I had a strong suspicion that I passed last time I took CFE, so I downloaded as many of the readings as I could before I got the official pass in January. There weren’t a ton, but I did try to read up as much as I could.
Once I got the official pass in January, I ordered the source material as well as the PAK study manual and online seminar. I was a big fan of the PAK material for this sitting, especially the videos. I felt the PAK study notes by themselves were a little tough to get context on without either watching the videos or going back to the source readings, and I did both of those things many times. I seem to remember that for ERM and CFE the study notes by themselves were sufficient a lot of the time, but in this case without larger context I found even using them as review material was difficult without more explanation. This might be a symptom more of the material than of PAK’s presentation, as there was just a ton of information in seemingly every reading on the syllabus.
I found that my study sessions for FSA exams have been more efficient in short chunks rather than huge blocks (huge blocks worked for prelim exams), so I would do 30-45 minutes in the morning and at lunch and then 60-90 minutes in the evenings. I didn’t study much on the weekends, because having 3 kids on weekends really saps all your energy! Even trying to study after the kids went to bed would not have helped very much.
So, armed with that material and a structure, I began my studying in January. It was rough going the whole way through. While I found the material interesting, there was SO MUCH of it that it really made it hard to feel like I ever had a handle on it. There must have been well more than 250 lists I could possibly have tried to memorize, and just so much material that could be tested that it often felt hopeless. My strategy was to memorize a few formulas, but beyond that not to try to memorize anything specific, just to learn the material as well as possible and be able to understand and apply it. Now, even with that strategy, every time I opened the study material there was always more and more concepts that could possibly be tested, and there is no way I would ever have been able to learn them all. Every single week I just felt like I was trying to hold back a waterfall – I was tired from trying and it just kept coming!
So, at no point did I really feel confident. I had some ideas of what techniques I would like to use for taking notes and reviewing the material, but by the time I finished my read through and initial review, there wasn’t enough time for me to really work with the material. Keep in mind, I only had 3.5 months between finding out I passed CFE and taking SDM. If you’re throwing family responsibilities in there and weekends are out for the most part, that isn’t a lot of time. So, the last few weeks before the exam I started to formulate what I would try to do for next sitting and had a good strategy to pass in the fall. Unfortunately, I still had to prepare for spring!
I am fortunate to have study time provided by the student program at work. Most students take the 5 days prior to their exam off from work to study. I have always done this, and found it very effective. Well, for the first 3 of the 5 days I had a sick kid at home! While I should still be able to study with a sick kid at home, it was definitely a constant distraction and made it difficult to get into the full mindset or “zone”. Also, I couldn’t take study breaks like I normally do. A mid-afternoon trip to the grocery store has always been a good study break for me, and I couldn’t leave the house with a sick kid.
Halfway through the third study day, a coworker of mine who is taking the same exam called and we chatted about how we felt about our chances. He was feeling positive, but I was not. I felt like I knew nothing! Keep in mind, the exam is in 3 days at this point. He was encouraging, and after he called I decided to try to use one of the methods I was preparing for the fall, which was to take notes on all the sections by hand. Essentially, extract what I felt was most important from the PAK notes (based on my highlighting and handwritten notes in there) and put it all in a notebook. 2 full days and 30 handwritten pages of notes later, I had given myself and handy mini review book, and had reinforced many of the concepts in an efficient manner.
At this point, I still felt like I didn’t KNOW anything from a memorization standpoint, but that I was pretty familiar with over 80% of the material based on my crunch-time hand written note taking. If they asked me to apply concepts, I would be in good shape. If they wanted lists from the study material, I would come up short on most.
Well, the exam didn’t ask for a lot of lists to be regurgitated. It turned out to be application of concepts and a lot of applying concepts to the case study. My preparation was targeted towards that, and I feel like I got at least somewhere between 60-70% of the points, and quite possibly more than that. Based on feedback from other students, all of us seem to agree that the exam felt a little bit easy, so we shall see where the pass mark and pass rate end up, but I am cautiously optimistic at this point. I was able to answer every question with something, even if I thought it really wasn’t 100% correct, and I finished both the morning and afternoon sessions with at least 15 minutes to spare. This is the best I have felt out post-exam of my 4 FSA exam sittings, so we shall see if that holds up when results are reached.
If the result in July is a pass, the quest is complete!
