Your Series 63 time spent studying is likely to be among the shortest of your licensing exams. Employers are keenly eager to get you through this exam. As a result, they often push the envelope to see how quickly they can get their employees to pass.
Today we discuss this short, but deceivingly tricky, exam.
Series 63 Time Spent Studying: How Soon is Too Soon?
Increasingly we are hearing from students that their employers are demanding studying for this exam in a week or less. While we refrain from postulating as to why that might be, what we can say for sure is that it is doable…but usually just barely, and not for everyone.
The Uniform Securities Agent State Law exam (the Series 63 Exam) includes 60 questions, over a period of 1 hour and 15 minutes. You only need to score 43 out of 60 in order to pass.
That said, one week is a tight timeframe for anyone. With less than a week to study you’ll likely find it more challenging to cram in all you need.
Focus Here
If you have a tight timeframe, we recommend that you focus on these core sections:
- Exempt Securities vs Exempt Transactions
- Securities Registration Methods
- Revoking or Suspending Registration
- Investment Advisors vs IAR
- Brokers Dealers vs Agents
- Ethics
- Social Media Rules
Although there are plenty more areas to study, these core areas tend to confuse people the most. As a result, with such a short period of time to study, focusing here will really help.
Another important area to consider if you only have a very short time frame is practice questions.
Practice Makes (You Get as Close as Possible to…) Perfect
Learning the definitions, rules and regulations, and ethics associated with this state examination, is not typically enough. You must understand how they get questioned.
The exam trips most people up in its legal wording. There is heavy use of double negatives, and strict adherence to legal definitions that tend to mean something other than how one might define the same word in regular conversation.
For example, the word “person” technically includes corporations, businesses, and other entities – aside from simply individuals. The exam questions are very aware that this is confusing and therefore ask questions with reference to this definition.
Overall, if you have three or four days to study, and if that’s all you have, then we recommend that you can aim for about 200 questions per day, which should take you about three or four hours each day. Make sure to take the questions with the answers “turned on” so that you can learn as you go. If you have to take the test in a short period of time, you can definitely end up on the right side of the Series 63 pass rate, but it will take some work. Let us know if you need our help! Good luck!