Preparation day + mock day

I've got quite a few questions regarding CA3 preparation and shall be grateful if people could kindly give me some advise

1. I plan to sit CA3 in Jun 2014 and am wondering if i purchase the CMP now, would i need to get an update right before the exam?

2. Neither the Study Guide nor the CMP upgrade for 2014 is available for download on Acted's website; it is a bit hard to figure out how much preparation is involved. I find the Study Guide on all the other subjects very helpful to get an idea on how to schedule your study etc.

3. When should I start my preparation as I plan to sit my SA in Apr?

4. I plan to attend the preparation day as I've attended tutorials for all the subjects i've taken, but not sure how prepared i need to be before the actual preparation day (e.g. I think the suggestions for CA2 is that one should have finished all the past papers on the Institute's website before attending the preparation day?)

5. Question 4 also goes to the Mock day as between my planned SA and CA3, the 8 weeks required by the Institute tightly fit in. How long should i leave between the preparation day and the mock day?


Thanks in advance to anyone who could shed some light

 

1. No, the CMPs are only updated once a year, around October. If you buy the CMP now it will be fine for June.

2. For CA3, I would say it requires less work than an ST. The course notes can be read in a couple of hours. The main bulk of your preparation should be doing practice questions.

3. Personally, I would recommend doing maybe one CA3 question every 1-2 weeks in the run up to April would be fine. Concentrate on your SA. Then after April go full time on CA3 and do as many questions as you have time for. But that's just how I would do it, it all depends on how confident you are with your SA material and the communications work e.g. if you feel that you need a huge amount of CA3 practice and you are quite confident with the SA material then you might want to split your studying 50/50 before April.

4. I attended the preparation day. I think you should definitely read through the notes and attempt at least one of the past papers / example papers. It's not essential to have covered every single paper.

5. Definitely give yourself as much time between the mock and the exam as you can get away with, maybe sit it very soon after your SA. The Acted feedback from the mock is brilliant, so you want to give yourself as much time to practice after receiving this feedback as possible.