work. I am in tech and don’t have a finance background and was taking time off work to prepare so I figured I’d go all out and let this be my chance to really master this stuff. Also wanted to make sure I passed on the first try because it was not fun dealing with all the bureaucratic issues of the past year and I couldn’t even imagine having to go through it all again...

 

[Meta]

Thank you for your feedback, how is the workload compared to the part 1 exam?
As I have spent around 6 months for part 1, i guess that 3 months won't be enough for part 2...?

The quant part has killed me...

 

[LucreziaB]

Thank you for your feedback, how is the workload compared to the part 1 exam?
As I have spent around 6 months for part 1, i guess that 3 months won't be enough for part 2...?

The quant part has killed me...

It is a LOT more reading and memorizing qualitative facts (1200+ pages of reading) but there’s a fair amount of quantitative material too and I think the best way to understand a lot of qualitative stuff is to get the underlying quant part. I think coming fresh off of Part 1 is the best time to do it and if you did well in Part 1 you will really feel it paying off because several topics (particularly Market Risk and Investments) build off of and even repeat a lot of P1. Sections 3 and 4 of P1 are the most relevant to P2 though you do want to be rock solid on the normal distribution.

Personally I found Part 1 took more effort because I had never even done a simple discounting of cash flows to price a simple fixed rate non-callable bond before I started. I pretty much did nothing in my life besides work and study for 3.5 months leading up to Part 2 but I passed extremely comfortably probably because I had set the foundations in P1

As Part 2 is actually early December this year so if you start now and pick the latest date you have 4.5 months to study, I would say it’s very feasible as long as you can plan to spend significant time (a few hours on weekdays and a good portion of your weekend) studying.

 

[Mezzala95]

Hi all,

Wanted to get some input on how some of you are (or have in the past) studying/revising to prepare for the P1 exam.

I go through the instructional video and study notes for each topic, spending a fair amount of time on these (~3-5 hrs on average). After that I do the chapter practice question set which takes me another 3-4 hours, noting I'm able to do the questions without much trouble. If I do have trouble, it doesn't take me long to understand a solution given the time I would have spent on the study itself.

A problem I'm facing is that the BT questions are too time consuming for me to use as revision to keep concepts fresh. Especially if its a more quantitative question.

For example, the IR futures topic, calculating the quoted futures price given a clean spot price took me about 15 minutes to work through the first time, granted I got that right.

So the purpose of this thread; how are you all structuring your revision using the BT resources?

 

[Lu Shu Kai FRM]

Hi @Mezzala95 ,

For me, I went through all the BT videos (and read through the BT notes for clarification on things I didn't understand; but mostly did not look at them much). I spent more time on questions, reading/understanding/participating on the forum. When it came close to the exam, I redid the 4 topic practice questions sets (the question set that covered all the chapters of a topic) again. I also spent time doing the GARP and BT exams.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[Mezzala95]

@lushukai helpful as always mate!

I definitely feel like I need to spend more time on questions, with BT's questions really testing you across both depth and scope.

I just discovered this Airtable containing all of BT's questions (browsed through the forums and came across it).

Current BT Practice Questions Key - Airtable

Explore the "Current BT Practice Questions Key" base on Airtable.

airtable.com

I think this might help me get targeted practice for specific LOs and topics. Sometimes, especially with the QA topic - BT question sets tend to incorporate a few concepts which, whilst providing a one-of-a-kind question for understanding and development, simply takes too long to work through!

I've yet to try the 'interactive quizzes' too which I believe should replicate the exam-style questions (shorter, but difficult). Though these test you on the whole topic as opposed to just a certain chapter.

 

[kchristo]

Hi all,
I'm trying to best determine what my approach should be for studying. I've done the following, in this order:

1. Finish the readings, and take notes
2. Re-read, but this time taking notes and making notecards for each LOB
3. Do all the global topic reviews
4. Finish all the practice questions

At this point, the material I have left to cover are:

• Topic quizzes
• FRM Practice tests

I feel like the topic quizzes and practice tests are definitely worth doing, but does anybody have a recommendation to the best way to continue reviewing for the next 40 days before the exam? Would it be best to just continue to drill practice questions by author, in order of testability?

 

[Lu Shu Kai FRM]

Dear @kchristo ,

Towards the end of my exam preparation I focused purely on topic question sets (the summary for each topic) and exam sets (always timed). It is more important at this stage to get used to the questions and the exam environment. I personally would not read the notes and watch the videos more than once as understanding through the questions is always more effective, which is also why I choose BT over other study packages.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[sulemanms202]

although i am done with all the readings, notes making and practice apart from key rate hedges and greeks. I still do not feel comfortable with my level of expertise given the pressure of the exam. I would still like to revise atleast 2 times more before going to exams. I have prepared summary of summary and linked that to MCQs of each area.

 

[man.gao777]

Just decided to take the exam next year, do i really need the GARP text book? will the material purchased here be enough? Thank you!!