13.1 Ninety-Day, Sixty-Day, and Thirty-Day Plan

Final 90/60/30-day plan

The last 90 days before the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level I exam are a management problem, not a knowledge problem. The exam has 180 multiple-choice questions split into two sessions of 90 questions in 135 minutes each, which works out to roughly 90 seconds per question with a short optional break between sessions. A candidate who waits for perfect mastery before doing timed work usually discovers a pacing problem far too late to fix it.

Use the countdown to change the kind of work you do. Early study tolerates slow reading and long notes; final study should produce scores, error patterns, formula fluency, ethics judgment, and logistical certainty. The goal is to arrive with fewer surprises, not a beautiful stack of unused notes.

90 days out: close the map

At 90 days, every topic area should have an owner in your calendar. Level I weights are published as ranges, so allocate effort accordingly: Ethical and Professional Standards (15-20%), Quantitative Methods (6-9%), Economics (6-9%), Financial Statement Analysis (11-14%), Corporate Issuers (6-9%), Equity Investments (11-14%), Fixed Income (11-14%), Derivatives (5-8%), Alternative Investments (7-10%), and Portfolio Management (8-12%). High-weight areas deserve repeated contact, but no topic should go dark because Level I is deliberately broad.

Build an error log now. Each miss records four fields: topic, reason, corrective action, and re-test date. The reason matters more than the score. A formula miss needs a different fix than a misread qualifier, a weak concept, or a sloppy calculator keystroke.

This is also the time to retire non-content risk. Confirm that your valid international travel passport is current and its name matches your CFA Institute account exactly. Confirm your exam appointment. Reserve 10 to 20 hours for the Practical Skills Module (PSM), because PSM completion is required to receive results and is included free with registration.

60 days out: practice becomes the curriculum

Around 60 days, official mock exams are typically live in the CFA Institute Learning Ecosystem. Treat them as diagnostic assets, not trophies. Take each under timed conditions, then spend more time reviewing than testing — the review is where score improvement is created.

Your practice mix should include topic drills, full 90-question sessions, and at least one full two-session rehearsal. Topic drills repair gaps; 90-question sessions train pace; full mocks test stamina, break discipline, and recovery after a hard item.

30 days out: narrow the variance

The final 30 days stabilize performance; do not rebuild the course from scratch. Rotate formulas, ethics standards, high-weight reviews, and mixed sets, and let review notes get shorter each week.

Use a daily loop: 20 minutes of formulas, 20 minutes of ethics or qualitative review, one timed question block, and one error-log repair. On heavy days add a 90-question session; on lighter days keep the loop intact so memory stays warm. The final week should feel boring in a useful way — you know where to go, what to bring, how to pace, and how to submit the PSM if it is still open.

Sequencing the daily loop

The order of work inside a day matters as much as the volume. Do timed question blocks when you are freshest, usually early, because pacing and accuracy degrade with fatigue and you want to practice under your best conditions, then taper. Reserve passive review — re-reading a note, watching a lecture clip — for low-energy windows where it cannot crowd out testing. A practical template is: open with one 90-question timed block, then review every miss in the error log, then close with 30-40 minutes of formula or ethics recall.

Candidates who flip this order, reviewing first and testing last, often run out of energy before the part of study that actually moves scores.

Set weekly checkpoints, not just daily ones. Each Sunday, scan the error log for themes: are misses clustered in a single topic, a single error type (sign errors, qualifier misreads, formula gaps), or a single time band late in the session? A clustered pattern is a coaching signal — one focused intervention can lift several questions at once, which is far more efficient than scattered review. If the log shows no pattern and accuracy is rising, trust the plan and resist the urge to add new material in the last two weeks.

Countdown rule

If an activity does not produce a score, a corrected error, a memorized process, or a completed logistical requirement, question its place in the final plan. The countdown rewards evidence: read less passively, test more honestly, and fix the same mistake only once.