SII exams- Study at home?

Hi all,

I am looking into taking the SII Level 3 Certificates (securities, derivatives, investment management units). At the moment I am unsure whether I should to take one of the 2/3 day courses that are on offer at places like BPP, or whether I should just get the learning material directly from the SII website and learn from home. If anyone has taken the exams, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Milan

milzay said:

Hi all,

I am looking into taking the SII Level 3 Certificates (securities, derivatives, investment management units). At the moment I am unsure whether I should to take one of the 2/3 day courses that are on offer at places like BPP, or whether I should just get the learning material directly from the SII website and learn from home. If anyone has taken the exams, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks,

Milan

Click to expand...

Just study from home yourself. I did the old FSA course about 8 years ago
and paid £650 for a 5 day course. Basically some idiot giving you a shortened
version of whats in the book. Im sitting my finacial advisor exams at the moment.
Read the book in full it should take a week or 2. Then buy 3 to 5 mock examination
papers and complete them over and over again until your getting over 95% on each
paper. Your then ready for the exam.

When sitting the exam you will get a good amount of questions that you know straight away. Mark them as correct on a separate piece of paper. Any you dont know pass over for the moment. At the end count the questions your pretty much sure of. If you have say 50% you just need to go for the 20% to get the pass. At this point you need to
work hard on the previously passed over questions to get your pass.

Ive sat my Mortgae Advisor exams and as mentioned am sitting my IFA exams
so have a little idea of how it works.

Good luck

Ged

Hi again,

Thanks for the great advice and saving me a lot of money. Guess I'll get on with ordering the material, might be back on here to pick your brain a bit more further down the line. Once again, many thanks.

Milan

milzay said:

Hi again,

Thanks for the great advice and saving me a lot of money. Guess I'll get on with ordering the material, might be back on here to pick your brain a bit more further down the line. Once again, many thanks.

Milan

Click to expand...

If you have self-disciplined you can just buy the books and the online questions from the SII institute Online Bookshop Home Page

Courses for all the units are a waste of - The 7city ones are only "revision courses" that you get recordings of in the online learning package.

The only essentials you need are the exam questions, mocks etc which when I took my last exam 25% of the time were word-perfect copies a majority of the others werent far off.

Thanks for the further advice. I thought that the courses would be a bit of a waste of time and money. The learning material I've been looking at is indeed the SII Institute Online Bookshop, went to order the material today, although apparently I need to live in London (mine being the first house on the London / Essex border). I'm sure a quick phone call tomorrow should have it sorted though.

Does anyone have any idea (just a rough estimate) about how long it would take me to revise for one certificate, bearing in mind I'm pretty much completely free right now?

milzay said:

Thanks for the further advice. I thought that the courses would be a bit of a waste of time and money. The learning material I've been looking at is indeed the SII Institute Online Bookshop, went to order the material today, although apparently I need to live in London (mine being the first house on the London / Essex border). I'm sure a quick phone call tomorrow should have it sorted though.

Does anyone have any idea (just a rough estimate) about how long it would take me to revise for one certificate, bearing in mind I'm pretty much completely free right now?

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Everyone learns at different speeds so it can vary. Each level or module usually takes between 60 to 80 hours. On my CEFA 2 which im studying now, ive studied fot the last 4 weeks and that has varied from 1 to 2 hours per evening to full 8 hour days either in the week if im not working or a full 8 hours on a Saturday and Sunday.
Im now on my final chapter and will start my question bank questions tomorrow and will sit my exam next friday which will be 9 days away.

Whether i pass is another story but its around 6 weeks per module for me.

Print off a couple of months calendar from Outlook and plot on each day or 2 or 3 days which module you will start and finish by and stick to what you write down. Im around 3 days behind but i consider that quite good as ive mainly stuck to my plan and will only be 3 days later than planned in sitting the exam.

Ged

milzay said:

Thanks for the further advice. I thought that the courses would be a bit of a waste of time and money. The learning material I've been looking at is indeed the SII Institute Online Bookshop, went to order the material today, although apparently I need to live in London (mine being the first house on the London / Essex border). I'm sure a quick phone call tomorrow should have it sorted though.

Does anyone have any idea (just a rough estimate) about how long it would take me to revise for one certificate, bearing in mind I'm pretty much completely free right now?

Click to expand...

according to 7 city
SII Certificates Financial Training

Unit 1 FSA Financial Regulation or Unit 6 PFR: 10 hours plus course attendance
Unit 2 Securities: 30-35 hours plus course attendance
Unit 3 Derivatives: 30-35 hours plus course attendance

according to me lol
Unit 1= Approx 25 hours
Unit 2 = Approx 55 hours
Unit 3 = Approx 50 hours

I'd say it took me approx 2 months around work (2-3 hours a day - 4 hours over the weekends) for the Unit 2 secs - this was probably over kill and I probably referred to the book a few times more than I needed to before i started the mock exams.

I took the Unit 7 - Fin Deriv's took about the same as I found it a little trickier - regret not taking the full-fat Unit 3 (unit 7 is only a 75 question exam) -probably not much more work needed on that going by whats in the book.

I'm in the process of doing the Unit 6 regs one which is by far the worst purely because its proper boring - its a real effort opening the books in the evening. Been doing this for near 6 weeks.

I've held back-office jobs over the past 9 years though so some of it isnt new to me.

If my company wasnt paying for this I'd maybe looking to take the Eurex exam, its more comprehensive/harder but you can download the material off the Deutsche Borse website for nought (no practice exams). This exam covers you for work in the UK, you would still need to do tha regs though.