Many an investment banker starts off their career with a Series 79 time crunch. Investment bank employers know that they have high achieving employees in their ranks so they demand a lot. The Series 79 Exam is one of the harder FINRA exams. With many students given less than two weeks to study for this exam, we constantly get the question: “Is this enough time?”
Series 79 Time Crunch: Why the Time Crunch?
In our experience at Professional Exam Tutoring, we see roughly about half of students tend to pass the Series 79 Exam within a very short window of time. We define a short window of time as less than two weeks.
As one can imagine, employers want their employees productive as soon as possible. By giving their employees a very short timeframe to pass their exams, they hope to focus the attention of the student on studying. For at least a decent chunk of those employees, it works out and they pass their exams – so then they can jump right into their work.
What comes with this approach is typically an understanding employer when a student does not pass their exam. Despite the expectation that the student pass their exam very soon thereafter – and the soonest the exam can be retaken is 30 days later – most employers are reasonable to a degree.
Nevertheless, you may lose the opportunity to study during work hours, if you fail your first time around. Also, very common, you may have to give up your weekends and evenings. You may have to use the free time that you do have to finalize passing the series 79 exam.
How Do I Ramp Quickly?
Unfortunately, there is no shortcut for this exam. As a standardized exam, it is constantly changing to ensure questions are not shared. Careful analysis of each question is required.
The best method to tackle this exam in our view is to focus on your weak areas. We highly recommend that you do this using very targeted study methods.
For example, if your score is low in a highly testable area such as the first round or second round of mergers and acquisitions, then do a large number of practice questions on just those individual areas.
Warning!! Do NOT include other practice questions when you are practicing one specific sub topic. That will only dilute your study process and extend how long it takes you to absorb the specific material for which you need help.
You can rest assured that you will see all other questions in your study process by looping in a practice exam on all topics. We recommend you do this every three days at a minimum. This will help you continuously see questions from all topics, and keep them as fresh as possible for as long as possible.
Overall, this is a very doable exam for most people. To give it the proper attention it needs, focus on the right areas – which are the areas where you are tripping up. That will be the fastest way to ramp up your score in a short amount of time. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Good luck!