SIE Exam prep 2024 is a little bit different than it was six years prior. We now have a lot of information and a lot of experience with the SIE. This year marks the sixth full year since the exam was launched.
Fortunately, at Professional Exam Tutoring we’ve been tutoring the material since day one. With a front row seat we have a surplus of information to share.
Below we include six years worth of feedback from students and tutors on how best to study for the SIE Exam in 2024.
SIE Exam Prep 2024: Let’s Start at the Very Beginning
When it comes to getting ready for the SIE exam, there’s no better place to start than the textbook. The advice that you will hear over and over again is: read the textbook.
There is no shortage of students that we see that believe they have no reason to read the textbook. Sure, they made it through college without spending much time reading textbooks. But, there is no big bell curve that may save you on this exam.
The SIE Exam is an introductory exam, but still an equalizer. Therefore, we highly recommend that you pick up the textbook and read it cover to cover.
Don’t Take Notes?
That said, at the same time we don’t recommend taking notes on every single sentence that you read. Our advice is that you read the textbook like you read a novel. Read it over once. If you don’t understand something, reread that sentence, or that paragraph. However, don’t spend time underlining, highlighting, or note taking.
The reason is that from our experience, it’s very difficult to tell in advance what concepts will stick and what won’t. Certain definitions, rules, and regulations stick via very idiosyncratic means. The name of some law or rule for example, may remind you of your dog’s name. Or, some form like Form 144, might include your lucky numbers.
All in all, the only way to find out what’s worth taking notes on, is after you finish one or two practice exams. Read the whole textbook, take a practice exam, and then see where your scores shake out.
Also, definitely don’t expect fireworks for your first practice exams. Most first practice exam scores shake out somewhere in the 40% to 50% range. It’s from here where you start to learn more about what you know and what you don’t.
But first, do you have the right study material?
Best 2024 SIE Exam Study Material
Although there is a lot more study material for the SIE exam now than there was six years ago, our number one pick has not changed much. In short, we recommend STC.
Also known as the Securities Training Corporation, STC is our favorite for good reason. The main reason is that their practice material, and their practice exams, paint a representative picture. One that gives us as tutors the most accurate indication as to whether or not student is ready to take the exam (and pass!).
Kaplan, on the other hand has excellent textbooks however, in our view, STC’s practice questions and their eight practice final exams are enough to help get you over the finish line.
We recommend that students go through them, at least twice, in sequential order. In other words, start with exam one, and make your way through to exam eight. After completing them in order, we highly recommend that you take a look at their greenlight exams, and then do another round of the eight practice exams.
The “greenlight exams” from STC tend to be much harder, so do not be discouraged if your score drops by 10% to 15%. Students we see have a very difficult time passing these exams let alone scoring above 65% – but the large majority still pass the real exam. If your score is somewhere around the mid 60s, there is still very much hope!
Best SIE tutors for 2024
Another, excellent and unsurprising resource that we recommend is a SIE exam Tutor. While we admit, a tutor is not necessary for everyone, for those of you looking to accelerate your progress, or play it safe on a third attempt, we highly recommend an SIE Tutor.
Some of the best tutors that you’ll find online are on private tutoring websites or aggregators:
Private Tutors:
Professional Exam Tutoring – Yours truly is typically sold out on a week-to-week basis, but can ocassionally sneak in students at the last minute due to cancellations. Proficient in the finance industry, and with an equity research background, our knowledge base goes deeper than most finance professors, and Series 7, or SIE tutors. If you’re looking for easy to understand explanations to difficult concepts we are an excellent resource.
Capital Advantage, Tutoring – The next company I would recommend is run by Ken Finnen. He is a fixture on YouTube, and Instagram and TikTok. His experience is vast with well over 20 years in tutoring experience, and easily breaks down content into simple digestible bites. When we have an overbooked schedule, we always recommend Ken for our students.
Aggregators:
Wyzant – In a distant third place, we recommend some lower cost options you may find on Wyzant. The company consolidates freelancers willing to tutor students with a wide range of pricing. Unfortunately, this website requires a little more trial and error before you may find someone you click with. However, on the plus side, there is no commitment, and packages required for purchase.
Varsity Tutors – Varsity Tutors is somewhat similar to Wyzant. The feedback we hear from students here, however, is that it may take several phone calls, or several layers of phone calls before you’re able to speak with somebody who may actually teach you. Though nothing is inherently wrong with this, it tends to be a little time-consuming.
Private Tutoring with textbook providers – this route would largely be our last recommendation. We frequently hear from students that pay sometimes upwards of $500 per hour for tutors that are often on par with many of the others discussed, or less knowledgeable in many cases. It is easy to feel that because the textbook came from their company, their teachers may have supreme knowledge- but that’s of course no guarantee for a high price.
Overall, of course, our recommendation is Professional Exam Tutoring. Next, we would recommend Capital Advantage Tutoring. These two remain quite reasonably priced for the quality. Given the private nature of the tutoring, both tend to be quite accessible off-line and via email or text message.
Memorizing SIE Exam Content
Despite a lot of intuitive topics covered, there is a lot of memory work for the SIE Exam. Memorizing SIE Exam content is necessary in our opinion for the average student to pass.
Sections that cover rules such as Rule 144, Rule 147, Regulation D, etc. necessitate careful reading. Memory work in these sections is simply due to the fact that the rule numbers are no giveaway. There is no indication that Rule 147 has to do with intrastate offerings. Therefore you have to simply remember that Rule 147 is associated with these offerings.
Similarly, Rule 144 is about restricted stock and the regulations regarding holding periods. Without spending some time memorizing the rule associated with the number, there are no great ways to remember this rule.
In short, we highly recommend using flashcards or study notes. This approach to studying has not changed at all since the SIE was introduced in 2018. There is memory work now just like there was memory work then.
What More You Should Know
What you should know for your SIE Exam prep 2024 is that a lot of the same approaches from previous years are still applicable. The FINRA practice exam online is quite helpful, engaging the difficulty of the actual exam.
What is different in 2024 is that you have a lot more resources to choose from. There are now more tutors than there were six years ago, but there are also more online resources, such as study guides, online practice, questions, and textbooks.
Although many of them may have more visually appealing platforms than some of the more traditional providers, we still recommend the traditional providers. This is not because we are some old-school Tutoring company, but we highly recommend veering toward what works.
Many of the newer platforms are upstart and have yet to be thoroughly proven over period of time. Some may claim to be, but anecdotal feedback from students that we hear is somewhat mixed.
If you feel inclined to try the newer providers, then we recommend a mixed approach. Include some of the newer provider material with older practice questions to see how your performance may differ.
Overall, your performance should not be drastically different between different practice question providers but you are likely to see some change. We typically warn against companies where, even though you feel like you don’t totally know the content you still happen to be scoring in the 80s or above. False confidence can be a, bad thing when studying for these exams.
Do I Really Need to Read the Textbook?
We get this question a lot. Most students read the textbook, but we certainly get a large number that really don’t want to. Many students just can’t sit through reading the textbook and would prefer to watch videos.
Well, this is obviously better than nothing, you just have to realistically understand that videos won’t capture everything from the textbook. Videos have a lot of important stuff, there will be some details from the textbook that will be missing in the videos.
For this reason, and for the reason that a lot of time learning by reading is more effective than watching videos, we recommend reading the textbook at least once.
However, where we differ from others is that we don’t recommend reading it with a fine tooth comb. We don’t recommend that you highlight, take notes, or even practice questions on a chapter by chapter basis. In fact, we recommend that you read the textbook more like a novel. if you daydream reading a certain paragraph, then reread that paragraph but don’t get stuck somewhere if you totally don’t understand what they’re saying. Keep moving and trying to make it all the way to the end. After you’re done the textbook, practice questions which may make the material more clear.
To give you a sense of timing, we recommend that you leave at least three weeks to concentrate on practice questions. Work backwards and determining how much time that leaves you to get through the textbook and try to adjust accordingly. If you only have five weeks to study, then that means you should be dedicating two weeks to read the textbook.
Most of you will be able to get faster than that especially if you take our advice and read it like you would read a novel. In short, we highly recommend that you read the book, but approach this in moderation and don’t spend two months reading the textbook.
For those that fail, the SIE exam, we also don’t generally recommend that you reread the textbook. If you have already read it once, and your score was relatively close, chances are that you just need help answering the practice questions. In that case, consider a tutor or, going through the explanations of the practice question answers much more thoroughly.
What to Do If You Fail Your SIE Exam in 2024
No matter the SIE exam prep 2024 allows for you, occasionally, bad luck cannot be avoided. You may get a series of very tough questions that you can’t seem to answer. If you fail your SIE exam in 2024, we also have some advice on what you should do next.
First, you are going to need to aim your practice scores higher. What we mean by this is whatever practice scores you finished studying with on your missed attempt, you’re obviously going to need to ramp that up.
One reason for this is that you may have memorized some of the answers. Next time around you’re going to need to score even higher to account for that. The SIE exam can be tricky. Be sure not to fool yourself into thinking you know more than you do when you may have in fact, memorized practice questions.
Lastly, we also recommend that you reflect on the type of study material you are/were using. If your scores indicate that you were ready for the exam, but you failed, then there is certainly a disconnect. Look for reviews or contact a reputable SIE Exam tutor to see what they think about the material you used.
With hundreds of students every year we at Professional Exam Tutoring see that most students that use Kaplan for instance need to score somewhere in the high 80% range to be very confident about their chances. With STC on the other hand, scores in the low 80% range can often lead to the same level of confidence.
Beyond these two providers, the scores can be all over the map but generally, however, around 70% plus or minus 10 to 15% for many providers.
Does the SIE Exam prepare you for the Series 7 Exam?
The SIE exam is no doubt an entry-level exam. Consequently, we get a lot of questions around its purpose. Specifically does the SIE exam prepare you for the Series 7 Exam?
The short answer is that it certainly does. The Series 7 Exam is naturally the next exam. A student can take after the SE exam. The SE exam content has significant overlap on the series 7 exam. The primary difference is that the series 7 exam goes a little deeper into most of the content from the SIE exam.
For instance, on the SIE exam, you are only likely to see equity options presented one at a time. Some questions may ask for the maximum gain for a call option or a put option, or is other questions may ask the price for a call option or a put option.
Series 7 exam, however the content deals into strategies that combine multiple options positions concurrently. Although each individual option is not too complicated, as you start to stack one option on top of another, and deal with multiple prices, things can get complicated.
The same is true in the margin account section. On the SIE exam, it is necessary to know some of the basic regulations with regard to margin accounts. For the Series 7 Exam, you may be required to calculate whether an account will incur a margin call, and calculate the amount.
To this point, the math involved in the Series 7 Exam is also more extensive than the SIE exam. The SIE exam is welcoming on the math. We generally hear that students only need to pull out their calculator a handful of times for the exam. This is not true of the series 7 exam. The series 7 exam may require many calculations, although it should be a minority of questions.
Although the exams are different, the SIE exam provides the groundwork for someone pursuing the series 7 exam next.
How Much Time Should I Devote to Studying for the SIE Exam?
There is never a straight answer to this question unfortunately. First of all, it really depends on what other exams you’re going to need to pass after the SIE exam, and how flexible your employer is with your timeline.
When it comes to the other exams, following your SIE exam, if those include the Series 7 Exam, and the Series 65 or Series 66 exams, then you will want to get through the SIE exam as soon as you can to make room for a lot of study time for those other exams – particularly if you have a deadline from your employer to complete all of those exams.
The Series 7, and the Series 65 or Series 66 exams tend to take about six weeks on average. And, that’s usually the minimum amount of study time. Therefore, if your employer gives you a three month deadline to complete all of your exams, you may have to get your SIE exam done in a matter of a few weeks. Given our recommendation to spend at least three weeks on practice questions, that only leaves you less than a week to read the textbook.
If you are told by an employer that you have three months, it may sound like a long time. It isn’t! You should be prepared for a race to the finish. We should note that this is for particularly strict employers – most are not so strict, and know many people fail one or two attempts.
In a nutshell, your timing really depends on the flexibility of your employer. Many employers leave room for the possibility that a student may fail one of their exams, in which case that will extend the three month deadline that they originally imposed. In our experience, the employer deadline is often more to put pressure on employees to pass the exam first time around and take it seriously.
A Reasonable Study Timeline
There is a reality, though. A reason why we exist as a business is because many people if not a very large percentage of people, do not pass the first time around. That said, you’ll want to minimize the number of times you have to try for an exam.
We find that putting in about five weeks to study for the SIE exam is usually enough for the disciplined student. The less work you do, the longer it will take to pass. Not only that, but if you only study a small amount each day, what you studied last week may not be seen again in a review until two or three weeks later at which point it will be a faint memory.
We recommend you put in at least 2 to 3 hours per day. This will ensure that you cover a lot of the material. You should also plan to review some portions of the material two or three times per week to ensure that the harder stuff sticks in your long-term memory.
To ensure that you don’t extend your study time too long, we highly recommend that you put in a good amount of time each day and keep your total study to somewhere between four weeks and six weeks.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How Do I Know My SIE Exam Prep 2024 is Enough?
There is no secret ingredient that we have at professional exam tutoring. The only real way we know to tell when someone is ready to take the exam are their practice scores. Consistent practice scores in the 80s, generally let you know when you’re ready. As we’ve mentioned, some textbook providers need higher scores than others. Since there is a clear difference between scoring 80% two or three times in a row, and scoring 89% two or three times in a row, we highly recommend that you aim as high as possible in the 80% range. Keep in mind that scoring 80% or slightly higher even once may not be enough.
What Sections Shows Up the Most on the SIE Exam?
There is no one specific section that will count for 20% or more of the exam. There are, however, broad subsections, which include a lot of different exam categories. For example, product knowledge includes understanding, things like stocks, bonds, options, annuities, and a host of other financial products. But, you won’t see more than two or three questions on anyone specific subtopic generally speaking. The SIE exam is a broad-based exam. You will notice other exams, like the Series 7, go much deeper into specific areas.