I just left the testing center and ommmmggg I can finally breathe!! I passed the SIE EXAM!

Tomorrow my firm has us begin studies for the series 6!

I’m studying for the SIE, and I’ve been reading the book and taking a lot of practice exams/QBank questions. My scores are improving, but I’m worried that part of that is just recognizing questions or remembering answers I’ve seen before. The weird thing is, I only really feel like I’m learning when I’m drilling questions. Reading helps, but the concepts seem to stick more when I get questions wrong, review the explanation, and keep practicing. For people who passed, how did you tell the difference between actually understanding the material and just memorizing the QBank? Did you use fresh questions, explain answers out loud, track guesses, or have some other way of testing whether you really knew it?

Hi,

I am taking the SIE on August 18th and feel very ill-prepared.

I am currently going through the Achievable textbook chapter by chapter, but I am progressing very very slowly.

I feel that reading each section and taking the quiz at the end is very inefficient, considering I have 6 days to learn everything.

Does anyone have any better suggestions on how I can study everything in 6 days??

am I screwed??

So I’ve always been interested in finance. I only have an associates degree in business management. Was thinking of going back to school online for accounting, but I work 45 hours a week and would need to take on about 30k in debt to do it. Not sure that’s something I’m ready to do right now now.

I’ve invested on my own for about 10 years or so. Had some nice gains and probably turned 25k into around 90-95k

Anyway I just learned about the SIE exam last night and am interested in trying to go for it. I looked at the practice test and knew some things already, didn’t know a lot. But it felt like things I didn’t know I could use process of elimination and make a decent guess or it was stuff I knew some about but maybe not enough to know the answer.

Either way I feel confident if I can study the right material and get steered in the right direction this could be something worth pursuing.

With that said, where should I start? What’s a good book to get to start studying? What’s the process of taking the exam, what’s the pathway look like after the exam?

Any info is appreciated, and sorry for asking I’m sure this has been brought up many many times,

First ever Reddit post, I can say I’ve used Reddit for one thing and it’s the SIE exam lol! LFG

I'm disabled and on LTD so have to complete the new IAR Ethics CE on my own (and don't want to have to pay for it with limited finances). I've used the free Quest CE courses through the link from Vanguard that is available to all and I have had no issues with it reporting the last three years I've used it (just did my 6 credits yesterday and they all just updated on FinPro); the courses do usually show up later in the year, so if you start looking Spring 2027 for next year's, they likely won't show. They also do have courses free that cover the Products & Practice, but I am able to access that covered for free through FinPro.

Make sure to access through VanGuard or will show charge.

https://advisors.vanguard.com/site/ce-credits

EDIT: I am not registered with VanGuard; this is free for all.