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CFA Level I — the foundations
Level I is the broadest of the three exams — ten topics that build the analytical vocabulary you'll use for the rest of your CFA journey and your career in investment management.
CFA® Program · Level I
Level I, at a glance.
Level I is the broadest of the three exams — ten topics that build the analytical vocabulary you'll use for the rest of your CFA journey and your career in investment management.
CFA Institute recommends roughly 300+ hours of focused preparation — the WSU platform breaks that into topic-weighted practice, mocks, and analytics so every hour lands.
See Level I pricing
Topic Weights
What Level I actually covers.
CFA Institute publishes the weight ranges every cycle. Prioritise study time toward the heaviest blocks first — the WSU question bank is filtered to match.
Quantitative Methods
6–9%Time value of money, statistics, hypothesis testing — the maths spine that every other topic borrows from.
Economics
6–9%Micro and macro fundamentals, business cycles, monetary policy, currency and trade.
Financial Statement Analysis
11–14%Reading and adjusting income statements, balance sheets and cash flows under IFRS and US GAAP.
Corporate Issuers
6–9%Capital structure, working-capital management, governance, ESG and stakeholder analysis.
Equity Investments
11–14%Market structures, equity valuation models and industry analysis.
Fixed Income
11–14%Bond pricing, yield measures, duration and convexity, securitised products.
Derivatives
5–8%Forwards, futures, swaps and options — pricing logic and arbitrage relationships.
Alternative Investments
7–10%Private equity, real estate, hedge funds, commodities and infrastructure.
Portfolio Management
8–12%Modern portfolio theory, the IPS framework, risk management foundations.
Ethics & Professional Standards
15–20%The CFA Institute Code & Standards — the heaviest single topic and an exam-day differentiator.
What You’ll Walk Away With
Outcomes a Level I candidate should own.
By the time you sit Level I, every item below should feel automatic. The WSU question bank, flash cards, and AI assistant are tuned to push you to exactly that band of fluency.
- Apply the time-value-of-money framework to discounting, annuities and loan amortisation problems.
- Walk through any 10-K and adjust statements for comparability across firms and reporting standards.
- Value equity using DDM, FCFE and multiples-based approaches, and choose the right model for the asset.
- Price fixed-income securities, compute yield and risk measures, and read a yield curve.
- Recognise ethics violations under the CFA Institute Code & Standards — the highest-weighted topic.
- Build a defensible Investment Policy Statement and explain how it drives portfolio construction.
Exam Format
The shape of the sitting.
Recent Level I pass rates have hovered around 35–45%. The CFA Institute publishes them after every cycle.
Questions
180 multiple-choice
Duration
4h 30m total
Sessions
2 × 2h 15m
How WSU Helps
The module set, tuned for Level I.
Every WSU module — question bank, mocks, analytics, AI assistant — knows it’s preparing you for Level I. The weights, format, and difficulty band adapt accordingly.
Topic-weighted question bank
Filter 3,000+ Level I questions by topic, subtopic, difficulty and your own weak spots — so every minute of practice is targeted.
Concept-level analytics
See exactly which Learning Outcome Statements you have mastered and which still need work — no more averaging away your weaknesses.
WSU AI tutor
A CFA-tuned assistant that explains every wrong answer in plain English, references the curriculum, and adapts to where you are stuck.
Full-length mock exams
Time-pressured 180-question simulations with the same topic weights as the real exam — the closest you can get without sitting it.
Ready to prep for Level I?
Pick your sitting on the next page — every Level I tier includes the full question bank, mock exams, and the AI tutor.