FinQuiz Editorial Additions (2026 Update)
This section is written by FinQuiz editors. The guest post below comes from an earlier era of Joseph’s series for
this blog (its exact publication date isn’t recorded; the paper-exam calendar it assumes places it in the
mid-2010s). Of all his posts we’ve restored, this one needed the least translation: the study method it teaches
is the part of exam prep that hasn’t changed at all.
The method, in one line: don’t re-read — review soon, review again, and test
yourself. Study a topic, give it ten minutes the next day, touch it weekly for a month, and check your recall
with the book closed. The exam around this advice changed completely — computer-based, multiple windows a year
— but the way human memory works did not, which is why his routine transfers to 2026 without edits.
What has changed since it was written
- The calendar now works in your favor: all three levels are computer-based with multiple exam windows per year, so you pick your date and can schedule his day-after and weekly reviews backward from a known exam day — something June-or-December candidates never could.
- The 300-hour figure he cites is still the standard guidance, and his real point stands: hours only count if the material survives until exam day. Review cycles are how they survive.
- The missing graphic: the original post displayed a forgetting-curve illustration — retention dropping steeply in the days after studying, rescued by each review. We couldn’t recover the image, but his text describes the idea completely, so nothing essential is lost.
- His “15 or 20 minutes of practice problems” got easier to act on: your CFA Institute registration now includes official practice questions in the Learning Ecosystem, and topic-filtered drills in our formula-recall guide’s companion tools make the daily-review habit nearly frictionless.
- Self-testing has a full-dress version now: the close-the-book recitation he prescribes scales up to a complete 180-question mock — two 90-question sessions, free with any FinQuiz account — which tells you topic by topic what stuck.
- The posts around this one are live: his warning about drifting into meta-studying, Getting Side Tracked on Your Way to the CFA, is the natural sequel — spaced review only works if the review sessions actually happen.
Original Guest Post (Text Unchanged)
Disclosure: The guest author does not endorse FinQuiz products. The content below is displayed with
no edits, no paraphrasing, and no reordering. No links have been added into the author’s text.
The original publication date is not recorded; the forgetting-curve graphic the post displayed could not be recovered
and is not shown — the editorial note above describes what it illustrated.
The phrase ‘study smarter, not harder’ is thrown around a lot but candidates may not be taking the advice to heart. Studying upwards of 300 hours for the exam is hard enough but even that may not get you closer to the designation if you’re not retaining the information. You truly do need to master the material in order to recall it on the exam and you won’t be able to do that by just reading through study material.
The Curve of Forgetting
Ebbinghaus published his hypothesis on the ‘curve of forgetting’ in 1885, describing how we learn and forget information.
The idea is that you learn everything you can about a topic through a study event or lecture but then start to lose the information over time if it’s not reinforced.
If you do nothing to remember the information, you’ve lost up to 80% of it by the second day and retain just 2% in a matter of 30 days.
Active Recall Techniques
The solution is to reinforce the material and commit it to long-term memory by reminding yourself of the key points.
Spending just 10 minutes studying the material the day after a lecture will help boost your memory back to full comprehension.
After that, it takes less time revisiting the material to remember the bulk of the topic.
Using this idea in your CFA examination study plan means reviewing the material you study the following day and each week for the next month. Use study notes to review the key points and then do 15 or 20 minutes of practice problems.
Work published in Psychological Science by a Washington University professor on a 2009 study shows that students remember material better when they actively recall it after studying. Instead of just reviewing notes or rereading material, close your book and verbally recite the key points to a topic. Do this just after studying and before reviewing the material.
Written by Joseph Hogue, CFA
FAQ (Global candidates)
Does this study advice still apply to the computer-based CFA exams?
Yes — arguably better than when it was written. The method he describes (study, review the next day, review
weekly, and test yourself instead of rereading) is independent of exam format. What has changed is the calendar:
all levels are now computer-based with multiple exam windows per year, so you choose your date and can plan review
cycles backward from it, and the roughly 300-hour guidance he references is still the standard planning figure.
How do I build active recall into a CFA Level 1 study plan?
Follow the post’s own recipe with modern tools: after each study session, close the book and recite the key
points aloud, then review the topic the next day and again each week. Make practice questions the backbone of the
reviews — his 15 or 20 minutes of practice problems maps directly to topic-filtered drills in a question bank.
Start with the official practice included with your CFA Institute registration in the Learning Ecosystem; the
FinQuiz Level I Question Bank is an optional extra
when you want more volume.
How often should I revisit material I have already studied?
The post’s cadence — a short review the day after you first study a topic, then weekly touches for about
a month — remains a sensible, low-overhead schedule, and it is exactly the kind of plan that fits the 300-hour
guidance. The practical trick is putting the reviews in your calendar when you first study the topic, so revisiting
is automatic rather than a willpower decision. Our guide on
how many hours to study for CFA Level 1
shows how review cycles fit into a full plan.
How can I check whether the material is actually sticking?
Test yourself under exam conditions. Every free FinQuiz account includes one full-length Level I mock exam —
180 questions in two 90-question sessions, free with any account — and the topic-by-topic results show you
exactly which subjects survived the forgetting curve and which need another review cycle. It is the same
close-the-book self-testing the post prescribes, scaled up to the whole curriculum.
