Seeking Opinions on How to Pass to the Series 65 Exam

I am hoping readers of this blog would be able to provide some feedback on their experiences with the Series 65 exam. As a

little background, many of our firm's clients are managers who will be state registered investment advisers and therefor these groups will need to make sure certain individuals take the Series 65 exam in order to become registered in the state of principal residence.

The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) is the group in charge of creating the Series 65 and the exam is administered by FINRA at any number of locations across the U.S. and in different countries. At the beginning of 2010 NASAA changed the grading of the Series 65 exam so that it was more difficult to pass. From that time forward we have anecdotally noticed that there were in fact less people who were passing the exam on the first try.  Accordingly, we are trying to gather information on the exam to help out those people who will be taking it in the future.

If you have taken the e

xam over the last year we are asking if you can provide us with a little information on your experiences and some thoughts on how you would prepare for the exam, given what you know now. For example, we think the following information would be helpful:

• Date you took the exam (month, year)
• Final score
• Series 65 Exam prep / study guide(s) you used
• Amount of time spent studying (approximate number of hours)
• Number of practice exams you took? Scores on those exams?
• Areas you did well on/ could have done better on
• Overall impressions – was it similar to the practice exams?
• How would you study for the exam differently?

If you have other comments or information that might be helpful, please feel free to post that as well.  Responses can be posted in the comment section below or you can contact us directly.

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Cole-Frieman & Mallon LLP is a boutique law firm focused on the hedge fund industry.  We help fund managers with investment adviser registration and hedge fund formation matters.  Bart Mallon can be reached directly at 415-868-5345.