CFA field agent exam - how long did your prep actually take?

The surveillance section has a lot of jurisdiction-specific nuance. Make sure you're studying the correct regulatory framework for your state if the exam version you're taking is state-specific. I wasted two weeks on the wrong state's requirements before I caught the mistake.

Your 67-72% range at week 7 is actually reasonable if you're still covering new material. I was in a similar range at week 8 and ended up passing at 79%. The last 2-3 weeks are usually where the score jumps if you're reviewing systematically rather than just doing more practice questions.

Twelve weeks is comfortable for most people starting with adjacent background. The documentation section requires genuine memorization - there's no shortcut for learning the specific form numbers and filing windows. I made a one-page reference sheet and drilled it for 10 days straight until it was automatic.

Corporate investigations background will help you more than you think on the critical thinking questions - those don't test memorization, they test judgment calls in ambiguous scenarios. Lean into that advantage while you shore up the documentation specifics.

I just passed mine two months ago so I can actually answer this. Your scores are closer than you think — I was hovering around 70% at week 7 and ended up clearing 80% on the real thing. The one thing that actually moved the needle for me was stopping to drill just the questions I got wrong instead of redoing full practice sets. I wasn't learning anything by re-answering the stuff I already knew.

Seriously, pull out your wrong answers and figure out why you missed them before moving on. Half the time I'd realize it wasn't the content I didn't know, it was the wording of the question tripping me up. Once I got used to how they phrase things, the scores jumped pretty fast. You've got time, just stop treating every session like a timed exam and start treating some of them like an autopsy.

I failed my first attempt at 71%, which stung because I'd been scoring right around where you are on practice tests. So take this seriously: hovering at 67-72% usually means you know the material well enough to recognize answers but not well enough to work through the tricky ones under pressure. That gap matters way more than I realized.

Second time around I changed two things. First, I stopped rereading and started doing timed full-length practice exams, then spent as long reviewing my wrong answers as I did taking the test. Sounds tedious but it's where all my score gains came from. Second, I tracked which topic areas kept dragging me down and hammered just those for the last three weeks instead of reviewing everything equally. Passed with room to spare. Your daily 1.5 hours is fine, honestly, it's not about total hours. It's about whether you're drilling your weak spots or just staying comfortable. Don't schedule the exam until your practice scores sit at 80% or better consistently, not on your best day.

I almost quit at week 8, so I get where you're at. My scores were stuck around 68-70 for what felt like forever and I honestly started drafting the "is this cert even worth it" post in my head. But here's the thing nobody told me: that plateau is normal. The jump from low 70s to passing didn't come from more hours, it came from changing what I did with them. I stopped rereading material and went full practice questions, reviewing every single wrong answer until I could explain why the right one was right. Took me about 11 weeks total at your pace, so 7 weeks in with 67-72% isn't behind at all.

One thing that saved me was drilling my weakest area on its own instead of mixed sets. For me that was the cfa/questions/counterintelligence awareness threat recognition section, which dragged everything down until I hammered it for a week straight. Find your version of that topic and attack it. You're closer than you think.