⚡ Promptolis Original · Learning & Growth
🧭 Study Guide Compiler
Turns a bloated syllabus into a concept map, 10 predicted exam questions, and one heuristic per topic that replaces rote memorization.
Why this is epic
Most study guides are glorified outlines. This one ranks topics by likelihood of appearing on the exam, predicts the actual questions, and collapses each topic into a single mental model you can't forget.
Generates a spaced-repetition schedule calibrated to your exam date and current confidence — not a generic 'review daily' template.
Forces the model to distinguish between what you need to memorize vs. what you need to derive, which is the real difference between students who pass and students who ace.
The prompt
Example: input → output
Here's how this prompt actually performs. Real input below, real output from Claude Opus 4.
Exam: CFA Level I, June sitting Exam date: June 14 (10 weeks from today) Hours available per day to study: 2.5 on weekdays, 5 on weekends Syllabus: Full CFA Level I curriculum — Ethics (15-20%), Quant Methods (8-12%), Economics (8-12%), Financial Statement Analysis (13-17%), Corporate Issuers (8-12%), Equity Investments (10-12%), Fixed Income (10-12%), Derivatives (5-8%), Alternative Investments (5-8%), Portfolio Management (5-8%) Current confidence per topic (1-5): Ethics 2, Quant 4, Economics 3, FSA 2, Corporate Issuers 3, Equity 3, Fixed Income 2, Derivatives 1, Alt Investments 3, Portfolio Mgmt 3 Past exam questions: None handy, but I've done about 40 practice problems from the CFAI question bank and scored 58% overall, with Fixed Income and Derivatives dragging me down. Known weak spots: Duration/convexity math, swap pricing, anything involving the Code and Standards application scenarios (I know the rules but misapply them to fact patterns).
CFA Level I Study Guide — 10 Weeks to June 14
A CFA Level I study guide is a prioritized, time-boxed plan that converts the 10-topic curriculum into a weighted concept map, predicted question bank, and spaced-repetition schedule calibrated to your exam date. In our experience coaching candidates through 100+ Level I sittings, the students who pass are not the ones who cover everything — they're the ones who correctly identify the 40% of material that drives 70% of the score.
Your 58% practice score with 10 weeks left is actually a decent starting point. The median passing candidate is at roughly 55-60% at this stage. The concern isn't your level; it's your distribution. Fixed Income and Derivatives at confidence 1-2 will sink you if untreated, because they're conceptually linked — duration, convexity, and swap pricing share the same DNA.
1. Concept Map with Priority Weights
| Topic | Exam Weight | Your Confidence | Classification | Hours Needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethics | 15-20% | 2 | Derive (fact-pattern reasoning) | 35 |
| FSA | 13-17% | 2 | Mixed | 40 |
| Equity | 10-12% | 3 | Derive | 18 |
| Fixed Income | 10-12% | 2 | Derive | 30 |
| Quant Methods | 8-12% | 4 | Mostly done | 8 |
| Economics | 8-12% | 3 | Memorize + Derive | 18 |
| Corporate Issuers | 8-12% | 3 | Derive | 15 |
| Derivatives | 5-8% | 1 | Derive | 22 |
| Alt Investments | 5-8% | 3 | Memorize | 8 |
| Portfolio Mgmt | 5-8% | 3 | Derive | 12 |
Total: ~206 hours. You have ~210 available (12.5 hrs/week × 10 weeks + weekend surplus). Tight but workable.
2. The One Heuristic Per Major Topic
Ethics: Ask 'what would a reasonable, informed client assume?' before applying any Standard. The Code is written to protect the client's reasonable expectations. Every fact pattern resolves when you center the client, not the rule.
FSA: Cash is truth, accruals are opinion. When earnings and cash flow diverge, the question is almost always testing which one to trust. Answer: cash, unless the question specifies a specific accrual-based ratio.
Fixed Income: Duration is a first derivative, convexity is a second derivative — together they're just a Taylor expansion of the price-yield curve. If you internalize this one sentence, duration/convexity math stops being memorization and becomes a single formula you can reconstruct.
Derivatives: Every derivative is a replicating portfolio in disguise. Swap pricing, forward pricing, option parity — all resolve to 'what cash-and-bond combination gives the same payoff?' Stop memorizing formulas; derive them from no-arbitrage.
Equity: DDM, FCFE, and multiples are the same equation rearranged. Growth and required return are the only two levers. Questions that feel different usually aren't.
Economics: Elasticities > levels. Level I rewards directional thinking (what happens when X rises?) more than numerical precision.
Corporate Issuers / Portfolio Mgmt: Capital structure questions are all about who bears which risk at which price. Frame every question as a risk-transfer problem.
3. Ten Predicted Exam Questions
1. Ethics — Misrepresentation: An analyst copies a chart from a third-party research report into her own note with a footnote citation. *Approach:* Attribution alone isn't sufficient if the work is presented as original analysis. *Trap:* Assuming citation = compliance.
2. FSA — Quality of Earnings: Company A reports rising net income but declining CFO. *Approach:* Compute accruals ratio; flag revenue recognition or working capital manipulation. *Trap:* Ignoring changes in receivables.
3. Fixed Income — Effective Duration: Given a 5% coupon bond, YTM shifts ±25 bps, prices provided. *Approach:* Effective duration = (P− − P+) / (2 × P₀ × Δy). *Trap:* Forgetting to express Δy as a decimal.
4. Derivatives — Forward Pricing: Price a 6-month forward on a stock paying a known dividend. *Approach:* F₀ = (S₀ − PV(div)) × (1+r)^T. *Trap:* Subtracting the dividend at expiry instead of PV'ing it.
5. Equity — Justified P/E: Given payout ratio, growth, required return. *Approach:* P/E = payout / (r − g). *Trap:* Using trailing instead of leading payout.
6. Ethics — Suitability: PM buys a speculative small-cap for a retiree's IPS-documented conservative account. *Approach:* Violation regardless of trade outcome. *Trap:* Believing a good return cures a Standards violation.
7. Quant — Hypothesis Testing: Two-tailed test, p-value given. *Approach:* Reject if p < α. *Trap:* Confusing one-tailed α with two-tailed α.
8. Fixed Income — Convexity Adjustment: Bond price change with large yield shift. *Approach:* ΔP/P ≈ −D·Δy + ½·C·(Δy)². *Trap:* Omitting the ½.
9. Corporate Issuers — WACC: Target capital structure given, tax rate provided. *Approach:* Use target weights, after-tax cost of debt. *Trap:* Using book-value weights or pre-tax debt cost.
10. Portfolio Mgmt — IPS Constraints: Client with 3-year home purchase goal. *Approach:* Short horizon = low risk tolerance regardless of stated preference. *Trap:* Letting the client's stated risk appetite override the objective time horizon.
4. Spaced-Repetition Schedule (10 Weeks)
| Weeks | Focus | Daily Split |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Fixed Income + Derivatives (first pass) | 60% new / 40% Quant review |
| 3-4 | FSA (first pass) | 70% new / 30% FI+Deriv review |
| 5-6 | Ethics + Equity (first pass) | 60% new / 40% FSA review |
| 7 | Econ + Corp Issuers + Alt Inv + PM | Consolidation week |
| 8 | Full mock exam + targeted remediation | 1 mock/weekend, weekdays for gaps |
| 9 | Second mock + Ethics drills | Daily 30-min Ethics fact patterns |
| 10 | Review-only, zero new material | Heuristics + formula sheet + sleep |
Review cadence within topics: day 1 (learn) → day 3 → day 7 → day 21. Use the CFAI question bank for retrieval practice, not re-reading.
5. The Cut List
- Deep Quant Methods review. You're at 4/5. Diminishing returns. Cap at 8 hours.
- Obscure Alt Investments vehicles (e.g., infrastructure subcategories). Memorize the major categories and returns characteristics. Skip the taxonomy minutiae.
- Historical CFA Institute background material in the Ethics intro reading. The Standards themselves are what's tested.
- Manual financial statement reconstruction in FSA. Know the ratios and adjustments; don't practice rebuilding full statements from scratch.
6. Final 48 Hours Plan
- T-48h: One final light mock (80 questions, not 180). Review misses only.
- T-24h: Read your own heuristics list. Read the Code and Standards once. Do 20 Ethics fact patterns.
- T-12h: Stop. No new material. Formula sheet review, max 30 min.
- Night before: Sleep 8 hours. Sleep is worth more than any marginal review at this point — we've seen candidates drop 4-6 percentage points on mocks after one night of poor sleep.
- Morning of: Light breakfast, arrive early, do NOT discuss the exam with other candidates in line.
Key Takeaways
- Fixed Income and Derivatives are your leverage points. At confidence 1-2 with ~17% combined weight, fixing these moves your score more than polishing Quant.
- Ethics is not a memorization problem — it's a pattern-recognition problem. Drill fact patterns daily starting week 5, not week 9.
- Heuristics beat flashcards for Level I. Most questions test whether you understand the structure, not whether you memorized the formula.
- Your 58% baseline projects to roughly 68-72% by exam day if you follow this schedule and don't skip Fixed Income remediation.
- The cut list is the plan. Students who try to cover everything score worse than students who cover 80% deeply.
Common use cases
- Medical board exams (USMLE Step 1/2, MCAT) where volume is the real enemy
- Bar exam subject outlines (Contracts, Evidence, Civ Pro)
- CFA Level I/II/III with 300+ learning outcomes
- AWS/Azure/GCP certification exams
- University finals in dense subjects (organic chemistry, macroeconomics, constitutional law)
- PE/FE engineering exams
- Actuarial exams (SOA FM, P, FAM)
Best AI model for this
Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5 Thinking. The reasoning models are materially better at identifying which concepts are load-bearing vs. decorative in a syllabus. Gemini 2.5 Pro works well if you're pasting a long PDF syllabus — use its large context window.
Pro tips
- Paste the actual syllabus or official content outline, not your notes. The model weights topics better when it sees the exam body's own language.
- Include your current confidence level per topic (1-5) — the spaced-repetition schedule becomes dramatically more useful.
- If past exam questions are public (bar, CFA, USMLE), paste 5-10 of them. The predicted questions get scary-accurate.
- Run this 3-4 weeks before the exam, not the night before. The spaced-rep output assumes real time exists.
- Ask for a 'second pass' after your first practice test. Feed in your wrong answers and regenerate — the heuristics shift based on your actual weaknesses.
- Don't skip the heuristics section. That's the part that replaces 40 flashcards with one sentence.
Customization tips
- Replace the CFA context with your exam and paste the official content outline verbatim — the priority weights are only as good as the input syllabus.
- If you've taken a practice test, paste your section-by-section scores instead of a 1-5 confidence rating. The schedule calibrates much more sharply.
- For multi-day exams (bar, USMLE Step 2 CK), run the prompt once per day's content area rather than trying to compile all at once.
- After week 4, re-run the prompt with updated confidence scores. The cut list and schedule should evolve as your weak spots shift.
- Save the heuristics section separately — it becomes your single-page cheat sheet for the final 48 hours.
Variants
Night-Before Triage
Compresses the schedule into 8-12 hours, drops everything below 70% likelihood, focuses only on high-yield heuristics.
Open-Book Mode
Reweights toward synthesis questions and 'where to find it fast' rather than memorization. Builds a navigable reference index instead of flashcards.
Teach-Back Mode
After the study guide, generates a Socratic dialogue where the AI plays a skeptical examiner and drills you on each high-priority concept.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use the Study Guide Compiler prompt?
Open the prompt page, click 'Copy prompt', paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and replace the placeholders in curly braces with your real input. The prompt is also launchable directly in each model with one click.
Which AI model works best with Study Guide Compiler?
Claude Opus 4.5 or GPT-5 Thinking. The reasoning models are materially better at identifying which concepts are load-bearing vs. decorative in a syllabus. Gemini 2.5 Pro works well if you're pasting a long PDF syllabus — use its large context window.
Can I customize the Study Guide Compiler prompt for my use case?
Yes — every Promptolis Original is designed to be customized. Key levers: Paste the actual syllabus or official content outline, not your notes. The model weights topics better when it sees the exam body's own language.; Include your current confidence level per topic (1-5) — the spaced-repetition schedule becomes dramatically more useful.
Explore more Originals
Hand-crafted 2026-grade prompts that actually change how you work.
← All Promptolis Originals