u/Electrical_Bar6324

Hey Series 65 Reddit,

I just walked out of the testing center after (luckily!!!) passing after my first try. I used this subreddit a lot, so I wanted to do a quick write-up to pay it forward to all of those who have done so in the past. I figure that hopefully I can help too.

As a background, I’m a random 30-year-old dude who majored in finance but has worked in non-finance industries for 9 years. I’m deciding to pursue the RIA path, and I’ve been preparing for this exam pretty hardcore (2-6 hours per day) for 3 weeks. I did about 3300 KBank questions and probably studied a total of 100+ hours.

I was reading online that a lot of people were studying for a few months (3-4+), but were studying for maybe an hour or so a day. Just knowing myself, I tend to thrive with quick, intense bursts of studying because otherwise I’ll lose my groove or forget things on the test. And as many of you who are preparing for this test know, this test requires a lot of memorization and covers a pretty wide breadth of material. So I decided to go all-in for 3 or so weeks. As a disclaimer, I’m just sharing what I thought would work with me. Your mileage may vary.

I used Kaplan to prepare. At the beginning, I sort of brute forced things. I just started taking Kaplan QBank quizzes before doing any reading for studying, and was getting around a 52% average. I was making lots of mistakes and had no clue about laws and regulations in particular.

I then almost exclusively cycled between 4 key pillars to study:

1. Kaplan QBank

2. A study sheet that Claude created for me after I uploaded the textbook into Claude

3. Series 65 Mighty Ninety by Series 7 Guru

4. Series 66 Power Hour: Facts you need to know (Series 65 also) by Ken Finnen

Every day would involve some combination of these items. I’d often do several 10-question QBank quizzes, try to learn from my mistakes, then re-read my study sheet, and re-listen to Series 7 Guru and Ken’s videos. I probably listened to Series 7 Guru’s and Ken’s videos 10 times each.

I felt that Kaplan was helpful in preparing me for the breadth of the material. There’s a lot of stuff on Kaplan and there’s also a lot of stuff on the exam. HOWEVER, I’ll say that Kaplan’s use of roman numerals was absolutely ridiculous. I remember seeing a minimum of a dozen roman numeral questions per Kaplan practice test. On the actual test? Not a single one—not in 140 questions did I even get a singular roman numeral question.

Kaplan felt like it was written more to trick you. The language is convoluted and difficult and some of the questions are written poorly. The Series 65 is written in much more straightforward of a way and it doesn’t seem like it’s intended to trick you. You still do have to read the questions carefully (because if you neglect “except” or confuse “pre-tax” with “post tax’), you’ll mess up.

I was eventually getting my Kaplan practice quizzes/tests up to the 67%-77% area. I felt borderline here, because some of the 140-question quizzes that I took would be high 60%s and this subreddit would have you think that you’d fail miserably with those. I also had a full-length practice test where I got a 77% and this gave me a ton of confidence.

Come test day (today), like many test takers, I experienced a couple of things. The first 30-35 questions felt concise, straightforward, and easy. The middle questions (40 through 100) toughened up and got a little longer. The last questions (100 through 140) felt easy again.

One of my biggest pieces of advice is: treat every question like it’s its own independent thing. If you feel like the middle of the test if getting to you, remember that every question is a chance for you to score points. And you also never know which questions are the experimental/nongraded questions.

If you think about it, you can theoretically get 47 questions wrong (37 graded and 10 experimental non-graded) and still pass this test. I don’t necessarily encourage you to feel like you can get a TON of questions wrong, but what I’m saying is that my confidence definitely dipped toward the middle of the exam and I felt like I may be failing because I was getting a few curveballs on items that I hadn’t prepared for/studied for.

When my screen paused for 20 seconds, my heart was pounding out of my chest. And then I saw: “Passed.” Whew.

All in all, my key takeaways:

- Kaplan is helpful, but wordier/trickier than the real deal. The roman numerals are absurd and do not expect to see many if any of those on the exam

- Series 7 Guru and Ken Finnen are incredibly legit and know their stuff. Listen to their videos several times, because I was still picking up new items during listen #5, 6, 7, 8, and beyond

- Expect the Series 65 to be hardest in the middle. Breathe and treat every question like its own thing

- Sections 3 (client recs & strategies) and 4 (laws & regs) have a disproportionate representation on the test, so study accordingly! Especially for finance-native folks, don’t just think that these will be cake! They require memorization and are not intuitive

- Toward the end of my studying, I knew what my weaknesses were (discount vs. premium bonds/ life insurance/ annuities/ order types). I asked ChatGPT to prepare me a 1-2 page PDF describing those concepts very simply and I studied that sheet a few times. It was very helpful.

This subreddit can have you feeling on top of the world on one minute and like you’re never going to pass another minute. Take it from a guy who studied really hard for 3 weeks and doubted himself a lot along the way: this test IS doable and you just need to chip away at it concept by concept. You don’t need to know EVERYTHING, but definitely make sure that you don’t have huge gaps or weaknesses.

My DMs are open if you all have any questions. Good luck and crush it out there!!!!

Just took a full-length Kaplan test using QBank. I’ve been studying pretty hardcore for 3 weeks.

How test-ready am I, here?