How many hours do you need?
Treat 300 hours as a starting point, not a target. A finance or accounting degree can shorten Financial Statement Analysis and Corporate Issuers considerably; if you are new to the material, or out of practice with maths, plan for more. What matters more than the total is that you cover every topic and leave enough time at the end to practise under exam conditions.
What a study week looks like
Hours spent reading are easy to forget. A plan that works mixes four things every week, which is how CheapMocks Academy is built:
- Learn: short lessons. Work through the topic of the week in short lessons, each with the idea, the formula, worked examples and a quick self-check (794 lessons, 218 of them with a video).
- Remember: flashcards every day. Finish a lesson and its cards join your deck. A short session of spaced-repetition reviews each day keeps earlier topics fresh while you learn new ones (5,018 flashcards in all).
- Practise: the question bank after each module. Answer a set of questions on what you just learned, read every explanation and redo the ones you missed.
- Prove: full mocks at the end. Once the curriculum is covered, sit timed 180-question mocks and use the topic report to choose what to review.
Let the exam plan do the maths
In the Academy, the My deck card has an exam plan. Enter your exam date and it turns the lessons and flashcards you have left into lessons per week and new cards per day, keeps the last 30 or 60 days before the exam free for review, and shows whether you are ahead of or behind an even pace. The schedule below is the same idea worked out by hand, so you can see where the weeks go.
Hours by topic
The table splits 230 hours of first-time study across the topics in proportion to their exam weights (the midpoint of each range), rounded to five hours. Move time towards your weaker topics once you know what they are.
| Topic | Exam weight | Hours | When | Academy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quantitative Methods | 6–9% | 15 | Week 1 | 82 lessons |
| Financial Statement Analysis | 11–14% | 30 | Weeks 2–3 | 89 lessons |
| Fixed Income | 11–14% | 30 | Weeks 4–5 | 110 lessons |
| Equity Investments | 11–14% | 30 | Weeks 6–7 | 62 lessons |
| Corporate Issuers | 6–9% | 15 | Week 8 | 49 lessons |
| Derivatives | 5–8% | 15 | Week 9 | 59 lessons |
| Alternative Investments | 7–10% | 20 | Weeks 10–11 | 52 lessons |
| Portfolio Management | 8–12% | 20 | Weeks 11–12 | 46 lessons |
| Economics | 6–9% | 15 | Weeks 12–13 | 60 lessons |
| Ethical and Professional Standards | 15–20% | 40 | Weeks 13–16 | 55 lessons |
A 20-week schedule
- Weeks 1–16: learn the curriculum. Work through the topics in the order above. Quantitative Methods comes first because later topics use its tools, then the big technical topics (FSA, Fixed Income, Equity) while your energy is highest. Ethics comes last, in the final weeks, so the Standards are fresh on exam day. Do the lessons for each learning module, keep up your daily flashcards, and finish each module with practice questions before moving on.
- Weeks 17–18: first full mock and targeted review. Sit a full, timed mock, review every question, and spend the rest of the time on your weakest high-weight topics: go back to their lessons and drill them in the question bank.
- Weeks 19–20: more mocks and final review. Take at least one more full mock, re-read the Standards and ethics cases, keep your flashcard reviews going, and go over the formula sheet until you can use every formula without looking.
- The final week: light review only. Rest, check the exam logistics and keep your timing routine.
If you have less time
With 10–12 weeks, cut the first-time reading rather than the review: move quickly through the descriptive modules, focus on the high-weight topics (Ethics, Financial Statement Analysis, Equity and Fixed Income together make up about half the exam), and still keep the last three weeks for mocks. A mock shows you where marks are being lost far faster than rereading does. With a shorter plan, the exam plan simply asks for more lessons a week and more cards a day.
Tips that make the hours count
- Study little and often. Five sessions of three hours beat one fifteen-hour weekend.
- Practise questions from the first week. Reading alone feels productive but is easily forgotten.
- Do your flashcard reviews every day, even on days without new lessons. Missed days pile up.
- Keep a log of every question you get wrong and why, and review it each week.
- Use your exam calculator from day one, so the keystrokes are automatic by exam day.
Not sure where you stand? Take the free full mock first and let the topic report tell you where to spend the most time.