When starting out studying for the SIE exam, we have some tips on how to read the SIE curriculum textbook. In today’s note, we explain how our successful students do this. We also share some extra tips we’ve learned along the way.
How to Read the SIE Curriculum Textbook: Quick, but Don’t Skim
When it comes to the SIE textbook, or most textbooks when taking FINRA Exams, we’ve found that students that tend to get through the textbook in a short amount of time, tend to do best. This is not because they happen to be fast readers.
The reason appears to be that they don’t prolong reading chapters over a period of days or weeks. Therefore, once they get to practice questions, all of the material is relatively fresh in their mind.
That said, don’t expect any miracles. Even those students that are successful in the end, start out with practice scores around 40% or 50% on their first few practice exams. What’s different, is how their scores progress overtime (they tend to go up faster).
A student that gets through the textbook in a short amount of time, will have less time to forget what they read on day one. Hence, don’t try to take notes, highlight or do practice questions. This will be drags on your time (and you may not have much before your exam).
Forget Practice Questions…Until You’re Done Reading (but don’t take too long)
On that note, at Professional Exam Tutoring we also recommend against the typical schedule advised by many of the textbooks.
That is, we see the most success in students that don’t try taking practice exams by chapter as they go. This process simply delays how long it takes to progress to subsequent chapters. Naturally, by the time you have gone through 20 chapters, it doesn’t matter if you took five questions or 20 questions on the first chapter, it’s likely to be mostly forgotten.
Concentrate on reading the whole textbook once over, before you get to practice questions. As a result, we also recommend that you don’t dilly-dally on reading. We recommend you spend at least 2 to 3 hours per day reading the textbook. That should get even very slow readers, like your author, through the entire textbook in two or three weeks maximum.
This may require setting aside social time, and a little more studying than you may prefer on your weekends, but it’s better that you do this over a 30 or 45 day period, then have to extend it out three or four months which is what often happens from a half-hearted commitment.
Overall, we recommend that you get through the textbook in a short amount of time, so you can spend at least three or four weeks focus on practice questions.
When it comes to practice questions, we tend to recommend at least two full practice exams per week, followed by custom exams about 20 questions in size. The custom exams should be focused on areas where you really need extra work (Options is a common sticking point).
For more tips and tricks, feel free to book a tutor. Good luck on your exam!