CFA Study Group: Where to Find One for Each Level

A CFA study group works when everyone sits the same level in the same exam window. Find members through your local CFA society, your office or StudyDuo. Take timed questions alone and review the mistakes together. At Level III, mark each other's essays by the rules CFA Institute's own graders follow.

The CFA exams as of November 2026

CFA Institute holds exams four times a year, "usually in February, May, August, and November" (dates and fees). Not every level sits in every window. In its results for 2025, Level I ran in all four, Level II in May, August and November, and Level III in February and August (exam results since 1963).

The formats are from CFA Institute's pages for Level I, Level II and Level III; the Level II and III paces are session time divided by sets. The Level III pathways are Portfolio Management, Private Markets and Private Wealth, worth 30–35% of the exam. At each level you must also complete one Practical Skills Module before you get your result.

Two rules shape a group's calendar. You can sit a CFA exam at most twice a calendar year, and never in consecutive windows or in windows within six months of each other. So a member who fails can't resit in the next window. And Level I changes weight in 2027: Ethical and Professional Standards falls from 15–20% of the exam to 10–15%, while Quantitative Methods rises from 6–9% to 11–14%. A friend's notes from 2026 are weighted the old way.

2026 pass rates, window by window

No 2026 window passed more than half its candidates, so a group of four should expect, on average, to split when results come out. The same file counts who sat. Adding its numbers up, Level I tested 83,717 candidates in those three windows, against 28,115 at Level II and 25,209 at Level III. Fewer than 20,000 shared any one Level II or III window worldwide, so at the upper levels you'll search wider for an exact match.

Where to find a CFA study group

• Your local CFA society. CFA Institute has nearly 160 local societies, and each runs its own programs. On November 13, 2026, CFA Society Hong Kong said registration for its May 2027 study groups (Levels I and II) opens in December 2026. CFA Society Philadelphia forms groups twice a year from a candidate survey. In Baltimore, a charterholder leads an in-person group that meets four times in the two months before each window, from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
• Your office. If your employer pays for the exam, ask HR or your team who else is registered for your window before you post to strangers.
• Discord. Its server directory had no server just for the CFA exam when we searched on November 13, 2026. "CFA" returned gaming leagues, and "chartered financial analyst" mostly trading servers, plus one study server shared with India's CA, CS and CMA students.
• StudyDuo. In Find Partners, pick CFA from the exam interests and narrow the list by country or city; then follow people and message them.

Post the match, not just the exam: "CFA Level II, May 2027, GMT+8, weeknights 8 to 10". A bare "CFA Level 1 study group" post gets replies from every window. If a group moves to WhatsApp or Telegram, use a username, keep your phone number private and never share your CFA Institute login. Are Online Study Rooms Safe? has more checks.

What to do together at each level

Mixed levels can share only the silent part. A Level I and a Level III candidate can sit timed sets side by side on video, but they can't review each other's questions.

One limit applies to every level. CFA Institute's Standard VII(A) allows discussing nonconfidential material "in study groups in preparation for an exam". After the exam, details of its questions and the topics tested or not tested stay confidential. Its examples include a forum group that met the week after the test to work out the correct answers: that was a violation.

Why timed sets with feedback work

Your exam won't repeat your practice questions, so what counts is whether practice carries over to new ones. Steven Pan and Timothy Rickard pooled 192 such effects from 122 experiments with 10,382 participants (Psychological Bulletin, 2018). Practice tests improved performance on different questions by d = 0.40 on average, compared with studying the material again. Transfer was strongest to application and inference questions, the kind CFA Institute says Levels II and III test.

It wasn't automatic. Transfer depended on what the authors call elaborated retrieval practice and on how well people did on the practice test itself. When none of the helpful conditions were present, estimates corrected for publication bias often showed no transfer at all. In a group, the elaboration is the explanation: the key gives you the letter, and a member who chose it can tell you why.

Format matters most at Level III. Mark McDaniel's team followed a college course with weekly quizzes and feedback (European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 2007). The quizzes raised scores on later multiple-choice exams, and short-answer quizzes helped more than multiple-choice ones. Spotting the best option in an item set is easier than typing three reasons from memory. So in review, write the essay answer out instead of saying you'd have known it.

Mark Level III essays the way CFA's graders do

Hundreds of charterholders grade the Level III essays at a grading event, CFA Institute says on its exam results page. Its exam page and its guide to the process, Where Theory Meets Practice, give a CFA study group five rules to copy:

1. Mark by question, not by script. CFA's graders work in teams, and each team grades one question or part. In a group of three, each member marks one essay set on all three scripts, so every answer gets the same standard.
2. Count only what was asked. Responses are graded up to the number requested, in the order given. A fourth reason to "discuss three reasons" earns nothing, so strike extras before you mark.
3. Credit a correct number on its own. A correct value typed alone gets full credit. Shown working matters only for partial credit when the number is wrong.
4. Read the command word first. Each item opens with a bolded command word taken from the curriculum's learning outcome statements. Mark the answer against that word, not against how much was written.
5. Send close calls to a third marker. CFA Institute grades roughly the middle 30% of candidates a second time, by a different grader, and a third time where the two rounds disagree. When two of your markers differ on a question, a third decides.

A group calendar around the mock exams

Registration includes "two official mock exams released approximately 60 days before each exam window" (Learning Ecosystem). Build the last two months around them:

A CFA study group earns its place in these weeks only if solo scores rise from the first mock to the second. If they don't, spend the meeting hour on your own sets.

When to split up

• Someone moves to another window. The six-month rule makes it a long move. Keep them as a marker if they want, not as a member.
• Results split the group. Those who passed start the next level's curriculum. Those who sit again get their topic-level performance from CFA Institute (Level III passers don't), and that report is the new group's agenda.
• Meetings outnumber timed sets. Meetings with nothing timed before them are a reading club.

More on running small groups that write and mark papers is in our CA study group guide, and methods for two in How to Study With a Partner. For the silent hours between meetings, an online study group keeps the clock running with people around.