the Wealthy Canadian

Are you taking the Canadian Securities Course and need a way to practice and ‘assess your readiness to take the CSC exams’?  The Canadian Securities Institute has study aid to do just that.  This aid comes in the form of an online course called CSC Check that you sign up for like any other CSI course.  I’ve made use of this course, here is my review.

The Good

The CSC is a large course filled with enough material to learn and memorize to make an elephant run in fear.  The way that I like to learn is by actually practicing the concepts.  CSC Check is great for that.  Every chapter in the CSC has a corresponding domain module in the CSC Check with several practice questions.  These are great to run through as you struggle to understand the concepts presented in the CSC.  This is the place where you can identify what you truly do understand and areas that you likely should re-read.  If you’re already taking the CSC, then these quizzes will look familiar – they are the built the same as the CSC quizzes.  They are timed, but there is no time limit.  The way that I studied was to take each domain quiz as I completed each chapter, I didn’t worry about the timer, and I used the CSC textbook as a reference.  So, in my case they really weren’t quizzes but more assignments for practice.

The next level of testing is the Knowledge Assessment Tool.  The CSC is divided into sections and further subdivided into chapters.  Where the Domain Quizzes test individual chapters, the Knowledge Assessment Tool tests an entire section.  Again, they are timed, but there is no time limit.  Again, I did not concern myself too much with the timer and it was still open book, but this time any question that required me to open the CSC was marked as something that I needed more practice on.

The third and final level is the Exam mode.  This time you get 100 questions covering one book of the entire course and two hours to complete it.  This is to simulate the exam and get you prepared – an excellent preparation for T day.  The CSC Check test bank contains a few hundred questions that are inserted pseudo-randomly, based upon the weighting of the CSC.  That is, the exam mode knows how many questions of each topic to include based upon how many will be on the real CSC exam, and then randomly selects enough of each domain.

The large test bank is what I valued the most as it allowed me far more practice than answering the exact same questions over and over.  It means that you don’t have a limited number of exams to practice on.  This is where I got the most practice and built my confidence.

The Bad

The questions generally provide you with some level of explanation of the answer and where references to where it can be found in the CSC.  However, I found that the explanations should be more in depth.  Pointing me to a chapter in the CSC is not good enough… I know what chapter the question is from and likely didn’t understand it well there.  I got the question wrong and I want to know why.  There is no discussion board (although, one might assume that you are likely enrolled in the CSC, so you could use that discussion board).

Although the test bank has several hundred questions they are randomly placed in the exam mode.  Therefore, after your first trial run you will run into questions that you have already completed.  That means the only real exam simulation is the first one that you write.  After that you will run into questions that you’ve just answered, which will allow you to go quicker than you would on the exam.

Another downside is that I’m quite sure that they reuse questions between the quizzes in the CSC and CSC Check.  They may change names or numbers but use the exact same wording.  While the practice is still valuable, the real exam is going to ask questions in a completely different way.

If you are writing the CSC using the paper and pencil method (they now offer computer-based testing) then the CSC Check will not be a completely realistic simulation.  Not a biggie, but something to keep in mind.

The biggest detraction is the price.  Looking it up now it appears to be $120!  Come on folks at CSI, you can buy massive GMAT test prep books with thousands of questions for $20-30, and each exam is completely different.

The Bottom Line

If you are shelling out to take the CSC then you want all the practice you can get.  The CSC Check is a great way to do that, and it is cheaper than the cost of an additional attempt at writing the real exam.  I think that it helped me out.  I’ll never know what I would have scored if I didn’t use the CSC Check, but I do know that I passed with honours by using it.

The CSI may occasionally offer some sort of a discount on the CSC Check, at least that’s why I bought it at the time.  Since my biggest objection with the course is the price, the discount certainly helped sway me to buy it.

Not sure about the Canadian Securities Course?  Check out my review on it, here