Brand Resources and Study Plan
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in CPD & Exams
Hi all,
I’ve noticed similar questions have been posed before but none that specifically answer my query.
Studying for R02 at the moment and I’ve read a lot about the BrandFT materials and they seem to get good reviews. I was just wondering, for those who’ve used these materials, do you by the study text (much shorter than the CII study materials) and that’s all you need for your exam? Or does this just provide a summary/highlights of the module and then you use the CII text for more detail?
Thanks
I’ve noticed similar questions have been posed before but none that specifically answer my query.
Studying for R02 at the moment and I’ve read a lot about the BrandFT materials and they seem to get good reviews. I was just wondering, for those who’ve used these materials, do you by the study text (much shorter than the CII study materials) and that’s all you need for your exam? Or does this just provide a summary/highlights of the module and then you use the CII text for more detail?
Thanks
Comments
Hello,
I would say it depends on your level of knowledge/experience/confidence within the area.
For some e.g. R05 or other ones I felt confident with, I purchased condensed study notes and used them along with lots of practice questions. For any area I got multiple questions wrong, I'd at that point go back over that topic within the text book.
Of course everybody revises differently, but for me personally, I found it more beneficial to concentrate on doing as many practice papers as possible and then going over the tricky bits in the notes/text book.
I have however found it useful having the various textbooks in the office for reference if I need to look over anything for a report etc.
Hope that helps & good luck!
Thanks.
That's great thanks for the insight!
So far I've passed LP2, R01 & R05 first time. What's worked for me is buying the notes from Redmill, reading them them twice then doing the question packs on revision mate and practice papers from Brand. I then go through the questions I got wrong and make notes on that particular section, I will use the CII text book as reference as the chapter numbers are next to the answers. I then keep repeating the questions over and over until I'm getting pretty much all the answers correct. Seems to be working so far.
I have yet to read the CII text book, I think if I relied solely on that I would have failed. There is far too much information in that book and you can't take notes on all of it.
Each to their own I guess, personally I have only ever used the CII book to pass the multiple choice exams and only now I am doing R06 gone for the Brand analysis.
With the others I think you can pass by reading the CII book and doing past papers but I agree that I think it recent years gaps have appeared in the CII books which to be honest I think are do the additional study materials the CII have started selling!
I think the only exam the CII book has a limited use is RO6 as it is so broad and the CII book is very very generalised.
I would say that the more your knowledge grows generally as you progress and become more experienced also helps greatly passing exams.
When I was originally studying I found the audio support from Patterson was useful, as I could listen to it on the drive into and home from work.
As said before, everyone has their own 'best way' of learning.
For R01 I just bought the Brandft one but though the brevity was valuable (compared to cii) I found sometimes/often I wanted to check things in the cii one (I still passed luckily). So for the rest I bought the cii study book and coincidentally around about r02 I discovered the aviva resources which are now out of date and no longer available but were good as the brevity option. I think some R0* options now have people selling pdf versions on eBay but I used to buy the official ones and sell the book version on eBay and get a tenner or so back (after paying the stupidly expensive postage charge for cii to send it).
Brand is a great resource but if you don't have a lot of experience in the field I would go for Redmill Advance.
Brands study notes are similar to the notes I would make after I have read Redmill/CII book, they can lack in context and I, personally, would not use them as a sole source of learning. With that said, everyone is different and this may well be right up your street