The Importance of Taking Practice Problems

I can not express enough that taking practice problems is extremely important. By doing lots of practice problems you will be able to convert your knowledge into question answering ability, which is key to passing level 1.

One should take as many practice problems as possible, however, be sure not to over-focus your time on taking practice problem such that you forgo a thorough reading reviewing of the material.

In order to develop adequate question answering abilities I recommend you do at least the following:

• Complete each practice problem at the end of each chapter.
• Immediately following completion of practice problems review incorrect problems and problems that you had a hard time with. The best way to review problems is to read over the solution then try to answer the problem again from scratch. This helps cement the solution.
• After finishing each book, take a sample test with questions only from that book. Save your practice exams, keeping track of what questions you got wrong and had a hard time with.
• After finishing your first read of the entire body of knowledge take at least three, six hour, timed, practice tests, to adequately prepare and simulate the actual exam. Review the questions you got wrong and had a hard time with.
• My practice schedule was to take a three hour practice exam on Saturday morning, take a break, then review my exam, and do the same on Sunday. Try to this for four weekends.

Thoughts on ethics/GIPS practice questions:

• To prepare for the ethics/GIPS portion I recommend taking a disproportionately large amount of practice questions. There are lots of small and seemingly minor rules you will be tested on for ethics that are easiest learned via taking practice problems. I feel that it is more effective to spend 5 hours reading the ethics/GIPS materials and 5 hours taking practice problems than to read ethics/GIPS for 8 hours and take practice problems for 2 hours.