eBook Pass the 63: A Training Guide for the NASAA Series 63 Exam ePub

I hold a number of licenses in the Securities industry, and I am a general partner in a prominent firm. It came to my attention that someone in my firm inadvertently allowed my Series 63 to lapse which I held for several decades. I have no time to waste, so my first project is simply what is the best way to study for this exam? I passed it, and please allow me to give you the benefit of my experience.

1) This exam is not a blow through. You cannot wing it. The knowledge is very specific, and dogmatic. It is not intuitive, and perhaps even illogical. Since it involves rules, regulations, and laws, the exam is written by lawyers who want to impress you with how smart they are?

2) The exam in no way says anything about you in terms of your intelligence. You study you pass. You don't study, you fail.

3) Do not use just one source of materials for studying, including this very well written book. The first thing you should do is read the entire book through from beginning to end, and try to form a template in your mind of the outline of the material. You will not master it on the first read. There are four main sections to the exam, and they are given different weightings. Since the time Walker's book was written, the WEIGHTINGS HAVE CHANGED. This is CRUCIAL information. In my opinion, the exam is much, much easier now. In fact I over studied because when I read this book first, I put too much energy into areas that I subsequently found out were now underweighted. Here are the old, and new weightings. Avoid reading this chart at your peril:

Topic Area Tested----------No. of Questions-----Percentage of Exam

Registration of Persons -----18 questions--------30% of old exam
Securities-------------------15 questions--------25% of old exam
Business Practices-----------21 questions--------35% of old exam
Administrative Provisions----6 questions--------10% of old exam

REVISED Exam

Topic Area Tested--------------No. of Questions---------Percentage of Exam

Registration of Persons-------18 questions now 24------------40%
Securities--------------------15 questions now 6-------------10%
Business Practices------------21 questions now 24------------40%
Administrative Provisions-----6 questions still-------------10%

You should memorize the above chart. Notice that Registration of Persons is now 40% of the exam, up from 30%. Securities are now 10% of the exam, down from 25%, and Business Practices is now 40%, up from 35%. Folks, the Securities part of the exam is the toughest part of the exam by far, and they have now made it just 10% of the exam. In Walker's book, there is just too much material devoted to the securities part of the exam, and it is very detailed and difficult, but it is now only 10% of the exam.

What this means is that you will be killing yourself to memorize the Securities section, and it represents only 10% of the exam. If you study it, you will get half of the questions right in any event, so now you are only giving up 5 points, or half of the ten points allotted for the securities section. Before the exam was revised, and securities represented 25% of the exam, you were at risk of failing because of this part by itself.

Somebody smartened up and realized that there was no need to continue to test extensively on Securities because anybody doing underwritings would be using lawyers to do the deals anyway.

You also need a 72% passing grade to get through this exam, and that is up from 70%. The exam is 65 questions of which 60 count towards your score. On every exam there are 5 questions (you won't know which ones) where the examiners are trying out new questions, and areas to determine if they should be included in future exams. This means you can get all 5 of these questions wrong and it means nothing for your score. Here's the problem though.

Most people taking the exam are going to become flustered or shaken when they start seeing questions that they have not studied for. Don't let these questions rattle you. Just be aware before you even sit for the exam, that there are going to be five questions that you have most likely NEVER SEEN before, and you have no idea at all of the answer. Just forget about them.

I have a few other ideas for you:

A) In Walker's book are two exams to study with answers. This is not enough. You need to study and take 7 or 8 practice exams, and you should take them over and over again, until you are getting in the high 80's on each and every exam. If you do that, you will get in the high 80's on the actual exam. Since a score of 72 is passing on the actual exam, you want to make sure; you score well above that on the practice exam. You won't see this in any of the books, but if you happen to fail this exam, you must wait 30 days to take it again. Fail it a second time and you must wait 6 months to take it again. This is your career; you can't afford to fail this exam.

B) The exam is very TRICKY. They put in a word or a phrase, or a negative, in order to fool you. They actually attempt to fool or trick you. This is why you must not leap to the answer when you take the exam. You must read the question thoroughly and actually say to yourself, are they trying to fool me? Read each and every answer. Do not bring preconceived notions to this exam. Have a very open mind. It is very, very easy to make careless answers on this exam. It is terrible to know an answer and still get it wrong, because of either trickiness, or just not reading the question or associated answers correctly.

C) Bear in mind that this is a multiple choice exam, and that means that they are giving you the answer in one of those choices. There are also questions, where the answer is several of the choices, like I plus II, plus IV. Just have an open mind, and focus on what they are asking. Remember, do not formulate an answer too quickly, and do not make careless errors.

D) I suggest you order exam questions and answers from some other service of which there are several out there. Just check the search engines, and you will find what you are looking for. You may also want to order flash cards, they really do help. Some services also have video or DVD's available to help you, and I found them useful as well.

In summary, adopting the right approach to studying for the Series 63 will slash your study time in half. Knowing what questions are on the exam, and to what extent each of the study sections are tested will force you to reallocate your time to study what is important. Finally, anything you find really difficult, write up on index cards, or type it into a word document, and print it with the smallest font, and carry it around with you and study it in elevators, on trains, or in transit anywhere. You want to get this exam out of the way, and get on with your career. Benefit from the mistakes of others, and those that have taken this exam before you. Good luck.

Richard Stoyeck

When I worked at the big banks, and was forced into either taking these exams and passing, or being bumped out of the office. Well I am always up for a challenge so I got this book and studied like no other. The bank also has you go sit in a classroom for 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 4 months, you take each exam and if you don’t pass that’s it you are done and cant go on. I passed this on the first try. I will say having your 6 and 63 is worthless. You don’t actually get to do anything in the banks but give the FA the account to sell. The day my one year contract expired, meaning if I quit before I owed them 3k, I quit and never went back. The big banks play a terribly unfair game with the general public in which every single thing makes them money and makes the customers lose money. The book works and you will pass, but you also give up your soul in the process. I got mine back from them and moved into a back office role elsewhere.

You will not score 100 percent using this book, but if you are like me, that is not your goal. You want to pass this test as quickly and painlessly as possible and get on with your life. This book excels in this regard. Walker reduces the material to a child-like level of clarity. He takes a set of tedious test material and turns it into easy reading.

I used this book along with the STC Series 63 manual and scored 90 percent with a week of preparation (alongside my job). At most, the STC book contributed about 5 points to my score. Walker's book is not complete, but it has enough information for you to pass, provided that you have some measure of common sense to answer the more "colorful" questions. The four practice tests mirrored the difficulty of the actual exam. The best part is that it only takes 2-3 days to get through the whole book.

Learn the material quickly. Pass the test. Get on with your life. That's what this book is for.

This book is unlike many of its genre in that it is actually an interesting read. The author employs many real world examples, which will help the reader recall the material much better at test time than would a simple memorization of facts. The author is also very good at explaining the more subtle aspects of securities laws. In some instances, he presents the set of laws as written in "legalese" and follows this with a translation in plain English. Two sample exams are included at the end of the book, so the reader can test his or her memory. I didn't think the exam questions he provided tested the material deeply enough, however, and may give the user a sense of false confidence. I also found both the glossary and the index lacking in that they were both incomplete, making it difficult to locate the discussion on a specific topic I wanted to review.

A little background first:
I decided to enter the finance industry, after being in the customer service business for a while now. I have little experience in finance, but its where i want to go.

The book:
Mr. Walker does a good job of presenting the information in a simple way, and at the same time also manages to deliver the core ideas of the test requirements. He also uses many popular terms and jokes to help the understanding process, although some jokes were too corny for my taste. There were also some cases where the author assumed the reader would know certain things, but i was actually left wondering what the explanation would be.

My Suggestion:
Buy this book!... but also use other sources; i used investopedia.com and their practice tests, which helped me determine the areas that i needed to review further. I passed with a 75%, which is cutting it close, but i think my study strategy was the issue, and not this book. This book definitely allowed me to understand the general concepts of the Series 63 exam.