u/-XxxtemptationxxX-

Background

Studied Finance in school, worked in PE in Canada. Grew up with above-average memory. Used knopman marks (I bought Kaplan but never got around to using it)

 How it felt

Despite my b/g I found the material difficult because it was quite heavily weighted on rote memorization on new rules and dates. This is because I'm Canadian and I had only ever heard of a Roth IRA, traditional IRA or a 401(k). I shot myself in the foot because I totally underestimated the volume of new stuff I would have to memorize. I also had to onboard a new job and was generously given after 3pm to study. I would lock into the material Monday to Friday from 3pm to ~12am over the work week. I think my b/g helped with a very small portion of the exam being Reg D (Partnerships), economics, equity and debt mechanics, and options (Which honestly didn't weigh that much in my exam).

 What my exam covered

• I got a lot of questions regarding MF, Savings Accounts and timeline.
• Very little amount regarding options and equities (what I was hoping to see).
• Submitted it feeling like an absolute toss-up between a pass and fail.

Biggest tips

-VERY IMPORTANT PREFACE-

• Beyond my take on the approach to study material, I leaned into Claude looking at my test results, observing my learning (looking at questions I got right and wrong) was a serious game changer. AI is incredible at pattern recognition and leaning into the science of learning. All the below were what Claude taught me about my learning.

 How to approach resources (Knopman Marks)

• Incredible material that is supposedly on average harder (see below).
  • Honestly, maybe my exam was an edge case, it felt like it covered a lot of niches.
  • Based on other posts regarding knopman, I think I am an edge case for questions.
• I think the purpose of these study programs is not to make you read everything, but to push you to cover enough that once you're at the exam you can meet that passing threshold with a 95% confidence interval.

 Active Recall and Learning

• Got something wrong? Review why you chose it and why the other answers didn't seem true. Go over why the right answer is the correct choice.
• Show AI your test results, ask it to find where it hurts most and press down on that topic.
  • For me it was savings accounts and taxation.
  • Beyond topics, I was apparently not good at process timeline recognition across all topics, so I dug deep into all the timelines and orders of operations.
• I'd be careful with this next one: Talk to Claude about the concepts, say it out loud and ask it for feedback on your understanding.
  • Sometimes it will be wrong and that's when you check the books.

 Take rest as serious as your studying

• Claude recognized my sleep schedule and connected the dots with my studying and chapter test performance. Results were shocking. Every time I slept ~5 hours, I performed far worse on tests.
  • It is imperative to your learning that you rest properly.
  • The marginal cost of losing an hour of sleep is far greater than the marginal benefit of an extra hour of studying.
• Healthy diet and hydration are also KEY.

An analogy to support rest and wellness

Holding a stack of books

• If you don't give your body the time to "Put the books in the bookshelf" (sleep), then you will drop all the "books" (knowledge) and waste your time trying to pick them up (relearn).
• Moral of the story: Put your books on the bookshelf.
• Don't take my word for it, take science's.

On the day before and of the exam

• Like I said, sleep, eat well, stay hydrated.
• Read the questions THOROUGHLY (make sure it's asking for what is true or false, look out for EXCEPT).

Test Tips

• Process of elimination is your best friend, sometimes two answers say the same thing and if you can only pick one, you know both are not true, then do a best guess or use your intuition to eliminate the last choice.
  • I like to flag questions that I somewhat questions.
  • Go through ones I'm fairly certain on and lock them down, if I'm comfortable with it, unflag.
  • Next wave of flagged are ones I am somewhat certain, give best answer.
  • GOAL: Get the flags as low as possible, the most flags you want left is 19 (worst case all your toss ups are wrong guesses, which is unlikely that ALL of them are wrong).

People have told me they take on average 2-4 weeks to study for the SIE. Given my background I should have given myself ~2 weeks to be comfortable. I definitely pushed the limit by giving myself ~6 days.

Feel free to reach out with any questions! ONTO THE 7!