In today’s post, we are going to outline some of the best practices for your SIE exam studying. These tips won’t guarantee that you pass the exam, but they will certainly help boost your score.
Let’s jump in.
SIE Exam Studying: Starting with the Right Stuff
Since the SIE exam was launched in 2018, there has been no shortage of curriculum providers. Some companies that never existed at the time have popped up to provide practice questions, study tips, etc.
With such a large number of providers, it can be very difficult to get a sense of which you should choose. Unless of course you see about 400 students per year like we do, deciding can be hard.
At Professional Exam Tutoring, our SIE exam tutor service is “textbook agnostic.” In other words, we try to help students with whatever textbook they’ve been assigned or chosen. That said, when the student has a choice, we certainly have our recommendation based off of what we see works for the majority of the hundreds of students we see.
Specifically, that company is Securities Training Corporation, or STC. We generally find that students that use even their basic package, which is currently selling for $125 is even more important than one hour of tutoring.
How to Use STC
The catch, however, is in how to use the study material. It’s one thing to know which study material seems to be most effective, but is another thing to utilize the most effective study approach using the right material.
From our experience, some of the suggested approaches by STC are not as effective as you’d expect.
What we personally find is that students have a lot of success when studying for the exam by first reading the textbook. Next, then going through all eight of STC’s practice final exams one-by-one, learning and reinforcing as they go. However, we highly recommend that you go through all eight in order. Starting with the first, and then working their way through to number eight.
After your first round of eight practice exams, we recommend that you take the FINRA practice exam online. Next, repeat the eight final exams from STC, take the FINRA practice exam again, and then try STC’s two “Greenlight” exams if you have access to them.
Memorize Some Stuff
Lastly, in between your practice exams, there is necessary memory work to do.
Whether you use flashcards or simply study notes, we highly recommend that you take note of any specific definitions, formulas, or rules and regulations that you consistently get wrong. Only record those on flashcards. The reason for this is that many people put down everything on flashcards and then they end up with a massive stack of cards that they never want to look at.
The overall goal is to keep your studying as efficient as possible, and as streamlined as possible. The approaches above should help you do that and help you successfully bring up your score. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. With a little hard work, you’ll be through this exam in no time. Good luck!