You’re an absolute machine. I appreciate your detailed response.
I’m a hair away from pulling the trigger on the Series 66 prep material via Achievable. Re: the SIE, my experience almost mirrors yours (I passed first attempt, thread here). Along these lines and in response to your post I have a few new thoughts:
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I did not know the Series 7 was globally recognized and had value in overseas markets. Thanks for educating me on that. The Series 66 has two co-requisites: SIE and Series 7, so I will be taking the 7 if I go the 66 route, as it doesn’t “activate” as a license until you have both SIE and 7. But seeing as Series 7 requires sponsorship. I assume, this means you’ve found a sponsor, or got into a firm?
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I used the dump sheets in a similar manner. By the time I was at the end of the textbook, I used the dump sheets more as a “checklist” than anything. To mean, any concept or info on the dump sheet I didn’t recognize or was unfamiliar with, I automatically knew was a weak area and reinforced with more studying until I understood.
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You mention you would have changed how you allocated your time. I agree here.
Not that options aren’t important, but for the time invested in studying versus the proportion of questions in the draw, I wasn’t being efficient with my time. Sinking wayyy too much time into options (actually the options themselves were easy, it was the hedging strategies where I struggled most bc it marries several concepts together). Again, not that they’re not important, but spending 40 hours to study options when the exam only presents 3-4 questions wasn’t efficient. In theory, you could skip / miss every options questions and still pass if you spend your time reinforcing other major testable areas like capital markets, products and their risks, etc. To be clear, I don’t recommend this. The only thing that gave me confidence in doing so is that FINRA released a content outline for the SIE. The knowledge itself is still very valuable. To add, the SIE is also general in nature whereas the other top-offs are more specialized. So I imagine that for more difficult concepts, one will be required to commit their time until they’re able to grasp the testable concepts. -
I’m happy to know the SIE bleeds over into other Series exams. The overlap will be very useful to reinforce what we’ve already learned.
Overall, I can only express my CONGRATULATIONS on passing your exams. These tests are not a walk in the park for most (especially Series 65), and so your experience and data points are invaluable. I’m positive whichever firm you settle in will be fortunate to have you.
Thanks for paying forward your experience to us who are still in the studying community.