Best CFA Exam Prep Courses of 2024

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If you plan on pursuing a career as a chartered financial analyst (CFA), you'll need to pass a series of three comprehensive exams. The CFA exam measures and certifies your competence and integrity before becoming a financial analyst. In passing the CFA exam, you'll gain analytical skills and expertise in quantitative methods, economics, financial reporting, investment analysis, and portfolio management. The exam is meant to help you enhance your career or help you find a new role in the finance sector.

To prepare for these exams, many candidates use prep course products to complement their self-study from the Institute’s materials or as a complete alternative to using those materials. So, candidates should focus on the products that they really need, given their own circumstances. There are five distinct categories of products, including self-study with books/e-books, questions, and mock exams, in-person or online instruction, pre-test review, and tutoring.

To best help you feel ready for the exam, we assessed the best CFA exam prep courses to get you across the finish line.

Our exam system in meltdown

The examination system in this country is in a complete mess and has been undermined by Government obsession with target-setting and league tables, claims Dr Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul’s School.

No-one really noticed when the Titanic hit the iceberg. There was a gentle judder, but the ship sailed on for a while at least. We are in the same situation with regard to our national exams, with the system approaching meltdown whilst the captains of the ship sternly tell everyone not to panic. The evidence for such a sweeping assertion? Just look at our 16-plus examination structure, increasingly making us a laughing stock in the industrialised world. We have no fewer than four separate examinations competing for the favours of our 16-plus cohort – A-Level, the International Baccalaureate, the Pre-U examinations and the dreadful new Government Diplomas. These four competing systems divert attention away from the reform of what should be our national examination, A-Level, and dilute the effort we can put into producing a viable, single and unified system at a time when the economic crisis will mean fewer resources available for education. It is difficult to imagine a greater mess. A new A* grade has been introduced on the basis of the rather novel idea that you can invent a new grade without having to invent any new material on which to award it — the content of A-Level stays the same. Ivy League universities are in despair at the inability of A-Levels to identify the top 15 per cent of candidates, leading to a burgeoning number of so-called aptitude tests, pioneered by Oxford and Cambridge but now spreading like a virus. We have reinvented the fourth term Oxbridge examination. Schools are deserting to the IB, which is actually quite a flawed examination, or seeking to develop with limited resources and no Government backing the Pre-U examination. Meanwhile the Government, as if enough people were not jumping ship, invents the new diploma, an all-singing, all-dancing examination which will by some new magic bridge the gap between the academic and the vocational pathway. Maintained schools, meanwhile, have to be ordered not to take the IB and ordered to take the new diplomas, which are about as popular as a demolition course in the middle of the Blitz.

Things are not much better at GCSE level. The examination is not rigorous enough for those aspiring to places at top universities, but it still too difficult for roughly half the school populace to gain a creditable grade.

I was howled down recently for criticising the new GCSE science specifications, and criticised in public by Government ministers and the head of a leading teaching union. My criticisms were ‘insulting’. A fortnight later Ofqual, the new and supposedly independent Government agency overseeing qualifications, savaged the new science specifications, and the same ministers were positively falling over themselves to agree and promise firm action.

Apparently we don’t shoot the messenger unless he comes from an independent school, in which case it’s OK. Independent schools are flocking to the IGCSE examination, to the anger of the Government whose response is to refuse funding for state schools to do, and refuse to recognise it for league table purposes. How have we come to be in this sorry mess?

The first step was to take control of examinations away from their end-users, universities and employers. Does anyone remember the days when examination boards carried the name of universities? It was not a perfect system, but it did mean that academic qualifications were validated by academics. Then in one of the most unheralded takeovers of all time, more and more power over our examinations was taken by Government, until the pigs started to walk on two legs and we found ourselves with QCA, a wholly-owned Government subsidiary with totalitarian powers over every exam. and qualification in the UK. At more or less the same time, exams became commercial entities, needing to compete in the market place and make a profit. The market may be a fine thing for vegetables, but it is less good for qualifications. Examiners started to come back from meetings and report that talk of standards had been replaced by talk of the need to increase market share. Market share is not compatible with maintaining standards. Schools faced with the tyranny of league tables are not attracted by exams that are harder than others, and the effect of the market is to drive down standards. Followers of conspiracy theory also worry that dumbing-down is the result of a chronic shortage of teachers with degrees in their subject. If you cannot get the teachers who will raise the standard of the pupils, an alternative is to lower the standard. It is also difficult not to see a link with politics in a wider sense. How good is it for a Government to announce standards are rising in its term of office? How disastrous is it if the reverse is true?

The Government obsession with target-setting and league tables has also done serious damage to the examination system. It has placed huge pressure on schools to opt for ‘soft’ subjects, not only because these are easier to get teachers for but because they are easier full stop, and boost a school’s points score. It is not just government who are attracted to easier exams, because ‘better’ grades allow them to crow about how well they have done. Schools have to be attracted to them as well, because higher or better grades reflect well on them.

A largely un-noticed negative influence on exams has been the scarcity of decent markers. For years exam. marking has been to education what the sweat shop has been to the manufacture of clothing, an employment of last resort. This and the expense of marking have lead to a rise in the multiple choice and tick-box style of marking, and pressure to adopt on-line systems. Neither approach encourages rigour, and neither has the capacity to reward true creativity or original thinking.

Another factor contributing to our present deeply unsatisfactory situation is the extraordinary confusion in Government thinking between the teaching of knowledge and the teaching of skills. They are two separate things, and have been since time immemorial. The division is summed up by the saying that those who understand how something works will always have a job, but their boss will always be the person who understands why it works. Our present examination system seems set on treating knowledge and skills as the same thing, and that is a recipe for sterility.

Our present system is also another victim of the Government addiction to initiatives. It responds to a crisis by setting new targets and launching a new initiative. Initiatives do not spring out of a coherent overall philosophy of education. They are a knee jerk response to a crisis or a good cause, and are useful because they generate a lot of noise and make it seem as if someone is doing something. They also have the advantage that if they fail, schools, teachers or parents can be blamed – anyone, in fact, except the Government itself. The new Diplomas are an initiative, as was the dumbing-down of the specifications (syllabus in old-speak) for the new GCSE Science papers. Initiatives are bolt-ons, as if module after module was being added to an ancient Soyuz space vehicle. W. B. Yeats’ vision of Armageddon was summed up by the image ‘the centre will not hold’. Initiatives are like para-medics. They give some instant relief, but are no substitute for the surgeon and a long-term solution.

One thing has also played in to the hands of Government is persuading people to keep quiet about declining standards in exams. Whoever else’s fault it might be, it is certainly not the fault of the young people who have no choice other than to sit our national exams if those exams are no longer as rigorous as they need to be. Yet to criticise those exams is potentially to undermine the achievement of young people and appear to denigrate it. Teachers do not come in to teaching to lower the self-esteem of young people, and fear of doing just that has in effect gagged many people from saying what they think.

There are a number of possible answers to these problems, but they will require real political courage to introduce. A 15 year-old in my school was discussing many of the above issues with me in a History lesson. ‘What you’re really saying,’ he said, ‘is that if we’re to have a credible exam. system we’re going to have to recognise that some people will fail.’ Er… yes, really. But we could soften both the blow and the numbers by adopting a number of measures, the first one being to replace the one size fits all GCSE with a series of qualifications that fit horses to courses. We need a School Leaving certificate that guarantees every pupil leaving school has reached minimum standards of literacy and numeracy, hopefully around the age of 14. For those wishing to pursue the knowledge route there needs to be one set of qualifications, another for those pursuing skills, with the ability to mix and match if so desired, until the age of 16. After that we need a tiered Diploma, along the lines set out bv the Tomlinson Report. Most of all, we need to focus on a single, coherent and national pattern of examinations that will stop the present profligate expenditure on more and more different and competing exams. That pattern should be controlled by universities and by employers, not government. Examiners should be distanced from the need to be elected every five years or less. While we are at it, we need to create a new body to regulate and represent those who mark examinations, and give a recognised standing and career path to graduate teachers who undertake this crucial task.

Dr Martin Stephen is the High Master of St Paul’s School.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Attain - the magazine for the parents of children attending IAPS prep schools across the UK - www.attainmagazine.co.uk

What are System Error Memory Dump Files in Windows 11/10?

System Error Memory Dump Files or Win Dump Files are like reports created whenever your computer experiences a crash.  As the name suggests, they are Dump Files that are created and stored with information about each crash event and can be used to diagnose the problem that caused the crash. There are two major types of memory dump files, Memory.dmp and minidump. Memory Dump Files are important; however, they do take up a bit of space, and that can be a problem for users, especially if the storage is small.

When Windows crashes, it collects information about the crash during the time that the Crash Screen is displayed. At this point, the OS collects information from running applications, drivers, memories, etc., to create the Win dump files, also known as crash dumps files. These files together can be used to determine the cause of the crash. It is like analyzing stores of data that are saved over some time, the data will contain patterns that can be used to diagnose the cause of the problems.

Five types of Memory Dump Files can be created during a crash. They are:

A Complete Memory Dump File is a copy of the entire Windows physical memory at the time that the crash occurred. This type of Memory Dump is the largest. The default location for the Complete Memory Dump File is %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp. The old file is overwritten each time a new file is created. 

TIP: You can analyze Windows Memory Dump .dmp files with WhoCrashed.

Kernel memory dump files contain Windows kernel and hardware abstraction level kernel-mode drivers. Kernel memory dump files have smaller sizes than complete memory dump files because they don’t contain unallocated memory and memory allocated to user-mode applications.  The default location for kernel memory dump file is  %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp. The old one is overwritten when a new one is created.

Read: How to manually create a Crash Dump file in Windows

Small memory dump files contain information related to the list of loaded drivers, the running process, and the kernel. They are the smallest Win dump files and have lesser details and usefulness. The default location for the small memory dump file is %SystemRoot%\Minidump. When a new file is created, the older file is preserved.

Read: How to open and read Small Memory Dump (DMP) files

Automatic Memory Dump and Kernel Memory Dump contains the same information. The difference between the two is the way that Windows sets the size of the system paging file.

If the system paging file size is set to System managed size, and the kernel-mode crash dump is set to Automatic Memory Dump, then Windows can set the size of the paging file to less than the size of RAM. In this case, Windows sets the size of the paging file large enough to ensure that a kernel memory dump can be captured most of the time.

If the computer crashes and the paging file is not large enough to capture a kernel memory dump, Windows increases the size of the paging file to at least the size of RAM. The time of this event is recorded here in the Registry:

The increased Paging file size stays in place for 4 weeks and then returns to the smaller size. If you want to return to the smaller paging file before 4 weeks, you can delete the Registry entry.

To see the Page file settings:

By default the Automatic Memory Dump file is written to %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp.

An Active Memory Dump is similar to a Complete Memory Dump, but it filters out pages that are not likely to be relevant to troubleshooting problems on the computer. Because of this filtering, it is typically significantly smaller than a complete memory dump. This dump file does include any memory allocated to user-mode applications. It also includes memory allocated to the Windows kernel and hardware abstraction layer (HAL), as well as memory allocated to kernel-mode drivers and other kernel-mode programs.

An Active Memory Dump is particularly useful when Windows is hosting virtual machines (VMs). When taking a complete memory dump, the contents of each VM is included. When there are multiple VMs running, this can account for a large amount of memory in use on the host system. Many times, the code activities of interest are in the parent host OS, not the child VMs. An active memory dump filters out the memory associated with all child VMs. The default location for the Active Memory Dump File is %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp. The Active Memory Dump is available in Windows 11/10 and later.

Read: Free Crash Dump Analyzer software for Windows

The default location for the System Error Dump Files or Win Dump Files is on the drive that the Operating System is installed. In most cases that is the drive C:. you can search for:

or

If the Operating System is installed on a drive with another drive letter, then that drive letter would replace C:.

In most cases, you will see both minidump and Memory.dmp on your computer. This is so because all other Memory Dump files will be stored in the memory.dmp while the small dump file will be stored in minidump file.

If you can’t find the Memory Dump Files it could mean that they were deleted possibly in a clean-up. It could also mean that no crash was recorded.

In Windows 11, dump files can also be stored as smaller memory dump files called Minidump. You can find minidump.dmp dump files in C:\Windows\Minidump.dmp. Some minidump files will have their own names, usually numbers such as the date and time of the crash incident.

Read:

Yes, it is safe to delete System Error Memory Dump Files. All System Memory Dump Files contain some information about a system crash. Each time the system crashes a System Error Dump File is created. These files can be used to analyze the cause of the crash. Deleting these files will not directly affect the system, however, they might hold valuable data. It would be wise to make a backup of the System Error Memory Dump Files for future reference. Files that are older than 30 days may be deleted if you wish if there are no problems. The urge to delete the Dump Files is usually because of the space they take up on the computer. You can choose to backup the files externally for 30 days and delete them if there are no problems.

The files may also be sent to Microsoft for analysis. it is a good idea to report them to Microsoft before deleting them. Sending dump files to Microsoft is a good idea because there are teams that review them and try to investigate the cause and resolve it either through Windows Update or notify you about possible solutions in Action Center.

To delete Memory Dump Files you can find them on the hard drive and delete them. You can also delete it using the Windows Disk Cleanup Tool.

Open This PC in the left panel.

Right Click on the C: drive and click Properties.

A window will appear. Click Disk Cleanup, and it will load.

A window will appear, look to see that any files you need to delete are selected then click Clean Up System Files then wait for it to finish.

Another window will appear showing a list of things that can be cleaned up. You will notice some files selected and the amount of space that will be freed up if those files are deleted.

System Error Memory Dump files and System Error Minidump files are unselected. You can choose to delete them by selecting them and clicking ok,

You will be asked to confirm the delete. Confirm by clicking Delete Files.

System Error Memory Dump Files are basically error logs that are created whenever your computer crashes. They can hold small amount of information about the crash or very large amounts of information. The System Error Memory Dump Files can be used by users or technicians to see why the crash happened and they can decide what to do. If these files are sent to Microsoft, they can use them to make corrections to whatever caused the crash.

Related reads:

Error Memory Dump Files can be kept for 30 days or 60 days. They can be deleted after that time if the crash is not happening anymore. If the crash keeps happening then the larger Error Dump Files will get written over. The Complete Memory Dump File is the largest of the five types because it contains more data about the crash. This is usually the one that concerns users because of the size. If you want to keep them longer but you are low on disk space, you can choose to save them externally.