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Studying CA12

D

Deniese

Member
can anyone suggest how to begin studying for CA12......I got the notes and nearly died......I haven't got a clue how to go about memorising all 60 chapters...also are the chapters relating to CA11 really that important cause the prospects of having to revise subject 301 (CA11) again is daunting.

The subject is almost enough to make you want to quit the profession:)

Any suggestions? (TUTORS)
 
I'm in the same boat - I'm exempt from CA11, but have to take CA12.

If anyone can offer any advice about how applicable the CA11 material is, it would really help!

On the one hand, I can see the argument that CA11 is assumed knowledge and therefore should be learnt. On the other hand, presumably the Institute wouldn't bother with a transition period where CA12 can be taken seperately unless they were excluding the CA11 material from this paper?

At the moment, it feels like as much fun as trying to memorise the phone-book!
 
do-able?

I was in the same position: exempt from CA11, sitting CA12. I passed it first time THANK GOD! I did the following:

* after reading a chapter, I would summarise it: key points and key lists. It's an extremely painful, boring and frustrating experience, but it paid off in the end: CA12 is not really about depth, it's all about being able to come up with as much ideas as you can, and there are a couple of long - stupid - lists in there that really do the trick
* read the CA11 summaries once, right before the exams
* kept the 301 exam questions in mind when it came to guessing the style of the CA12 exam questions. You should now have a better idea looking at past CA12 papers

Unfortunately, the summaries are handwritten and partly in flemish, so they wouldn't really help you, but remember, while summarising, you really get a feel for the chapter, so I didn't think it was a waste of time (well, in the end, that is; when I was summarising, I often wondered...)
 
I only scanned through the CA11 chapter summaries, nothing else - and NONE of it came up in the exam. My suggestion is: Ignore parts 3 to 6 (chapter 12 to 31, I think) and do the rest; if you have time read through the CA11 part but focus on the rest.

Also, part 1 is the worst part of the subject - all those lists! You do need to know them, but for now my advice is to just summarise them, not memorise (yet), and go on to the meatier part of the subject where understanding is more important than memorising. Memorise the lists in the 6 weeks before the exam, not now, otherwise you'll just end up forgetting them again.

Maybe some of the tutors can give some advice on mnemonics to remember the lists - CREATE BIG LIST for the chapter on external influences was a winner for me, thanks Anna!
 
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Ca12

Could anyone please tell me whether the material covered in CA12 is new since April 2005 or was covered under any of the old 300 Series subjects ?
I know that CA11 is the equivalent to the old Subject 301.

I just wish to know whether past Institute exam questions exist for the CA12 part of CA1.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,
David
 
Cracking CA12

I'm picking up on two questions in this thread:
1. how to memorise the large quantity of material
2. how much effort should you put into recapping on CA11

1. It is certainly daunting when you look at the notes for the first time. :rolleyes: However, we've found from preparing forteaching tutorials that each chapter boils down to a side or a double side of A4. Remember it's the Core Reading that you need to be concentrating on. The ActEd material is useful to help with understanding and applying but you certainly don't need to rote learn our paragraphs! I would endorse the message from steven74 - after studying each chapter, produce your A4 page summary. The process of doing this is invaluable since we only remember about 10% of what we read but 70% of what we say or write.

Other things that will help with learning the material are:

- mnemonics (as mentioned by Lin) - make up your own or speak to students who have been on CA1 tutorials in the past - perhaps this forum is a good place for people to post any that they have come up with?

- practising questions by chapter - something to do during revision rather than now - doing questions by chapter forces repetition and you start realising that it's the same key ideas coming up from each chapter time and time again (the CA12 ASET has a cross ref grid by chapter, equally the revision notes, to be released later this session will have questions grouped by theme)

- doing the assignments - not everyone's cup of tea but we've certainly found that exam results tend to be better, on average, from those who've had a go. I realise this is partly due to self selection but why not be one of those self selecting students? Again, it's the "doing" rather than just being passive that makes the difference.

2. If you've sat Subject 301 in the past, you will have quite a lot of investment knowledge lying latent, which will come back when prompted. I certainly would not recommend a full study of the CA11 materials if you are just sitting CA12. The aim of the CA12 exam is not to do a detailed test of the CA11 materials. The aim is to sometimes link the two parts together. For example, you might be considering a particular set of liabilities and be asked to think about the types of assets that would be a good match, or the basic principles of setting an investment strategy. So, the key things are to recap on the SYSTEM T type features of each asset class and to revise the factors affecting investment strategy from Chapter 27. If you do get more time, I would look over the chapter summaries for each of the CA11 chapters, particularly the chapters that are new to CA11 - Chapters 12, 14, 26, and 32.
 
ActEd has a list on their website of past exam paper questions useful for CA12 study - I can't remember exactly where I found it, but it's on the website somewhere. But basically to answer your question, most of the material comes from old 302-304 course material, and some is virtually identical to the chapters in those subjects.
 
David

The CA12 material for 2006 contains very minor changes from the 2005 version.

There are lots of past exam questions from the 300 series that are relevant to CA12. The CA12 ASET has the relevant questions and full solutions from the last 3 years. Equally, the revision guides, to be launched later this session will have relevant past exam questions and outline solutions from 1999.

CA11 is not quite equivalent to 301. For example, lots of the 301 material has been removed - fundamental analysis, performance measurement, derivative strategies, equity industry groupings. There are also 4 new chapters on project management (12), cashflows (14), asset models (26) and credit risk (32).

Anna



frawled2 said:
Could anyone please tell me whether the material covered in CA12 is new since April 2005 or was covered under any of the old 300 Series subjects ?
I know that CA11 is the equivalent to the old Subject 301.

I just wish to know whether past Institute exam questions exist for the CA12 part of CA1.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,
David
Click to expand...
 
CA12 is an extremely intimidating course but I don't think it should be.
I was exempt from CA11 and only did the CA12 part last time.
My strategy was to completely skip all of the chapters which werent directly examined by my paper. I understand that the institute say that you need all the background chapters but I dont really think thats the case. Its more like they are saying the same sort of thing as you need 103 to do 109 if you know what I mean. As long as you have some sort of basic grasp of the key asset characteristics, I wouldnt spend much time at all going through the non CA12 chapters.

I think the key in helping me to pass was spider diagrams. There is a lot of material for CA12 alone and it can be very difficult to memorise but if you can construct some sort of mind map to help you with idea generation in the exam that will help you.
As you can probably tell under this new exam regime, the focus is now much more on application rather than memory tests. Nowhere is this more true than in CA12 I think so make sure you are working towards the goal of being able to think of plenty of points to put down in the exam.

I didn't use Acteds list of 302,303,304 questions cause if I had have done it would have taken me a life time! Instead, I would focus for this exam more on the assignments and also tutorial questions if you can get hold of them.
 
Anna

You mentioned that the CA12 revision guides would be available later on this session - do you know roughly when they're likely to be available?



Anna Bishop said:
David

There are lots of past exam questions from the 300 series that are relevant to CA12. The CA12 ASET has the relevant questions and full solutions from the last 3 years. Equally, the revision guides, to be launched later this session will have relevant past exam questions and outline solutions from 1999.


Anna
Click to expand...
 
CA12 revision guides

The release date for these is end November. We then produce another version in January, updated to include the Sep 05 exam questions + outline solutions.
 
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